The Inhabited Worlds

49:3.1The ma­jor­ity of in­hab­ited plan­ets are peo­pled with the breath­ing type of in­tel­li­gent be­ings. But there are also or­ders of mor­tals who are able to live on worlds with lit­tle or no air. Of the Or­von­ton in­hab­ited worlds this type amounts to less than seven per cent. In Neb­a­don this per­cent­age is less than three. In all Sa­ta­nia there are only nine such worlds.

49:3.2There are so very few of the non­breather type of in­hab­ited worlds in Sa­ta­nia be­cause this more re­cently or­ga­nized sec­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek still abounds in me­te­oric space bod­ies; and worlds with­out a pro­tec­tive fric­tion at­mo­sphere are sub­ject to in­ces­sant bom­bard­ment by these wan­der­ers. Even some of the comets con­sist of me­teor swarms, but as a rule they are dis­rupted smaller bod­ies of mat­ter.

49:3.3Mil­lions upon mil­lions of me­te­orites en­ter the at­mo­sphere of Uran­tia daily, com­ing in at the rate of al­most two hun­dred miles a sec­ond. On the non­breath­ing worlds the ad­vanced races must do much to pro­tect them­selves from me­teor dam­age by mak­ing elec­tri­cal in­stal­la­tions which op­er­ate to con­sume or shunt the me­te­ors. Great dan­ger con­fronts them when they ven­ture be­yond these pro­tected zones. These worlds are also sub­ject to dis­as­trous elec­tri­cal storms of a na­ture un­known on Uran­tia. Dur­ing such times of tremen­dous en­ergy fluc­tu­a­tion the in­hab­i­tants must take refuge in their spe­cial struc­tures of pro­tec­tive in­su­la­tion.

49:3.4Life on the worlds of the non­breathers is rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from what it is on Uran­tia. The non­breathers do not eat food or drink wa­ter as do the Uran­tia races. The re­ac­tions of the ner­vous sys­tem, the heat-reg­u­lat­ing mech­a­nism, and the metabolism of these spe­cial­ized peo­ples are rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from such func­tions of Uran­tia mor­tals. Al­most ev­ery act of liv­ing, aside from re­pro­duc­tion, dif­fers, and even the meth­ods of pro­cre­ation are some­what dif­fer­ent.

49:3.5On the non­breath­ing worlds the an­i­mal species are rad­i­cally un­like those found on the at­mo­spheric plan­ets. The non­breath­ing plan of life varies from the tech­nique of ex­is­tence on an at­mo­spheric world; even in sur­vival their peo­ples dif­fer, be­ing can­di­dates for Spirit fu­sion. Nev­er­the­less, these be­ings en­joy life and carry for­ward the ac­tiv­i­ties of the realm with the same rel­a­tive tri­als and joys that are ex­pe­ri­enced by the mor­tals liv­ing on at­mo­spheric worlds. In mind and char­ac­ter the non­breathers do not dif­fer from other mor­tal types.

49:3.6You would be more than in­ter­ested in the plan­e­tary con­duct of this type of mor­tal be­cause such a race of be­ings in­hab­its a sphere in close prox­im­ity to Uran­tia.