You cannot imagine my surprise when I reached Alpha Centaurus and found that it was inhabited by a class of human creatures who were created to live and flourish in fire.  Their customs and habits are so strange that I am not capable of giving an intelligent description of them.  I know that it is inconceivable to us how life can be developed and sustained in the midst of a burning sun, and I found that these beings in turn could not conceive how life can exist in a cold world like ours.

These creatures have no digestive organs.  They live, in part, on the chemical action produced by fire breathing.  The hotter the fire, the more easily is life sustained.  If they were to get away from the heat, this chemical action would cease and therefore death would be as certain to them as being enveloped in fire would spell death to us.

In our eyes, their bodies are misshapen, composed of elements most of which are not found in our world.  There are many cold places, or sun spots, on Alpha Centaurus, but these are shunned by the people as death traps.  However, the centers of population gather on the more solid sections, most of which lie around the sun spots.

You could scarcely believe your eyes were you to look upon the durable works of architecture built by these strangely shaped mortals.

Still more wonderful are the seas of boiling fire which are sometimes comparatively quiet, and then again, in all madness, their majestic flames shoot upward thousands of miles.

When the sea is quiet, life is oppressive in the centers of population just as it is in our world when the air is still and the summer sun is pouring down upon us.  Breathing is easier and life is quickened when the molten sea boils furiously.  These terrible heat blasts are most exhilarating and refreshing to the inhabitants living near enough to receive the benefit of them.

You may imagine that these people of Alpha Centaurus are idlers, being fed by the ceaseless heat waves that beat upon them.  Such a conception is totally false, for I saw that industry was plainly evident, and labor had its reward in securing the necessaries and luxuries of life.

These life-sustaining foods are composed of elements which can be appropriated into muscle and bone (if you will permit me to use these terms), and are obtained by reuniting and re-combining spent forces.  This explanation is somewhat mystical, but I can do no better in describing the food production and assimilation in a pure fire-world like this one on which I had arrived.

To imagine and believe that fertility can be possible in a seething world-furnace, is too far beyond our philosophy to be conceivable.  Alpha Centaurus is so large a sun that although it has a population ten times greater than our globe, yet its surface is sparsely settled.

The oceans of fire occupy the greater part of the surface of this wonderful sphere.  In these great red-hot seas live the monsters of the deep, as well as a motley variety of other species, veritable salamanders, some grotesquely hideous, others surpassingly beautiful in form and hue.