The Inhabited Worlds

49:2.1There is a stan­dard and ba­sic pat­tern of veg­etable and an­i­mal life in each sys­tem. But the Life Car­ri­ers are of­ten­times con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of mod­i­fy­ing these ba­sic pat­terns to con­form to the vary­ing phys­i­cal con­di­tions which con­front them on nu­mer­ous worlds of space. They fos­ter a gen­er­al­ized sys­tem type of mor­tal crea­ture, but there are seven dis­tinct phys­i­cal types as well as thou­sands upon thou­sands of mi­nor vari­ants of these seven out­stand­ing dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions:

49:2.21. At­mo­spheric types.

49:2.32. El­e­men­tal types.

49:2.43. Grav­ity types.

49:2.54. Tem­per­a­ture types.

49:2.65. Elec­tric types.

49:2.76. En­er­giz­ing types.

49:2.87. Un­named types.

49:2.9The Sa­ta­nia sys­tem con­tains all of these types and nu­mer­ous in­ter­me­di­ate groups, al­though some are very spar­ingly rep­re­sented.

49:2.101. The at­mo­spheric types. The phys­i­cal dif­fer­ences of the worlds of mor­tal habi­ta­tion are chiefly de­ter­mined by the na­ture of the at­mo­sphere; other in­flu­ences which con­tribute to the plan­e­tary dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of life are rel­a­tively mi­nor.

49:2.11The pres­ent at­mo­spheric sta­tus of Uran­tia is al­most ideal for the sup­port of the breath­ing type of man, but the hu­man type can be so mod­i­fied that it can live on both the super­at­mo­spheric and the sub­at­mo­spheric plan­ets. Such mod­i­fi­ca­tions also ex­tend to the an­i­mal life, which dif­fers greatly on the var­i­ous in­hab­ited spheres. There is a very great mod­i­fi­ca­tion of an­i­mal or­ders on both the sub- and the super­at­mo­spheric worlds.

49:2.12Of the at­mo­spheric types in Sa­ta­nia, about two and one-half per cent are sub­breathers, about five per cent super­breathers, and over ninety-one per cent are mid-breathers, al­to­gether ac­count­ing for ninety-eight and one-half per cent of the Sa­ta­nia worlds.

49:2.13Be­ings such as the Uran­tia races are clas­si­fied as mid-breathers; you rep­re­sent the av­er­age or typ­i­cal breath­ing or­der of mor­tal ex­is­tence. If in­tel­li­gent crea­tures should ex­ist on a planet with an at­mo­sphere sim­i­lar to that of your near neigh­bor, Venus, they would be­long to the super­breather group, while those in­hab­it­ing a planet with an at­mo­sphere as thin as that of your outer neigh­bor, Mars, would be de­nom­i­nated sub­breathers.

49:2.14If mor­tals should in­habit a planet de­void of air, like your moon, they would be­long to the sep­a­rate or­der of non­breathers. This type rep­re­sents a rad­i­cal or ex­treme ad­just­ment to the plan­e­tary en­vi­ron­ment and is sep­a­rately con­sid­ered. Non­breathers ac­count for the re­main­ing one and one-half per cent of Sa­ta­nia worlds.

49:2.152. The el­e­men­tal types. These dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions have to do with the re­la­tion of mor­tals to wa­ter, air, and land, and there are four dis­tinct species of in­tel­li­gent life as they are re­lated to these habi­tats. The Uran­tia races are of the land or­der.

49:2.16It is quite im­pos­si­ble for you to en­vis­age the en­vi­ron­ment which pre­vails dur­ing the early ages of some worlds. These un­usual con­di­tions make it nec­es­sary for the evolv­ing an­i­mal life to re­main in its ma­rine nurs­ery habi­tat for longer pe­ri­ods than on those plan­ets which very early pro­vide a hos­pitable land-and-at­mo­sphere en­vi­ron­ment. Con­versely, on some worlds of the super­breathers, when the planet is not too large, it is some­times ex­pe­di­ent to pro­vide for a mor­tal type which can read­ily ne­go­ti­ate at­mo­spheric pas­sage. These air nav­i­ga­tors some­times in­ter­vene be­tween the wa­ter and land groups, and they al­ways live in a mea­sure upon the ground, even­tu­ally evolv­ing into land dwellers. But on some worlds, for ages they con­tinue to fly even af­ter they have be­come land-type be­ings.

49:2.17It is both amaz­ing and amus­ing to ob­serve the early civ­i­liza­tion of a prim­i­tive race of hu­man be­ings tak­ing shape, in one case, in the air and tree­tops and, in an­other, midst the shal­low wa­ters of shel­tered tropic basins, as well as on the bot­tom, sides, and shores of these ma­rine gar­dens of the dawn races of such ex­traor­di­nary spheres. Even on Uran­tia there was a long age dur­ing which prim­i­tive man pre­served him­self and ad­vanced his prim­i­tive civ­i­liza­tion by liv­ing for the most part in the tree­tops as did his ear­lier ar­bo­real an­ces­tors. And on Uran­tia you still have a group of diminu­tive mam­mals (the bat fam­ily) that are air nav­i­ga­tors, and your seals and whales, of ma­rine habi­tat, are also of the mam­malian or­der.

49:2.18In Sa­ta­nia, of the el­e­men­tal types, seven per cent are wa­ter, ten per cent air, sev­enty per cent land, and thir­teen per cent com­bined land-and-air types. But these mod­i­fi­ca­tions of early in­tel­li­gent crea­tures are nei­ther hu­man fishes nor hu­man birds. They are of the hu­man and pre­hu­man types, nei­ther super­fishes nor glo­ri­fied birds but dis­tinctly mor­tal.

49:2.193. The grav­ity types. By mod­i­fi­ca­tion of cre­ative de­sign, in­tel­li­gent be­ings are so con­structed that they can freely func­tion on spheres both smaller and larger than Uran­tia, thus be­ing, in mea­sure, ac­com­mo­dated to the grav­ity of those plan­ets which are not of ideal size and den­sity.

49:2.20The var­i­ous plan­e­tary types of mor­tals vary in height, the av­er­age in Neb­a­don be­ing a tri­fle un­der seven feet. Some of the larger worlds are peo­pled with be­ings who are only about two and one-half feet in height. Mor­tal stature ranges from here on up through the av­er­age heights on the av­er­age-sized plan­ets to around ten feet on the smaller in­hab­ited spheres. In Sa­ta­nia there is only one race un­der four feet in height. Twenty per cent of the Sa­ta­nia in­hab­ited worlds are peo­pled with mor­tals of the mod­i­fied grav­ity types oc­cu­py­ing the larger and the smaller plan­ets.

49:2.214. The tem­per­a­ture types. It is pos­si­ble to cre­ate liv­ing be­ings who can with­stand tem­per­a­tures both much higher and much lower than the life range of the Uran­tia races. There are five dis­tinct or­ders of be­ings as they are clas­si­fied with ref­er­ence to heat-reg­u­lat­ing mech­a­nisms. In this scale the Uran­tia races are num­ber three. Thirty per cent of Sa­ta­nia worlds are peo­pled with races of mod­i­fied tem­per­a­ture types. Twelve per cent be­long to the higher tem­per­a­ture ranges, eigh­teen per cent to the lower, as com­pared with Uran­tians, who func­tion in the mid-tem­per­a­ture group.

49:2.225. The elec­tric types. The elec­tric, mag­netic, and elec­tronic be­hav­ior of the worlds varies greatly. There are ten de­signs of mor­tal life var­i­ously fash­ioned to with­stand the dif­fer­en­tial en­ergy of the spheres. These ten va­ri­eties also re­act in slightly dif­fer­ent ways to the chem­i­cal rays of or­di­nary sun­light. But these slight phys­i­cal vari­a­tions in no way af­fect the in­tel­lec­tual or the spir­i­tual life.

49:2.23Of the elec­tric group­ings of mor­tal life, al­most twenty-three per cent be­long to class num­ber four, the Uran­tia type of ex­is­tence. These types are dis­tributed as fol­lows: num­ber 1, one per cent; num­ber 2, two per cent; num­ber 3, five per cent; num­ber 4, twenty-three per cent; num­ber 5, twenty-seven per cent; num­ber 6, twenty-four per cent; num­ber 7, eight per cent; num­ber 8, five per cent; num­ber 9, three per cent; num­ber 10, two per cent—in whole per­cent­ages.

49:2.246. The en­er­giz­ing types. Not all worlds are alike in the man­ner of tak­ing in en­ergy. Not all in­hab­ited worlds have an at­mo­spheric ocean suited to res­pi­ra­tory ex­change of gases, such as is pres­ent on Uran­tia. Dur­ing the ear­lier and the later stages of many plan­ets, be­ings of your pres­ent or­der could not ex­ist; and when the res­pi­ra­tory fac­tors of a planet are very high or very low, but when all other pre­req­ui­sites to in­tel­li­gent life are ad­e­quate, the Life Car­ri­ers of­ten es­tab­lish on such worlds a mod­i­fied form of mor­tal ex­is­tence, be­ings who are com­pe­tent to ef­fect their life-pro­cess ex­changes di­rectly by means of light-en­ergy and the first­hand power trans­mu­ta­tions of the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers.

49:2.25There are six dif­fer­ing types of an­i­mal and mor­tal nu­tri­tion: The sub­breathers em­ploy the first type of nu­tri­tion, the ma­rine dwellers the sec­ond, the mid-breathers the third, as on Uran­tia. The super­breathers em­ploy the fourth type of en­ergy in­take, while the non­breathers uti­lize the fifth or­der of nu­tri­tion and en­ergy. The sixth tech­nique of en­er­giz­ing is lim­ited to the mid­way crea­tures.

49:2.267. The un­named types. There are nu­mer­ous ad­di­tional phys­i­cal vari­a­tions in plan­e­tary life, but all of these dif­fer­ences are wholly mat­ters of anatom­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tion, phys­i­o­logic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, and elec­tro­chem­i­cal ad­just­ment. Such dis­tinc­tions do not con­cern the in­tel­lec­tual or the spir­i­tual life.