The Earthman, Wellesley, came to Ophir in the season of aphelion, when the binary suns of that remote planet were cold serpent's eyes, dimly seen above the chill mists that shrouded its fern forests and craggy, young mountains, its silent oceans and magnificent organ pipe cities of legend. From space one might look down upon the vista of these latter prominences and imagine a vast, exotic civilization spread over the face of the equinoctial swamps, but Wellesley knew that the giant towers were m