"The Selenites must have undertaken the immense labor of digging these enormous pits at places of refuge in which they could protect themselves against the fierce solar rays that beat against them for 15 days in succession!" "Not a bad idea, that of the Selenites!" exclaimed Ardan.
"An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl.

"But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters.

Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep.

To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds and hundreds of years, and even then they should be giants who would attempt it!" "Why so ?" asked Ardan.

"In the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on the Earth, the labor of the Selenites can't be compared with that of men like us." "But suppose a Selenite to be six times smaller than a man like us!" urged M'Nicholl.
"And suppose a Selenite never had an existence at all!" interposed Barbican with his usual success in putting an end to the argument.