"We cannot give you sunlight for less because it costs us much to keep in repair our immense curtain systems across the valley." So the poor toilers labored more and slept less, while the few rich on the elevations built unto themselves more spacious homes and lived in greater luxury all their days.
In process of time some of the shrewdest highlanders devised an attachment to the curtain system by which the rainfall could also be distributed at the will of the operators. Then the rich Marsmen on the elevations said to the toilers: "Give us one-fifth more of your products, and we will give you your share of the rainfall."
The poor laborers had no alternative; so they labored still more diligently to pay their taxes for light and rain, and the burden became so heavy that they could no longer bear it So they sent up a petition praying for sunlight and rain for a one-fifth instead of a two-fifths tribute. The rich refused to listen to this prayer, whereat the toilers refused to comply with these intolerable demands.
Then did the rich magnates of the eleva-
