Indeed it wasn’t liquor.  Watson took a sip; and he made a mental note that if all things in the Thomahlia were on a par with this, then he certainly was in a world far above his own.  For the one sip was enough to send a thrill through his veins, a thrill not unlike the ecstasy of supreme music—­a sparkling exuberance, leaving the mind clear and scintillating, glorified to the quick thinking of genius.

Later Watson experienced no reaction such as would have come from drinking alcohol or any other drug.

It was the strangest meal ever eaten by Watson.  The food was very savoury, and perfectly cooked and served.  Only one dish reminded him of meat.

“You have meats?” he asked.  “This looks like flesh.”

Geos shook his head.  “No.  Do you have flesh to eat, on the other side?  We make all our food.”

Make food.  Watson thought best simply to answer the question: 

“As I remember it, Rhamda Geos, we had a sort of meat called beef—­the flesh of certain animals.”

The Rhamda was intensely interested.  “Are they large?  Some interpret the Jarados to that effect.  Tell me, are they like this?” And he pulled a silver whistle from his pocket and, placing it to his lips, blew two short, shrill notes.

Immediately a peculiar patter sounded down the corridor; a ka-tuck, ka-tuck, ka-tuck, not unlike galloping hoof-beats.  Before Watson could do any surmising a little bundle of shining black, rounded the entrance to the room and ran up to them.  Geos picked it up.

It was a horse.  A horse, beautifully formed, perfect as an Arab, and not more than nine inches high!

Now, Chick had been in the Blind Spot, conscious, but a short while.  He knew that he was in the precise position that Rhamda Avec had occupied that morning on the ferry-boat.  Chick recalled the pictures of the Lilliputian deer and the miniature kittens; yet he was immensely surprised.

The little fellow began to neigh, a tiny, ridiculous sound as compared with the blast of a normal-sized horse, and began to paw for the edge of the table.

“What does he want?”

“A drink.  They will do anything for it.”  Geos pressed a button, and in a moment he had another goblet.  This he held before the little stallion, who thrust his head in above his nostrils and drank as greedily as a Percheron weighing a ton.  Watson stroked his sides; the mane was like spun silk, he felt the legs symmetrical, perfectly shaped, not as large above the fetlocks as an ordinary pencil.

“Are they all of this size?”

“Yes; all of them.  Why do you ask?”

“Because”—­seeing no harm in telling this—­“as I remember them, a horse on the other side would make a thousand of this one.  People ride them.”

The Rhamda nodded.

“So it is told in the books of Jarados.  We had such beasts, once, ourselves.  We would have them still, but for the brutality and stupidity of our ancestors.  It is the one great sin of the Thomahlia.  Once we had animals, great and small, and all the blessings of Nature; we had horses and, I think, what you call beef; a thousand other creatures that were food and help and companions to man.  And for the good they had done our ancestors destroyed them!”