The Local System Headquarters

46:1.1Je­ru­sem is di­vided into one thou­sand lat­i­tu­di­nal sec­tors and ten thou­sand lon­gi­tu­di­nal zones. The sphere has seven ma­jor cap­i­tals and sev­enty mi­nor ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­ters. The seven sec­tional cap­i­tals are con­cerned with di­verse ac­tiv­i­ties, and the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign is pres­ent in each at least once a year.

46:1.2The stan­dard mile of Je­ru­sem is equiv­a­lent to about seven Uran­tia miles. The stan­dard weight, the “gradant,” is built up through the dec­i­mal sys­tem from the ma­ture ul­ti­ma­ton and rep­re­sents al­most ex­actly ten ounces of your weight. The Sa­ta­nia day equals three days of Uran­tia time, less one hour, four min­utes, and fif­teen sec­onds, that be­ing the time of the ax­ial rev­o­lu­tion of Je­ru­sem. The sys­tem year con­sists of one hun­dred Je­ru­sem days. The time of the sys­tem is broad­cast by the mas­ter chro­nol­deks.

46:1.3The en­ergy of Je­ru­sem is su­perbly con­trolled and cir­cu­lates about the sphere in the zone chan­nels, which are di­rectly fed from the en­ergy charges of space and ex­pertly ad­min­is­tered by the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers. The nat­u­ral re­sis­tance to the pas­sage of these en­er­gies through the phys­i­cal chan­nels of con­duc­tion yields the heat re­quired for the pro­duc­tion of the equable tem­per­a­ture of Je­ru­sem. The full-light tem­per­a­ture is main­tained at about 70 de­grees Fahren­heit, while dur­ing the pe­riod of light re­ces­sion it falls to a lit­tle lower than 50 de­grees.

46:1.4The light­ing sys­tem of Je­ru­sem should not be so dif­fi­cult for you to com­pre­hend. There are no days and nights, no sea­sons of heat and cold. The power trans­form­ers main­tain one hun­dred thou­sand cen­ters from which rar­efied en­er­gies are pro­jected up­ward through the plan­e­tary at­mo­sphere, un­der­go­ing cer­tain changes, un­til they reach the elec­tric air-ceil­ing of the sphere; and then these en­er­gies are re­flected back and down as a gen­tle, sift­ing, and even light of about the in­ten­sity of Uran­tia sun­light when the sun is shin­ing over­head at ten o’clock in the morn­ing.

46:1.5Un­der such con­di­tions of light­ing, the light rays do not seem to come from one place; they just sift out of the sky, em­a­nat­ing equally from all space di­rec­tions. This light is very sim­i­lar to nat­u­ral sun­light ex­cept that it con­tains very much less heat. Thus it will be rec­og­nized that such head­quar­ters worlds are not lu­mi­nous in space; if Je­ru­sem were very near Uran­tia, it would not be vis­i­ble.

46:1.6The gases which re­flect this light-en­ergy from the Je­ru­sem up­per iono­sphere back to the ground are very sim­i­lar to those in the Uran­tia up­per air belts which are con­cerned with the au­ro­ral phe­nom­ena of your so-called north­ern lights, al­though these are pro­duced by dif­fer­ent causes. On Uran­tia it is this same gas shield which pre­vents the es­cape of the ter­res­trial broad­cast waves, re­flect­ing them earth­ward when they strike this gas belt in their di­rect out­ward flight. In this way broad­casts are held near the sur­face as they jour­ney through the air around your world.

46:1.7This light­ing of the sphere is uni­formly main­tained for sev­enty-five per cent of the Je­ru­sem day, and then there is a grad­ual re­ces­sion un­til, at the time of min­i­mum il­lu­mi­na­tion, the light is about that of your full moon on a clear night. This is the quiet hour for all Je­ru­sem. Only the broad­cast-re­ceiv­ing sta­tions are in op­er­a­tion dur­ing this pe­riod of rest and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

46:1.8Je­ru­sem re­ceives faint light from sev­eral near-by suns—a sort of bril­liant starlight—but it is not de­pen­dent on them; worlds like Je­ru­sem are not sub­ject to the vi­cis­si­tudes of sun dis­tur­bances, nei­ther are they con­fronted with the prob­lem of a cool­ing or dy­ing sun.

46:1.9The seven tran­si­tional study worlds and their forty-nine satel­lites are heated, lighted, en­er­gized, and wa­tered by the Je­ru­sem tech­nique.