Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 Part 41

The girl, Althora, leaned forward now. "It will please my brother,"

she said in a soft voice, "that you thought it real. He has had pleasure in creating that--a replica of the skies we used to know before the coming of the clouds."

Professor Sykes was bewildered. "That sky--the stars--they are not real?" he asked incredulously. "But the gra.s.s--the flowers--"

Her laugh rippled like music. "Oh, they are real," she told him, and her brother gave added explanation.

"The lights," he said: "we supply the actinic rays that the clouds cut off above. We have sunlight here, made by our own hands; that is why we are as we are and not like the red ones with their bleached skins.

We had our lights everywhere through the world when we lived above, but those red beasts are ignorant; they do not know how to operate them; they do not know that they live in darkness even in the light."

"Then we are below ground?" asked the flyer. "You live here?"

"It is all we have now. At that time of which I tell, it was the red ones who lived out of sight; they were a race of rodents in human form. They lived in the subterranean caves with which this planet is pierced. We could have exterminated them at any time, but, in our ignorance, we permitted them to live, for we, of Venus--I use your name for the planet--do not willingly take life."

"They have no such compunctions!" Professor Sykes' voice was harsh; he was remembering the sacrifice to the hungry plants.

A flash as of pain crossed the sensitive features of the girl, and the man beside her seemed speaking to her in soundless words.

"Your mind-picture was not pleasant," he told the scientist; then continued:

"Remember, we were upon the world, and these others were within it.

There came a comet. Oh, our astronomers plotted its course; they told us we were safe. But at the last some unknown influence diverted it; its gaseous projection swept our world with flame. Only an instant; but when it had pa.s.sed there was left only death...."

He was lost in recollection for a time; the girl beside him reached over to touch his hand.

"Those within--the red ones--escaped," he went on. "They poured forth when they found that catastrophe had overwhelmed us. And we, the handful that were left, were forced to take shelter here. We have lived here since, waiting for the day when the Master of Destinies shall give us freedom and a world in which to live."

"You speak," suggested the scientist, "as if this had happened to you.

Surely you refer to your ancestors; you are the descendants of those who were saved."

"We are the people," said the other. "We lived then; we live now; we shall live for a future of endless years.

"Have you not searched for the means to control the life principle--you people of Earth?" he asked. "We have it here. You see"--and he waved a hand toward the standing throng--"we are young to your eyes and the others who greeted you were the same."

McGuire and the scientist exchanged glances of corroboration.

"But your age," asked Sykes, "measured in years?"

"We hardly measure life in years."

Professor Sykes nodded slowly; his mind found difficulty in accepting so astounding a fact. "But our language?" he queried. "How is it that you can speak our tongue?"

The tall man smiled and leaned forward to place a hand on a knee of each of the men beside him. "Why not," he asked, "when there doubtless is relations.h.i.+p between us.

"You called the continent Atlantis. Perhaps its very existence is but a fable now: it has been many centuries since we have had instruments to record thought force from Earth, and we have lost touch. But, my friends, even then we of Venus had conquered s.p.a.ce, and it was we who visited Atlantis to find a race more nearly like ourselves than were the barbarians who held the other parts of Earth.

"I was there, but I returned. There were some who stayed and they were lost with the others in the terrible cataclysm that sank a whole continent beneath the waters. But some, we have believed, escaped."

"Why have you not been back?" the flyer asked. "You could have helped us so much."

"It was then that our own destruction came upon us. The same comet, perhaps, may have caused a change of stresses in your Earth and sunk the lost Atlantis. Ah! That was a beautiful land, but we have never seen it since. We have been--here.

"But you will understand, now," he added, "that, with our insight into your minds, we have little difficulty in mastering your language."

This talk of science and incredible history left Lieutenant McGuire cold. His mind could not wander long from its greatest concern.

"But the earth!" he exclaimed. "What about the earth? This attack!

Those devils mean real mischief!"

"More than you know; more than you can realize, friend Mack Guire!"

"Why?" demanded the flyer. "Why?"

"Have your countries not reached out for other countries when land was needed?" asked the man, Djorn. "Land--land! s.p.a.ce in which to breed--that is the reason for the invasion.

"This world has no such continents as yours. Here the globe is covered by the oceans; we have perhaps one hundredth of the land areas of your Earth And the red ones breed like flies. Life means nothing to them; they die like flies, too. But they need more room; they intend to find it on your world."

"A strange race," mused Professor Sykes. "They puzzled me. But--'less than human,' I think you said. Then how about their s.h.i.+ps? How could they invent them?"

"Ours--all ours! They found a world ready and waiting for them.

Through the centuries they have learned to master some few of our inventions. The s.h.i.+ps!--the ethereal vibrations! Oh, they have been cleverer than we dreamed possible."

"Well, how can we stop them?" demanded McGuire. "We must. You have the submarines--"

"One only," the other interrupted. "We saved that, and we brought some machinery. We have made this place habitable; we have not been idle.

But there are limitations."

"But your ray that you projected--it brought down their s.h.i.+p!"

"We were protecting you, and we protect ourselves; that is enough.

There is One will deliver us in His own good time; we may not go forth and slaughter."

There was a note of resignation and patience in the voice that filled McGuire with hopeless forebodings. Plainly this was not an aggressive race. They had evolved beyond the stage of wanton slaughter, and, even now, they waited patiently for the day when some greater force should come to their aid.

The man beside them spoke quickly. "One moment--you will pardon me--someone is calling--" He listened intently to some soundless call, and he sent a silent message in reply.

"I have instructed them," he said. "Come and you shall see how impregnable is our position. The red ones have resented our destruction of their s.h.i.+p."

The face of the girl, Althora, was perturbed. "More killings?" she asked.

"Only as they force themselves to their own death," her brother told her. "Be not disturbed."