The Perfect World: A romance of strange people and strange places

Two young gentlemen are transported from a company town dominated by their family coalmine into an Underground cave system where an oligarchic Lost Race of dwarf Israelites – exiled after an Old Testament quarrel – has lived for 3000 years and undergone dramatic physical changes. After escaping they find the earth wracked with natural disasters and troubles and escape on a space air ship. This ship brings them to the second part of the book finding themselves on Jupiter where they encounter a utopian alien civilization. The ever present sense of “self-preservation” beats within the breasts of men most strongly at some period or other of their lives. It showed itself to Alan now. A fear of the supernatural came over him and very quietly he stepped into the shelter of a jutting piece of rock from which all unseen he could take a view of his surroundings.