The Central Place also showed signs of having been erected only recently, and I marvelled at how speedily it must have been built and at what cost - since it must have been created primarily by human labour. The Central Place had been built by the blood of men -man subjected to a tyranny far harder to understand than that created by some power-mad dictator! The carriage stopped and was lowered to the ground outside the main entrance - a perfect square let into the side -and from it, walking like robots, the two men descended, leading the way into the building. Inside it was dim, poorly illuminated by simple lamps that seemed roughly the same as our oil lamps. This surprised me since most Martian peoples still use the almost everlasting artificial lighting that was one of the benefits left behind by the Sheev - the super-scientific race that had, according to legend and the little history that remained, destroyed themselves in a monstrous war many centuries earlier, leaving just a few immortals who had learned the error of their ways and rarely became involved in the affairs of men, fearing perhaps that they might repeat their errors.
