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.
“Even the libraries, which would have been of inestimable value to them, were on the airless surface of Ma Gong where they could not be reached, and most of these had been destroyed by the meteoric clusters projected from Lu Gong. The others succumbed to age and the incessant battering of planetesimal particles which followed the destruction of our atmosphere, before they could be reached.
“The eldest son of P’an-ku, who became P’an-ku at the death of his father, had been commander in chief of our interplanetary war fleets, and had been taken prisoner by the ruler of Lu Gong. He had left a wife with child, and she fled with the few hundreds who were the progenitors of our present race into the great caverns of our world. There a male child was born to her, and as he was the eldest son of that P’an-ku who never came back to us, he was the hereditary ruler of my people, and his descendants have directed their destinies ever since.
“Nearly a thousand years after the great war, our ancestors, who had multiplied in numbers and increased in knowledge, were able to construct suits in which they could explore the surface of our world, breathing air which was concentrated in tanks they carried with them. While searching the ruins of the ancient capital of P’an-ku, they came upon a metal cylinder which contained a message left there by his eldest son a thousand years before. It stated that he had escaped from Lu Gong, as there were none left alive there to detain him, and had come to Ma Gong in his one man space flyer, only to find his world destitute of people and untenable because of its lack of atmosphere.
“He stated that he was leaving for Du Gong—that world inhabited, in those days, by strange monsters and savage peoples, and that he would never have deserted Ma Gong had he found but a single one of his subjects alive, but that he could no longer stay in a dead world when there was a chance that he might find life and an empire in a live one. In closing, he implored the Great Lord Sun to pardon him for this desire to live and, if possible, perpetuate his race and his imperial line.”
“But what of the white race which now inhabits Ma Gong?” asked the professor. “Whence did they come?”
“About twelve hundred years after the great war,” said Kwan Tsu Khan, “a party of our ancestors who were exploring the surface of our world, met a party of white people, descendants of the Lu Gong colonists they afterward learned, who had fled to the inner caverns during the great war. They, too, had invented heat proof, cold proof suits and concentrated air tanks which enabled them to travel on the crust of our world. A parley was started, but because of the great hatred between the two races, a quarrel quickly became a battle, and only a few of the explorers from either side returned to tell their stories to their respective countrymen.
“This started a war between the two races once more, and my people were conquered because, while the enemy had succeeded in manufacturing their red ray projectors, our scientists had been unable, thus far, to reproduce the green ray projectors of their ancestors. For hundreds of years thereafter the heirs of P’an-ku ruled only as viceroys for the emperors of the white race. This lasted until half a century ago, when our people were freed by a magnanimous and peace loving ruler of the white people named Mazo Khan. The languages of the two races were, meanwhile, fused into one, which is now the universal speech of Ma Gong.
“Our scientists had been quietly at work for centuries, endeavoring to regain the secret of the green ray, as well as to reconstruct interplanetary vehicles as efficient as those of their ancestors. When they were set free by the magnanimous Mazo Khan work went on with redoubled vigor and, as you see, we now have both.
“The present ruler of the white race, who still calls herself ‘Maza of Ma Gong,’ the hereditary title of the supreme ruler of Ma Gong, is the granddaughter of the man who set us free, and even though she may desire to once more enslave us, she cannot do so because we now have the green ray and the interplanetary vehicles.
“We, on our part, could enslave her and her people only by a terrific loss of life on both sides, so we prefer to leave her unmolested as long as she does not bother us, and extend our conquests along lines of less resistance for the present. Of course we must conquer her people eventually, for there cannot be two rulers of Ma Gong, but the time is not yet ripe.
“The arrested motion of the vehicle tells me that we are now at our destination, so I must leave the globe for a while. If you will give me your word that you will not attempt to escape I will permit you the freedom of my ship.”
“Where are we?” asked the professor.
“We are in the capital city of the descendants of that P’an-ku who visited your world many thousands of years ago. I am to meet some of his descendants in conference.”
“I will give you my word not to try to escape,” said the professor.
“Very well. So long as you stay on the ship you will be unmolested.”
He pressed a button in the wall behind him, and Lin Ching instantly opened the door.
“You will permit the wise Khan, Am-Er-I, the freedom of the ship, Lin Ching,” he said, “but you will see that he is either recaptured or killed if he attempts to leave it.”
“Lin Ching hears, and Lin Ching obeys,” replied that individual, bowing the professor out of the room.
The professor strolled around the ship, examining its interior with considerable interest. Then he opened one of the diamond-shaped doors, and stepped out onto the bridge-instantly recognizing a section of Peiping with which he was familiar. He saw that the other two flying globes hovered near the one he was on and that several Lunites were descending each of the swaying ladders which hung down from the interplanetary vehicles.
He was gazing idly down at the crowd which milled in the street below him, when he suddenly spied a familiar face looking curiously up at him. A smile of recognition crossed the face of the Chinaman in the crowd beneath, but the professor instantly made a gesture of caution and then indicated that he wanted his friend to wait below him.
Hastily jerking pencil and notebook from his pocket, the professor quickly wrote a short note in Chinese characters. It was addressed to General Fu Yen, its contents as follows:
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”I am a prisoner on a lunar globe, and have given my word of honor that I will not try to escape while here. I have not, however, made any promise that I will not write notes to my friends. “My captors are now negotiating with your government for the purpose of finally signing the agreement which will make your people the subjects of a round-bodied monarch who calls himself P’an-ku, and rules a race which inhabits the moon. “Your people have fought and bled for freedom and a voice in their government. Are they going to renounce all this now? You, and you only, my friend, can save them. Act quickly if you would not be too late. “Sincerely, Geo. Ederson.” |
Crumpling the note into a ball, the professor called softly to the man below, who instantly took off his large helmet and held it upside down. Into this wide, inverted bowl, the professor dropped the note.
“For Fu Yen,” he called, softly.
The Chinaman nodded, pocketed the note, replaced his hat on his head, and moved away, a part of the crowd.
Then, with unexpected suddenness, vise-like fingers closed on the neck of the professor, and he was shaken like a rat.
“Worm,” grated a voice in his ear. “Tell me what you tossed to that person in the crowd, or by the Great Lord Sun, you shall not live to say aught else.”