me safely through the earth's crust, my travel-ing companion, the
hideous Mahar, emerged from the interior of the prospector and
stood beside me. For a long time she remained motionless.

What thoughts were passing through the convolutions of her reptilian
brain?

I do not know.

She was a member of the dominant race of Pel-lucidar. By a strange
freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason
in that world of anomalies.

To her, creatures such as I were of a lower order. As Perry had
discovered among the writings of her kind in the buried city of
Phutra, it was still an open question among the Mahars as to whether
man pos-sessed means of intelligent communication or the power of
reason.

Her kind believed that in the center of all-pervading solidity
there was a single, vast, spherical cavity, which was Pellucidar.
This cavity had been left there for the sole purpose of providing
a place for the creation and propagation of the Mahar race.
Everything within it had been put there for the uses of the Mahar.

I wondered what this particular Mahar might think now. I found
pleasure in speculating upon just what the effect had been upon her
of passing through the earth's crust, and coming out into a world
that one of even less intelligence than the great Mahars could
easily see was a different world from her own Pel-lucidar.