At times huge monsters, most of them dragon-like dinosaurs, crashed fearlessly through the jungle, pausing now and again to crop herbage or devour huge mouthfuls of luminous fungus, and exhaling great clouds of phosphorescent vapor that hung like wraiths in the still air above their enormous heads.
And everywhere was a dank, musty odor as if mold and matches had been mixed with stagnant water and brewed in a cauldron over a slow fire.
Presently they emerged from the jungle into a broad savanna of white, jointed grass with luminous tips, that reached to Ted’s shoulders. They walked side by side, now, and Ted noticed that the girl often glanced at a small instrument clamped on her wrist—evidently a compass.
For a moment his attention was distracted by a pair of enormous creatures, each well over fifty feet in height, browsing leisurely not more than a quarter of a mile to his right. Then a fearful thing happened.
Ted’s first intimation of it was the whistle of giant pinions just behind him. Then something struck the back of his head, knocking him flat on his face.
He scrambled to his feet and quickly brought up his pistol degravitor as he saw the girl, already far above the ground, struggling in the talons of a mighty flying reptile. His finger trembled on the trigger yet he did not pull it, for there suddenly came to him the realization that to destroy the monster would be to as surely kill the girl. A fall from that great height would have crushed her frail body to a pulp.
The creature flew with terrific speed, and in a moment, had disappeared from view with its prey.
Dejectedly, Ted holstered his degravitor. His downward glance fell on the green ray projector which the girl had carried—evidently knocked from her hand by the swoop of her captor.
He was about to pick it up, when suddenly far off in the dim mistiness toward which she had been carried, he saw a brilliant, star-like light, moving rapidly. It was unlike the phosphorescent gleam of the light carrying flyers, and he instantly recognized its import. Maza had lighted her brilliant head lamp in a last, desperate effort to guide him to her rescue.
With mighty bounds which, on earth, would have been phenomenal, but on the moon were quite normal leaps for his earth-trained muscles, he set out in swift pursuit.
As Roger Sanders plunged downward from the sky, the fragments of Ted’s shattered Blettendorf dropping around him, the three strange globes that had wrought such swift destruction with their green rays in so short a time, disappeared from view in a blinding whirl of cloud and snow. His parachute was whipped about by the force of the wind until he feared the lashings would be torn loose, but they held, and he presently landed, waist deep, in a snow drift.
He was floundering about, endeavoring to extricate himself from the clutches of the wet, sticky mess, when suddenly he heard his name called:
“Mr. Sanders.”
He answered, and a moment later a figure shuffled toward him and helped him from the drift. It was Bevans.
“Didn’t fall in as deeply as you, sir,” he said. “Landed in the middle of the road, while you went in the ditch. I’ve been walking along, calling your name in the hope of locating you.”
“Did you notice where the professor fell?”
“Yes, sir. He leaped before I did, and I saw him fall on the bridge of that strange globe. He tried to jump off again, but one of those diamond-shaped port holes opened, and he was dragged inside. I suppose they slaughtered him. A horrible ending for one of the greatest minds of the century.”
“Awful,” replied Roger. “Ted will be broken up when he hears it—that is if he lives to hear it. But we can’t help things any by crying about them. Any idea where we are?”
“I should say we’re somewhere in Indiana, sir, and not far from a flying field. Have you noticed the flashes of light and dark in the snow above us at regular intervals? Must be from a beacon.”
“Well, let’s see if we can find out.”
Guided by the dimly seen flashes, the two at length found themselves at the airdrome of the South Bend Flying Field—a government training station for student aviators since the advent of planes equipped to rise or descend vertically, and the consequent ability of experienced pilots to land “on a dime”.
Ridding themselves of a considerable weight of sticky snow by brushing each other, they entered the building, where a watchman, with a huge, foul-smelling cob pipe in his mouth, was playing a game of solitaire.
Spying a radiovisiphone, Roger was hurrying toward it to make his report while Bevans explained things to the watchman, when the figure of a man in military uniform suddenly appeared in the disc. He read from a sheet of paper held in his hand:
M. O. 318,246
Three flying globes sighted by U. S. S. P’s 347, 1098 and 221. 347 destroyed by strange green ray from one of the globes. 1098 and 221 shelling them without apparent effect when their radios were silenced. All combat planes in Zone 36 are ordered to report, fully manned, to division headquarters, and stand by for orders.
General J. Q. Marshall.
“Oh, boy! There’ll be some scrap, now!” said Roger, “but I’m afraid our planes won’t stand much chance against those green rays. I’d like to be in on it, though.”
“I, too, sir,” said Bevans.
Roger rapidly whirled the dials of the radiovisiphone, presently obtaining direct communication with President Whitmore, to whom he made his report. He was ordered back to Chicago at once, a plane being requisitioned from the flying field for the purpose.
As he and Bevans were about to take off they noticed six combat planes, manned and waiting orders. These rose only a few seconds after they did.
The air was now much warmer, the snow having been replaced by a faint drizzle of rain. This, too, subsided before they had flown half way to their destination, but a heavy fog, following the swift melting of the snow, made the visibility exceedingly low.
Despite this handicap, however, the skillful Bevans landed his plane neatly on the roof of the Dustin Building, turning it over to another of Ted’s pilots to be returned immediately to the flying field.
The cold weather had passed as quickly as it had come, and this fact added to the evidence that it had been directly produced by the giant green ray from the moon.
Back in his office, Roger quickly communicated with his wife by wrist radiophone—then waded into the mass of work which had accumulated during his absence. According to the shop reports the great interplanetary vehicle would soon be ready for launching. But fully as important as this, he found that ten thousand pistol degravitors and a thousand large degravitors for use on combat planes were completed and ready to be loaded with the special anode-cathode ray batteries in process in another division. Turning to the report of the superintendent of the battery division, he found that a hundred of the large and five hundred of the small batteries were ready for use.
Going to the safe, he took out the directions for assembling and firing which Ted had left, and after giving them a careful reading, ordered ten of the large and a hundred of the small weapons and an equal number of suitable anode-cathode batteries sent up to his office.
Morning came before he had completed his work of assembling them. Then, carrying a large and a small degravitor to the roof, he tested them on the remains of Ted’s metal hangar and found that they worked satisfactorily.
Hurrying back to his office he set the safety catch on every weapon—then ordered them packed and loaded into one of Ted’s freight-carrying electroplanes. An hour later, with Bevans as pilot, he was on his way to Washington.
As he neared the capital he used his binoculars on the surrounding territory, and noticed the havoc wrought by the green rays. At points where the effects of the rays had ended, rivers and creeks were blocked by ice gorges, overflowing the surrounding territory. The vegetation was wilted and lifeless, as if blighted by a heavy frost. In the villages and towns, Red Cross workers were going from house to house, relieving the sufferings of the survivors, followed by undertakers’ cars and large trucks, loaded with the canvas-wrapped remains of those who would suffer no more.
On his arrival at the Capitol he sought and gained an immediate interview with the President.
The chief executive of the country looked up from the stack of papers on his desk as Roger entered, and greeted him with:
“Now, what the devil are you doing here? I thought I ordered you back to Chicago last night. Who is going to look after your plant and radio station with both you and Dustin away?”
“Important business,” replied Roger. “I’ll be leaving for Chicago again within the hour, but I’ve something to show you that, for the present, I don’t dare make public over the air.”
“What about your code? Afraid someone will figure them out?”
“Not at all, but this is something you will have to be shown. I have some new weapons invented by Mr. Dustin, a few of which have been manufactured in his plant under my direction during his absence—weapons with which I believe we can successfully combat the green rays of the moon men.”
“Where are they?”
“In one of our freight carriers, now on the roof of the Lincoln Hotel under guard.”
Without waiting to hear more, President Whitmore seized his hat and said:
“We’ll have a look at them right now.”
On the way out he gave orders that Secretary of War Jamison and General Marshall meet him on the roof of the Lincoln in fifteen minutes. Once out of the Capitol, they were quickly transported to the hotel roof in the President’s private helicopter limousine.
Roger brought out one of the pistol degravitors, unwrapped it, and explained its use to the chief executive. Then he had an old propeller blade suspended on a wire, and proceeded to demolish it before the eyes of the astonished President.
At this moment Secretary Jamison and General Marshall arrived, and another old blade was disintegrated for their benefit.
Secretary Jamison, a newly appointed civilian, showed wonder and amazement, but General Marshall seemed unconvinced.
“What is the effective range of this weapon?” he asked.
“The theoretical range of this one,” replied Roger, “as worked out by Mr. Dustin, is one mile. In other words, it is supposed to completely disintegrate any known matter of any possible hardness or tensile strength, up to that distance. Beyond that distance, however, it would be deadly to man or animals, even though it should not completely destroy their bodies, up to a distance of perhaps two miles. I have with me, also, weapons constructed on the same principle, but much larger, with a theoretical range of twenty-five miles.”
“Have the weapons been tested at the ranges you name?”
“Not to my knowledge, but when Mr. Dustin figures something out it is usually right.”
“I would respectfully suggest, Mr. President,” said the General, stiffly, “that they be so tested.”
“And I was about to suggest the same thing,” rejoined Roger.
“We’ll make the tests at once,” decided the President. “While the General is arranging for the aerial targets you may get out one of the larger weapons, Mr. Sanders.”
Fifteen minutes later, Roger and the President were hovering on the shore of Chesapeake Bay in the latter’s helicopter limousine. Several hundred feet above the General and the Secretary of War hovered in a government plane, while one of their men directed the four aerial targets, miniature helicopter planes controlled by radio.
When one of them had flown a distance of a mile out over the bay the General signaled Roger who promptly brought it down with his pistol degravitor. A second, placed two miles away, presently crumpled and fell, although it withstood about five minutes’ exposure to the rays of the small weapon at that distance.
Then Roger mounted his large degravitor on a tripod, and with the assistance of his powerful field glasses, brought down one of the targets which meanwhile had been stationed at a distance of twenty-five miles up the bay. The fourth target, placed thirty-five miles away, which was as far as he could see it with his glasses, suffered a similar fate after only a few seconds exposure to the rays.
“Marvellous!” commented the President, as they winged their way back to the Capitol. “How many of these degravitors are ready for use?”
“I brought ten of the large and a hundred of the small ones with me,” replied Roger. “Within the week I can send you ninety more of the large and four hundred of the small.”
“And how fast can you turn them out after that?”
“We are equipped to turn out five hundred small and one hundred large a week. If more are required we can enlarge our capacity at any time.”
“Let the order stand on the weekly basis you mention, then,” said the President as they got out of the limousine, “unless I send you word to increase it.”
They returned once more to the President’s office, where he was immediately signaled by the radiovisiphone operator.
“World News Broadcasters on the air will announce important tidings from China in one minute. Shall I tune them in, sir?”
“Yes,” replied the President, seating himself at his desk and watching the disc.
A picture of the World News Announcer quickly flashed on the screen, and he stood looking at them for a moment, holding his chronometer in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. Then he said:
“Our correspondent in Peiping announces that the three strange globes from the moon, which destroyed three scout planes with their green rays last night and then disappeared, arrived in Peiping this morning.
“A dozen of the queer, round-bodied men immediately went into conference with the Chinese president and his cabinet. As soon, however, as the odd visitors had been described to the Chinese people, and, of course, seen by many of them, and it became generally known that the government purposed submitting to the rule of the moon government and assisting the lunar emperor to conquer the earth, a revolution was fomented and the Capitol attacked.
“The Chinese president and the members of his cabinet were all slain in the battle that followed, as were the twelve moon men closeted with them. After laying waste the greater part of the city, and killing hundreds of thousands with their green rays, the globes then departed, flying eastward. They were last sighted flying high over southern Japan with terrific speed, apparently bound for the United States.
“General Fu Yen, the revolutionary leader and new provisional president, announces his intention to stand by the other nations of the world in the war with the moon, and will shortly send official messages to the other powers to that effect. It is believed that he is supported in this decision by at least ninety percent of the Chinese people.
“One of his first official acts was to place Dr. Fang, the Manchu, under arrest as an instigator of the plot to sell out the nation to the moon monarch, Dr. Wu, his co-conspirator, having been slain with the former president and cabinet members during the attack on the Capitol.”
“Interesting, and vastly relieving, if true,” commented the President, “so far as the Chinese are concerned. But we still have those flying globes to contend with. They are on their way over here now, and nobody knows how fast they can travel. I think you brought out the new weapons in the nick of time, Mr. Sanders. Would you care to direct a combat squadron sent out to meet our belligerent visitors?”
“I’d be delighted with the honor,” replied Roger.
“Very well. Hurry over and get your weapons unlimbered. I’ll have ten expert gunners over at the hotel roof in as many minutes, and while you are explaining the weapons to them, five combat planes will be made ready.”
Five minutes later, Roger, with the help of Bevans, was hastily unloading the large degravitors from the freighter, when an air alarm siren sounded below them, followed by another and another until the city was in an uproar.
In a moment a fleet of combat planes left the ground and headed westward. Using his glasses, Roger saw the reason. The three huge lunar globes which had, only a few minutes before, been reported on the way to the United States, were flying swiftly toward the Capitol, raking the ground beneath them with their deadly green rays, more than a dozen of which shone from each globe—and occasionally destroying aircraft that approached them.
Standing on the hotel roof beside Ted’s aerial freighter was the helicopter limousine of the President. Its chauffeur was idly leaning against a wing, watching the fast disappearing squadron which had just risen.
“Quick, Bevans!” said Roger. “It’s you and me for it! Grab those controls and I’ll bring a degravitor!”
They rose, a moment later, with helicopters roaring, while the President’s pilot, who had lost his prop and his balance, scrambled to his feet and gaped after them. The plane was a swift one, and in a few minutes Bevans had brought it close behind the aerial squadron.
“Straight up, now,” ordered Roger, “and make it snappy.”
As they began their ascent the battle started with the rattle of machine guns and the boom of rapid fire turret guns. Then the globes, apparently unharmed by the gunfire, began systematically wiping out the defense squadron with their green rays. One by one, huge combat planes were crumpling and crashing to the ground, when Roger brought his degravitor to bear on the foremost globe. His invisible ray cut a round hole about four feet in diameter clear through the center of the lunar vehicle, with no apparent effect on its progress or lethal ray projectors. But he had only to lower, then slightly elevate his weapon, and the globe was divided as neatly as a knife divides an apple, both halves crashing instantly to the ground.
Swinging his degravitor into line on another globe, Roger proceeded to halve it as he had the first, but before he could turn it on the third globe, the latter, its commander apparently fearing the fate of the first two, elevated its forward disc and shot straight up into the air with such appalling speed that it disappeared completely in a moment.
Roger clapped his binoculars to his eyes, but even they failed to reveal the swiftly flying globe.
“No use to follow that bird, Bevans,” he said. “He’s well on his way to the moon by this time. Let’s go and have a look at the ones we brought down.”
They descended, but a half dozen of the government combat planes were ahead of them, and the men were dragging the bodies of stunned and dead Lunites from the wrecks when they arrived. Forty dazed prisoners, most of whom had fractured limbs, were taken from the wrecks, and twenty-six bodies.
Roger’s great fear was that he might find the body of Professor Ederson in the wrecks, but there was no sign of it. Either he had been completely destroyed by the degravitor rays, or was in the globe which had escaped.
Only thirty of the squadron of fifty combat planes which had flown out to meet the foe accompanied Roger back to the Capitol. The others, together with their crews, had been utterly destroyed by the green rays.
Back in the President’s office, Roger received the commendation of the chief executive with a deprecatory shrug.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Easier than breaking clay pigeons with a trap gun.”
“I don’t believe the General will ask for any more demonstrations,” smiled the President. “From now on, he’ll be crying night and day for degravitors.”
At this moment the President’s radiovisiphone operator appeared in the disc and said:
“Chicago is calling Mr. Sanders, sir.”
“Tune them in,” said the President.
There instantly appeared in the disc, the face of Ted’s day operator, Miss Whitley.
“Mr. Stanley, in charge of the big radiovisiphone, thinks the moon people are trying to get in touch with us,” she said.
“Tell him to hold them, if he can, until we can silence all broadcasting stations,” replied Roger. “Then connect me with him.”
Despite the mighty bounds with which Ted Dustin pursued the hideous flying reptile which was carrying off Maza of the Moon, the star-like gleam of her head lamp quickly grew more dim, showing that he was being rapidly outdistanced.
Presently it twinkled and went out, but he continued his pace, unabated, in the same direction.
As he hurried on, huge herbivorous dinosaurs, disturbed at their feeding, raised their massive heads from time to time to contemptuously snort fiery vapor at the queer and insignificant creature that bounded past them. Mighty reptilian carnivores, their bloody feasts interrupted, were more hostile, snarling or roaring hideously when he passed close to them, but he paid no heed to either.
Once his path was barred by a great, quill covered creature resembling a tiger, with the exception of the tail, which was a short, thick, spine-covered stub. It was larger than a draft horse, and presented a most fearsome appearance. With gleaming tusks bared, and sickle-like claws unsheathed, it sprang for him.
He halted, digging his toes into the ground for an instant to stop his forward momentum—then leaped backward, alighting fully fifty feet behind the spot on which he had stood. Before the creature could spring again he brought both pistol degravitors into play, and although the invisible beams played for but a moment across the huge breast of the beast, it was as if a giant scythe had suddenly cut through it, dividing the dorsal part of the body from the ventral. The claws and belly, apparently impelled by something akin to reflex action, leaped weakly forward, but the head and upper part of the body slipped off and fell to the ground behind them.
Without pausing to view the unusual sight of four massive legs wabbling disjointedly about carrying a great, sagging belly, Ted again pressed forward.
Presently the character of the country he was crossing changed. At first the shimmering, undulating surface of the savanna was broken by occasional outcroppings of white stone, mostly conical in form, but as he progressed, the vegetation grew more and more sparse until it disappeared altogether. He was in a forest of white columns, cones and pyramids—mighty stalagmites that dwarfed to insignificance anything of which he had ever heard or read, reaching upward toward equally huge stalactites, depending from the vaulted roof above. The ground beneath his feet was completely covered by rock fragments, varying in bulk from mere white powder to huge boulders weighing thousands of tons—evidently the remains of both stalactites and stalagmites dislodged by seismic disturbances.
His pace was slackened by these constant obstructions, and by the fact that the light gradually diminished in intensity as he drew away from the luminous vegetation. As he penetrated further and further into the deepening gloom that shrouded the ghostly columns there came to him the conviction that his quest was well nigh hopeless. There came, also, in the dark moment, the realization that the girl he had known for so short a time had come to mean far more to him than a mere companion in adventure—that if she were dead, life would have little to offer him.
Tired and dejected, he sat down on a boulder to rest and to think. Automatically he reached in his pocket for his black briar. As he did so, a tiny pebble suddenly fell at his feet. Several more followed as he quickly glanced upward.
Just behind him the huge stump of a broken stalagmite, fully a hundred feet in diameter and forty feet to where it had been cracked off, reared its shattered head. Turning his gaze toward it, he saw the tip of a huge pinion brushing back and forth across the edge as if its owner were engaged in a struggle. But most important of all, he noticed that the end of the wing as well as the broken edges of the stalagmite were bathed in a white radiance which differed in color and appearance from the phosphorescent luminosity of the lunar flora and fauna. Was it from the head lamp of Maza?
Bounding to his feet, he looked in vain for a place to climb the stalactite. Then, remembering the advantage his earthly muscles gave him, he backed up for a few paces, took a running start, and sprang into the air.
He had hoped to be able to catch hold of the rim of the broken top, but to his surprise, he passed completely over it, alighting in a cup-like depression about twenty feet in diameter which housed two of the homeliest looking creatures on which he had ever set eyes. They were scrawny, long legged, goggle eyed caricatures of the flying reptile which had carried off his companion some time before. Standing on the edge of the rim, dangling the girl by one leg in its huge mandibles and balancing itself with outspread wings, was the reptile itself, apparently trying to feed her to its young. That they had been unable, thus far, to do more than strip some of the wool from her armor, was evinced by the condition of their saw-edged bills, which both were shaking for the evident purpose of trying to rid them of the annoying fuzz.
All this, Ted saw at a glance, and no sooner saw than he acted. Whipping out a degravitor, he completely severed the great, arched neck of the reptile with a single sweep of its deadly ray—then caught the girl in his arms as she fell head-long, and was himself knocked to the floor by the falling, hissing head of the monster, while its giant body fluttered and toppled backward to crash to the ground a moment later. Partly stunned though he was by the blow from that huge head, he quickly dispatched the two hideous young ones with his degravitors—then turned his attention to the girl who lay across his lap.
Her eyes were closed and her head hung limply against the side of her glass helmet. Quickly opening her visor, he chafed her cheeks and forehead and blew on her eyelids, the faint flutter of which presently notified him that her consciousness was returning.
“Ted—Ted Dustin,” she murmured, and snuggled more closely to him.
He held her thus for a few moments, his heart beats registering an acceleration that could not possibly have been due to his recent exertions. Then she opened her great blue eyes, looked up into his, and said:
“Kari na Ultu.”
This, he interpreted to mean: “Go to Ultu,” so he, not having sufficient lunar vocabulary to ask her in what direction, managed to convey his question by signs.
She sat up, looked at the instrument strapped to her wrist for a moment, then pointed in the direction in which they had been traveling.
“Ultu,” she said.
For answer, he rose, still holding her in his arms, walked to the edge of the stalagmite, and stepped off, alighting at the end of the forty foot fall with no more of a jar than a similar step from a height of seven feet would have caused on earth.
Her little exclamation of alarm as they fell was changed to a cry of surprise and delight when she saw they had reached the ground unhurt. Then she signed that she wished to be put down.
He gently lowered her to her feet, and together they pressed on into the deepening gloom—their way now made easier by the light of the girl’s head lamp, reflected with many weird effects by the spectral white columns.
For many miles they traveled through murk so black that it seemed almost to have solidity, their range of vision limited to the small area lighted by Maza’s head lamp. Then a faint phosphorescent twilight tempered the thick darkness, and scattered tufts of luminous vegetation led into a mighty, tangled jungle, as well lighted by its own flora as the first one they had crossed.
Before they entered it, Ted unholstered one of his degravitors and, handing it to his companion, showed her how to fire it by pressing the trigger. She tested it, first on a clump of luminous toadstools and then on a small flying reptile, and he was delighted to see that her marksmanship was excellent, due, no doubt, to her proficiency with a red ray projector.
Then she extinguished her head lamp, and together they plunged into the riotous medley of sound and color, of strange smells and stranger sights that constituted a lunar subterranean forest.
After more than an hour of travel through the jungle without molestation from any of its queer creatures, they arrived at the bank of a swiftly flowing stream about sixty feet across.
The girl took a small drinking cup from a pocket of her armor, dipped it in the stream, and offered it to Ted, but he gallantly shook his head, indicating that she should drink first. She did so, sipping the water slowly as if it had been the last glass of some priceless wine of rare and ancient vintage. Ted filled his canteen in the meanwhile, and drank a deep draught, finding the water slightly alkaline, but quite palatable.
Having drunk her water, Maza opened two clasps which loosed her glass helmet, and lifted it from her head. Then she sat down on a low toadstool and began a minute examination of the fine wires on the crest which constituted the antennae of her radio set. She worked with them for some time, her white brow often wrinkled in puzzlement, but presently gave up with a shrug of disappointment.
Then Ted, who had been watching her intently, took the helmet from her hands and closely examined the broken head-set himself. His knowledge of radio, combined with his extraordinary inventive genius, stood him in such good stead that it was not long before he had located the source of the trouble.
While he set rapidly to work to repair the damage with tools from his pocket kit, his companion gathered some dried and broken ribs of tree fronds that had fallen nearby and ignited them with a tiny red ray from a small lighter she carried. Then, taking Ted’s hunting knife from its sheath, she cut several slabs from a pear shaped mushroom that grew near the water’s edge, spitted them on a green frond, and grilled them over the fire.
By the time Ted had finished his work of repairing her small radio set, she had spread the top of a toadstool with large flat leaves in lieu of a table cover, and placed thereon tastily grilled slabs of mushrooms, together with several varieties of small fruits which grew in abundance all around them.
Returning her helmet to her, Ted showed his admiration of her lunar woodcraft and culinary skill by seating himself opposite her and heartily falling to. The mushroom slabs were delicious, and the odd fruits exceptionally palatable.
When they had finished, Maza pressed the signal button connected to her head-set, there was an answering voice, and she immediately began a conversation which lasted several minutes, but which Ted was, of course, unable to understand. Once he saw her glance at the instrument on her wrist, and judged that she was telling someone their location. Presently she ceased talking, walked to a bed of moss beneath some long, overhanging fronds, and lay down as if to sleep, motioning Ted to do likewise.
Tired as he was, Ted could not bring himself to even think of closing his eyes in so insecure a spot, so he sat down on the moss beside her, unholstered his degravitor, and patting it, indicated that he would guard her while she slept. She closed her eyes without protest, and presently the regular rise and fall of her small, shapely bosom indicated that she was asleep.
For several hours Ted amused himself by watching the strange creatures of the earth, air and water. Giant saurians, with necks gracefully arched, paddled lazily past, sometimes darting their heads with lightning like rapidity into the water, and usually bringing up fish or small amphibians in their powerful jaws. Small flying reptiles, soaring low, sometimes descended to the surface of the water, sometimes dived beneath it, triumphantly emerging with living, wriggling food morsels which they usually swallowed as they flew, with little or no mastication.
But tired nature gradually asserted itself, and Ted finally caught himself nodding. He shook himself awake, but eventually nodded again, and thinking to close his eyes for but a moment, slept.
His awakening, he knew not how long thereafter, was rude and startling, for a warrior clad in glittering silver armor was kneeling on his chest, holding the point of a keen sword to his throat while two others, similarly accoutred, held his arms against the ground. His first thought was for the safety of his girl companion, but a glance showed him that she was completely surrounded by a ring of the armored soldiers.
Having leaped from Ted’s Blettendorf ahead of his companions, Professor Ederson was unable to see what had become of Roger and Bevans, for his parachute opened almost instantly, shutting out his view above.
What he did see, however, filled him with apprehension and horror, for he was falling directly onto one of the huge globes that had wrought such havoc with the Blettendorf and with the government patrol planes.
In vain, he endeavored to sway his body to one side as he hurtled downward toward the enemy craft. There was a sudden shock as he struck the curved bridge—then his parachute bellied out to a horizontal position. Badly shaken though he was, he tried to rise and leap over the railing, but at this moment a diamond-shaped door opened, and a rotund figure clad in yellow fur and wearing a pagoda shaped helmet with a glass visor raised, leaped upon him. With a short, curved knife, his assailant slashed the ropes which bound him to his parachute—then dragged him inside the globe, slamming a door after him.
Despite his feeble struggles, for he had been weakened by the shock of his fall, his captor bound his wrists behind him and jerked him to his feet. Then he pushed him roughly along a narrow hall—opened a diamond-shaped door, and flung him into a tiny cell. The door clanged behind him as he fell, bruised and half stunned, to the metal floor, and he was left alone in stuffy, inky darkness.
How long he lay in the black hole, suffering from a dozen bruises and the pain of his tightly bound wrists, the professor had no means of knowing, for his luminous chronometer was on his left wrist, and his hands were tied behind him.
He judged, however, that he had spent slightly more than an hour in the stuffy room when the door opened. He was jerked to his feet by the fellow who had captured him, and led down a narrow passageway into a commodious cabin where an extremely portly Lunite, whose pagoda-like helmet was taller than that of his fellows, sat cross-legged on a raised dais, examining a scroll which lay on a small, diamond-shaped table before him.
He looked up as the professor was dragged before him, disclosing a puffy, rotund countenance decorated by a long, thin moustache that drooped below the lowest fold of his enormous triple chin. His little, slanting eyes glittered triumphantly as they took in the figure of the professor.
“You have done well, Lin Ching—even better than I thought,” he said, “for this is the worm who tried to communicate with our great lord, P’an-ku, after all diplomatic relations had been severed with Du Gong. I recognize him from the picture flashed on our screens when he tried to send a message to which we refused to respond. He is evidently a linguist—perhaps can even speak with us.”
“If this be true, I will begin by teaching him manners,” said Lin Ching. “Make obeisance, low and miserable creature of Du Gong, to the mighty Kwan Tsu Khan, commander in chief of the Imperial Navy of P’an-ku.”
“I am an Am-Er-I-Khan, myself,” replied the professor slowly, in order that he might properly use the unaccustomed language, “and make obeisance to none but the great God of my fathers.”
The fat Kwan Tsu Khan rubbed his chubby hands together and actually beamed.
“Better and better, Lin Ching,” he said “You have captured a great as well as a wise man.” He turned to the professor. “How did you learn our language, Am-Er-I-Khan?” he asked.
“By studying the modern speech and ancient manuscripts of the descendants of that P’an-ku who, thousands of years ago, journeyed from your world to mine,” replied the professor.
“Bring a cushion for the Khan from Du Gong, and cut his bonds,” ordered Kwan Tsu Khan. “Then retire outside the door, that we may hold private converse.”
Lin Ching drew his sharp knife and severed the bonds which held the professor’s numbed wrists behind his back. Then he brought a great, thick cushion which he placed on the floor behind his captive, and assisted him to sit down. After a deep obeisance toward the dais, he retired to the passageway, closing the diamond-shaped door after him.
“Now, Am-Er-I-Khan,” said Kwan Tsu Khan, “just how much do you know about the history of that great and worshipful P’an-ku who journeyed to your world so long ago? And what can you tell me of his descendants?”
“I have only conjectured that such a person existed and traveled to our world,” replied the professor, chafing his numbed wrists. “Even his descendants, who are today numerous as the celestial stars, refer to him only as the first man, their first ancestor. It was by combining the statements in your message to us with the traditions of the descendants of P’an-ku and noting the easily recognized racial resemblance as well as the philological similarity, that I formed my theory.”
“Your conjecture,” said Kwan Tsu Khan, “must be correct, for our most ancient records tell of the journey of one of the mightiest of our P’an-kus to Du Gong, after our terrific battle with Lu Gong had vitiated our surface atmosphere to such an extent that life on Ma Gong was impossible except in the deepest caves. But nothing was ever heard from P’an-ku thereafter, and it was thought that he lost his life in the attempt to reach Du Gong.”
“That is interesting,” answered the professor. “I understand that you refer to your world as Ma Gong, and to mine as Du Gong, but may I ask what Lu Gong is?”
“Why, Lu Gong is the world which circles the great Lord Sun in an orbit just outside that of Du Gong—the world which appears red to your watchers of the sky.”
“Then Lu Gong is the world we call Mars,” said the professor. “And you have a tradition of a war with Mars?”
“We have more than a tradition. Our world carries the scars of that war, and will carry them to eternity.”
“I should be interested in hearing about it.”
“Very well, but I can only review it briefly, as time presses. Many thousands of years ago our world was a planet with its own orbit, which was midway between that of your world and Lu Gong, or Mars, as you call it. It rotated on its axis, even as do your planet and Lu Gong, and its days and nights were shorter and its years longer than your own are today.
“For millions of years my people had inhabited and dominated Ma Gong—developing a high civilization, and scientists who had explored the infinitely small and the infinitely great. Our interplanetary vehicles had traveled to and explored the other worlds that served the Great Lord Sun, as well as their numerous satellites, and on some of these we found human beings, but on none but Lu Gong did we find beings with a culture that even approached our own.
“Soon a regular freight and passenger line was in service between Ma Gong and Lu Gong, and we traded and visited with that accursed race of slim, white beings in all friendliness. Then they sent a colony of their pale people to live on Ma Gong, and we sent a colony of our own people to settle on Lu Gong. From the start these white colonists made trouble. Presently blood was shed, reprisals followed, and things went so far that war was eventually declared between the two worlds—a war which wiped out the people of Lu Gong, and most of the people of Ma Gong—destroying also, the culture of a million years on our world.
“The terrific weapons which the people of Lu Gong used were huge clusters of meteoroids which they hurled at us, after condensing them in interplanetary space by bringing into play certain magnetic lines of force which they were able to control. The face of our world still bears the hideous dents where these clusters fell. Many wiped out millions of helpless people, destroying the work of centuries. The interplanetary fleets, battling with their rays—ours green, those of Lu Gong red—practically destroyed each other.
“Our people were unable to condense and hurl meteoric matter as the people of Lu Gong did, but they were not lacking in scientific knowledge, and the great P’an-ku who ruled them at the time set up great ray projectors clear around our world, several of which were constantly trained on the enemy planet. The purpose of these rays was to destroy the atmosphere of Lu Gong, dissipating it into interplanetary space, and eventually stifling all the inhabitants of that world.
“The worst drawback to this method of warfare was that it slowly vitiated our own atmosphere where the beams passed through it, and thus constituted a system of slow suicide.
“No quarter was asked, and there was none given on either side. Meanwhile our scientists, who had succeeded experimentally in slightly perturbing the motion of our world around the sun, asked permission of P’an-ku to construct a huge electro-magnetic power plant with which they might control the motion of Ma Gong at will, and thus dodge the huge missiles of Lu Gong which were daily wiping out our cities and decimating our population. He granted them permission, and they soon increased the number of their power units to such a degree that they were ready to try to control the orbit of Ma Gong.
“The units worked, and the plan was to move Ma Gong behind your world, where it would be shielded from the bombardment of meteoric clusters. This was accomplished, but when the proper place had been reached, the scientists came in contact with terrific magnetic forces on which they had not counted—their power units were incapacitated, and they found themselves not only bound to the Great Lord Sun, but to your world as well. Ma Gong’s axial rotation was affected, so it eventually became as you now observe it. Its orbit, after it settled down, was much as it is today, so that it was now behind your world, now racing ahead on an outer curve, now lagging behind on an inner one, only to be caught up at a certain point and jerked forward once more to repeat the whole process.
“The bombardment from Lu Gong continued until both worlds were nearly without people to carry on the battle. P’an-ku, himself, was slain when the imperial city was destroyed by a meteoric cluster. The atmosphere of Ma Gong became so thin that the few people who remained alive did so because they retreated into the great inner caverns where what remained of the atmosphere had flown like water flows—toward the source of gravitational pull.
“The operators of the great ray projectors finally died at their posts for want of air. The bombardment from Lu Gong gradually waned as its inhabitants succumbed to the power of our ray projectors, until it ceased altogether.
“Only a few hundreds of our people were left alive in the great caverns, and there was not among them one scientist—for the scientists had all died in defense of our world. So far as scientific knowledge went, the race was thus set back for thousands of years. The simple people who had fled to the caves—for the most part agriculturalists and tradesmen—knew not how to construct an interplanetary vehicle, a green ray projector, an atmosphere disintegrator, or any of the thousands of useful but intricate devices formerly made by† the scientists. They were forced to begin with simpler things and gradually build a new civilization and a new school of scientists.