Myles S. Cabot, whose mysterious disappearance yesterday has shocked
Boston society, was the only son of the late Alden Cabot. His mother
was a Sears of Southboro.
The younger Cabot since his graduation from Harvard had devoted
himself to electrical experimenting. Although prominent in the social
life of the city, and an active member of the Union, University, New
York Yacht, and Middlesex Hunt Clubs, he nevertheless had found time
to invent novel and useful radio devices, among the best known of
which is the Indestructo Vacuum Tube.
He had established at his Beacon Street residence one of the best
equipped radio laboratories in the city.
His most recent experiment, according to professional friends, had
been with television.
Mr. Cabot substituted two circuits for the usual television circuit,
one controlling the vertical lines of his sending and receiving
screens, and the other the horizontal, thus enabling him to enlarge
his screen considerably, and also to present a continuous picture
instead of one made up of dots. The effect of perspective he obtained
by adding a third circuit.
The details of this invention had not been given out by Mr. Cabot
prior to his disappearance.
His nearest relatives are cousins.
The last was a particularly gentle touch, it seemed to me. Well, his
cousins hadn’t yet inherited his property, although they had tried
mighty hard; and perhaps this mysterious message from the void would
prevent them from ever doing so. I hoped that this would be the case,
for I liked Myles, and had never liked those cousins of his.
Myles had been a classmate of mine at Harvard, though later our paths
drifted apart, his leading into Back Bay society and radio, and mine
leading into the quiet pastoral life of a farm on Chappaquiddick Island
off the coast of Massachusetts. I had heard little of him until I read
the shocking account of his sudden disappearance.
The police had turned up no further clues, and the matter had quickly
faded from the public sight. I had kept the _Post_ clipping as a memento
of my old college chum.
I was anxious to learn what had become of him these four years. So I
opened the manuscript and proceeded to read aloud.
In the following chapters I shall give the story contained in that
manuscript—a story so weird, and yet so convincingly simple, that it
cannot fail to interest all those who knew Myles Cabot. It completely
clears up the mystery surrounding his disappearance. Of course, there
will be some who will refuse to believe that this story is the truth.
But those of his classmates and friends who knew him well will find
herein unmistakable internal evidence of Myles Cabot’s hand in this
narrative conveyed to me in the golden heart of a meteorite.
_2_
stranded in space
Thus wrote Myles Cabot:
My chief line of work, since graduating from Harvard, was on the subject
of television. By simultaneously using three sending sets and three
receiving sets, each corresponding to one of the three dimensions, any
object which I placed within the framework of my transmitter could be
seen within the framework of my receiver, just as though it stood there
itself.
All that prevented the object from actually being made to stand there
was the quite sufficient fact that no one had yet, so far as I was then
aware, invented a means for dissolving matter into its well-known
radiations, and then converting these radiations back into matter again.
But at just this time, by a remarkable coincidence, there came into my
hands a copy of an unpublished paper on this subject by Rene Flambeau.
The prior experiments of De Gersdorff are well known; he had succeeded
by means of radio waves, in isolating and distinguishing the
electro-magnetic constituents of all the different chemical elements.
Flambeau went one step further, and was able to transmit small formless
quantities of matter itself, although for some reason certain metals,
but not their salts, appeared to absorb the electrical energy employed
by him, and thus be immune to transportation.
As I could already transmit a three-dimensional picture of an object,
and as Flambeau had been able to transmit formless matter, then by
combining our devices in a single apparatus I found I could transmit
physical objects unchanged in form.
But this apparatus produced one unexpected phenomenon—namely, that
whenever I employed excessive power, my sending set would transmit
objects placed slightly outside its normal range, and certain small
quantities thereof would turn up in other portions of my laboratory than
within my receiving set.
To test this phenomenon further, I secured some high voltage equipment
and arranged with the Edison Company for its use.
On the afternoon when the installation was completed, I started to place
a small blue china vase in position to send it. Something must have
become short-circuited, for there came a blinding flash, and I knew no
more.
How long the unconsciousness lasted, I have no means of telling. I was a
long time regaining my senses, but when I had finally and fully
recovered I found myself lying on a sandy beach, beside a calm and
placid lake, and holding in my hand the small blue vase.
The atmosphere was warm, moist and fragrant, like that of a hothouse,
and the lap-lapping of the waves gave forth such a pleasing musical
sound that I lay where I was and dozed off and on, even after I had
recovered consciousness.
I seemed to sense, rather than really to see, my surroundings. The sand
was very white. The sky was completely overclouded at a far height, and
yet the clouds shone with such a silvery radiance that the day was as
bright as any which I had ever seen with full sunlight on earth, but
with a difference, for here the light diffused from all quarters, giving
the shadowless effect which one always notes in a photographer’s studio.
To my right lay the lake, reflecting the silvery color of the sky.
Before me stretched the beach, unbroken save for an occasional piece of
driftwood. To my left was the upland, covered with a thicket of what at
first appeared to be dead trees, but on closer scrutiny were seen to be
some gigantic species of the well-known branched gray lichen with red
tips, which I used to find on rocks and sticks in the woods as a child.
No birds were flying overhead, I suppose because there were no birds to
fly. I fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where I was and how I
got there; but for the moment I remained a victim of complete amnesia.
Suddenly, however, my ears were jarred by a familiar sound. At once my
senses cleared and I listened intently to the distant purring of a
motor. Yes, there could be no mistake—an airplane was approaching. Now I
could see it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach.
Nearer and nearer it came.
I sprang to my feet, and to my intense surprise found that the effort
threw me quite a distance into the air. Instantly the thought flashed
through my mind: “I must be on Mars!” But no, for my weight was not
nearly enough lighter than my earthly weight to justify such a
conclusion.
For some reason my belt buckle and most of the buttons which held my
clothes together were missing, so that my clothing came to pieces as I
arose, and I had to shed it rapidly in order to avoid impeding my
movements. I wondered at the cause of this.
But my speculations were cut short by the alighting of the airplane a
hundred yards down the beach. It seemed to land vertically, rather than
run along the ground, but I could not be sure at that distance. What was
my horror when out of it clambered not men but ants! Ants, six-footed
and six feet high. Huge ants, four of them, running toward me over the
glistening sands.
Gone was all my languor as I seized a piece of driftwood and prepared to
defend myself as well as I could. The increase in my jumping ability,
although slight, coupled with an added buoyancy, might enable me to
prolong the unequal encounter.
The ants came slowly forward, four abreast, like a cavalry formation,
while I awaited their onslaught, grasping the stick of driftwood firmly
in my hand. When nearly upon me they executed right-by-troopers and
started circling in an ever-narrowing circle.
Suddenly the ants wheeled and converged from all four points of the
compass, clicking their mandibles savagely as they came. The whole
movement had been executed with uncanny precision, without a single word
of communication between the strange black creatures; in fact, without a
single sound except the clicking of their mandibles and a slight
rattling of their joints. How like a naval attack by a fleet of
old-fashioned Ford cars, I thought.
When within about ten feet of me, they made a concerted rush; but I
leaped to one side, at the same time giving one of my antagonists a
crack with my club as they crashed together in the center. This
denouement seemed to confuse them, for they slowly extricated themselves
from their tangle and withdrew for a short distance, where they again
formed and stood glaring at me for a few minutes, clicking their jaws
angrily.
Then they rushed again, this time in close formation, but again I jumped
to one side, dealing another blow with my club. Whereupon the fighting
became disorganized, the ants making individual rushes, and I leaping
and whacking as best I could.
I scored several dents in the armor of my opponents, and finally
succeeded by a lucky stroke in beheading one of them. But at this the
other three came on with renewed vigor. Although each ant wore some sort
of green weapon slung in a holster at its side, they fought only with
their mandibles.
The slight difference in gravity from that to which I had been
accustomed finally proved my undoing; for, although it increased my
agility, it also rendered me a bit less sure on my feet, and this was
enhanced by the rapid disintegration of the soles of my shoes. The
result was that, at last I slipped and fell, and was immediately set
upon and pinned down by my enemies. One of the ants at once deliberately
nipped me in the side with his huge mandibles. An excruciating pain shot
through my entire body; and then, for the second time that day, I lost
consciousness.
When I came to, I found myself lying in the cockpit of an airplane,
speeding through the sky. One of my ant captors was standing on a slight
incline at the bow of the ship, operating the control levers with his
front feet; and the other two were watching the scenery. The dead ant
was nowhere to be seen. No one was paying any attention to me.
I was not bound, and yet I was unable to move. My senses were unusually
keen, and yet my body was completely paralyzed. I had no idea as to what
sort of country we were flying over, for I could not raise my head above
the edge of the cockpit. I didn’t know where I was going, but I
certainly was on my way all right. And not so all right, at that.
Overhead was the same silvery glare, without a patch of blue sky. No
sound came from my sinister, indifferent captors. The only noise was the
throbbing of the motors.
As to the time of day, or how long I had been on board, I had no idea;
and what was more, I didn’t particularly care. Rather a pleasant sort of
a jag, if it were not for the intense pain of lickering-up.
After a while the pleasant sensation wore off, and my throat began to
feel dry. I tried to call to the ants, but of course could not, because
of the paralysis; and finally desisted even the attempt, when I
remembered that the ants were speechless and hence probably unable to
hear.
By a coincidence, however, one of the creatures seemed to sense my
needs, and brought me some water in a bowl, gently holding up my head
with one of his forepaws so that I could drink. This action touched my
heart, and also filled me with hope that the ants might not turn out to
be such bad captors after all.
Then I fell to studying them. First of all, I noticed that each ant
carried on the back of his thorax a line of peculiar white characters,
somewhat like shorthand writing; and below it several rows of similar
writing, only smaller in size.
The peculiar green-colored weapon, slung in a holster on the right-hand
side of each ant, I had already noticed during the fight. But, apart
from the white marks and the green weapons, my captors were absolutely
naked; and so far as I could see they were exactly like the ordinary
black ants to which I had been accustomed on earth, only of course
magnified to an enormous size.
I studied the faces which the ants now occasionally turned toward me.
These faces were sinister and terrifying. They recalled to my memory the
fright which I had once had when, as a child, I attended an
entomological movie and was suddenly confronted with a close-up of the
head of some common insect.
But the ant who had brought me the water had a human look which relieved
him of much of his terrible grimness. In fact, he struck me as vaguely
familiar. Ah! Now I had it! A certain stolidity of movement, amounting
almost to a mannerism, reminded me of one of my Harvard classmates, a
homely good-hearted boy whom we had all known by the nickname of
“Doggo.” And so, from then on, I instinctively thought of that
particular ant as named Doggo.
Then, for the first time, it struck me as strange that these ants,
instead of scuttling aimlessly over the ground, or having wings of their
own to fly with, as in the mating season on earth, were utilizing a
carefully and scientifically built airplane, apparently of their own
make. And it struck me as even more strange that I had not wondered
about this before.
But then the events of that day had occurred with such startling
rapidity—from the flash in my Beacon Street laboratory, through my
awakening beside that strange lake, the approach of the airplane, my
fight with the ants, and my second lapse from consciousness, down to my
present predicament—that I was to be excused for not considering any
particular phase of my adventures as being more extraordinary than any
other.
Now, however, that I had had time to draw my breath and collect my
thoughts, it dawned on me with more and more force that here I was,
apparently on some strange planet of which the ruling race, apparently
of human or superhuman intelligence, were not men. And they were not
even some other mammal, but were insects—ants, to be more specific. For
all that I knew, I was the only mammal—or perhaps even the only
vertebrate—on this entire planet.
Then I remembered a remark by Professor Parker in Zoology 1 in my
freshman year at Harvard: “The two peaks of development, in the chain of
evolution from the amoeba upward, are the order of hymenoptera (bees,
wasps and ants) among insects, and the order of primates (men and
monkeys) among mammals. In any other world it is probable that evolution
would produce a ruling race, in much the same way that man has been
produced upon the earth; and it is a toss-up whether this ruling race
would develop along the lines of the hymenoptera, or in a form similar
to the mammals; but one or the other seems inevitable.”
“Well,” said I to myself, “old Parker is certainly vindicated, at least
with respect to _one_ planet.”
Thus I mused, as the airplane sped along. Then the purr of the motors
lulled me to sleep, and for the third time that day I became
unconscious.
When I awoke the sky was losing its luminous silver quality. On one side
it was faintly pink, and on the other the silver color merged into a
duller gray. The airship still sped along.
Doggo brought me another bowl of water, and I found, to my joy, that I
could now lift my head enough to drink without any further assistance
than to have Doggo hold the bowl. At this sign of recovery, one of the
other ants advanced menacingly as if to bite me again. But Doggo jumped
between us, and after much snapping of mandibles and quivering of
antennae by both, the other ant desisted.
This event decided me that Doggo was a friend worth cultivating, but I
was at a loss how to make advances which would be understood. Finally,
however, I determined to attempt stroking the huge ant in a way which I
had found to be very effective in making friends with animals.
Accordingly, when Doggo came near enough, by a great effort I overcame
my paralysis sufficiently to reach up and touch him on the side of his
head just behind one of his great jaws. Apparently this pleased the ant,
for he submitted to the caress, and finally lifted me to a sitting
position, so that the patting could be continued with greater ease.
I later learned that this patting, to which I had resorted purely by
accident, is a universal custom of this planet, corresponding to shaking
hands on earth, and signifying greetings, friendship, farewell, bargain
binding, and the like.
The other ant-man occasionally would advance menacingly toward me with
his head lowered, but each time Doggo would step between us, and lower
his own head and agitate his antennae, at which the other would desist.
I nicknamed the other Satan, because of his diabolical actions.
In my new sitting position I was now able to see over the side of the
airship. We were passing above gray woods, with occasional silver-green
fields, in which were grazing some sort of pale green animals, too far
below to be easily distinguishable. Through the woods and fields ran
what appeared to be roads, but as nothing was moving on them, I could
not tell for sure.
Suddenly my attention was distracted from the view by the frantic action
of the ant-man who was steering the ship. He seemed to be having
difficulty with his controls. And then, so quickly that it gave us no
warning, the ship reared up in the air and made a complete loop. That
is, I merely suppose it made a complete one, for when the loop was half
done, I dropped out and fell like a plummet.
I remember a momentary exultation at being free from my captors, and a
certain spiteful joy at the thought that I should undoubtedly be dashed
to pieces and thus rob them of their prey. Then I had just begun to
wonder whether I shouldn’t prefer captivity to death, when I struck—
And was _not_ dashed to pieces.
I still lived, for I had been thrown slantwise into a net of some sort,
and was now swaying gently back and forth like a slowing pendulum.
Hooray! I was both free and safe.
But my joy was short lived, for I soon discovered that the fine silken
strands of the net were covered with a substance like sticky fly paper,
which held me firmly. The more I struggled, the more I drew other
strands of the net toward me to entangle me. At last I paused for
breath, and then the truth dawned on me: I was caught in a gigantic
spider web! And sure enough, there came the spider toward me from one
corner of the web.
He wasn’t a very large spider. That is to say, judging by the size of my
previous captors, I should have expected that the spiders of this world
would be as big as the Eiffel Tower. He was quite large enough however,
having a body about the size of my own, and legs fully ten feet long. I
call him a “spider,” for that is the earth word which comes closest to
describing him.
With great assiduity he began wrapping me up into a cocoon, a process
which he seemed to enjoy much more than I. But it did me no good to
struggle, for any part of me which showed any indications of moving was
immediately pinioned with a fresh strand of rope.
At last the job was finished, and I was completely enveloped with a
layer of thick coarse sticky silk cloth, translucent but not
transparent.
_3_
out of the frying pan
When I had dropped from the airplane into the spider web, the time had
been nearly evening. All night, off and on, I struggled, but to no
avail. Finally, shortly after daylight, something startled me by
falling—plop—into the net close beside me. Another victim, thought I.
Well, at least I should have company.
But this other creature was not any more inclined to take its captivity
calmly than I had been. It thrashed and struggled violently, until
finally it tore a rent in the upper end of my shroud, so that I could
see out.
My companion in misery was an orange-and-black-striped bee about the
size of a horse. He was buzzing frantically and slashing about with his
sting, while the spider hopped around him with great agility, dodging
the thrusts of the sting, and applying a strand of silk here and there,
whenever an opportunity offered. Thus gradually the bee’s freedom of
motion became less and less, as strand after strand were added to his
bonds.
But the spider, getting bolder as his captive’s struggles diminished,
finally misjudged one thrust; and the imprisoned bee, putting all his
effort into the stroke, drove his sting home. The spider toppled from
the web, and the fight was unexpectedly at an end.
And now the bee and I were free, if we only could get free. Of the two
of us, I had the easier task, for my cocoon had dried during the night
and was now no longer sticky. But it was still very tough.
Slowly, inch by inch, biting, clawing, tearing, I gradually enlarged the
hole near my head, until finally I was able to step out and jump to the
ground, which was about ten feet away, a drop equivalent to a little
less than eight feet on the earth, not much difference, it is true, but
every little bit helped.
I now decided to assist my rescuer, the bee, to escape. A rash decision,
one would say, and yet the bee seemed to realize that I was helping him,
for not once did he strike at me. Picking up a tree branch, I hacked at
the cords which bound him, until finally he was able to fly away,
trailing a large section of the web after him.
As he left, I noticed that one of his hind legs was gone from the knee
down, and that he bore a peculiar scarlike mark on the under side of his
abdomen. I should know him, if ever I were to meet him again.
The web had been stretched between two large gray leafless trees of the
sort I had observed near the beach, but without the red tips to the
branches. Nearby was a wood of similar but slightly smaller trees,
bordering on a field of thickly matted silver-green grass, very similar
in color. In this field were grazing a herd of pale green insects a
little larger than sheep, with long trailing antennae.
These creatures swayed from side to side, lifting first one foot after
another as they munched the matted grass. On the sides of some of them
clung one or more bright red parasites, resembling lobsters in size and
appearance; but their green hosts did not seem to mind or even notice
them. Nor did they notice me, for that matter, as I passed between them
across the field.
On the further side of the field was a road, built of concrete,
resembling in every way such concrete roads as we have on the earth; and
along it I set out, whither I knew not.
Now, I had had nothing to eat since I found myself on the sandy beach
the previous morning. Also I had fought two battles on an empty stomach.
The day was hot and moist, my feet were bare—as was the rest of me—and I
felt discouraged and depressed. Still, I trudged along.
“Can it be true,” said I, “that only yesterday I rejoiced at freedom
from the ant-men?”
Now I was alone and lost—lost on a strange planet. Oh, how I longed for
the sight of my late captors. Better even captivity than this!
For a while the road ran between silver-green fields; then entered a
wood. On the gaunt gray trees hung a tangle of tropical vines, and
between the trees grew some kind of small shrub with large heart-shaped
leaves, on each leaf of which there sat motionless one or more purple
grasshoppers about four inches in length.
In the distance I occasionally caught sight of some strange sort of
bird—as I thought—flitting in tandem pairs from tree to tree. A
multitude of tiny lizards, resembling miniature kangaroos, hopped about
on the concrete and by the side of the road.
For a while the strange fauna and flora stimulated my curiosity and kept
my mind off my troubles; but then I rapidly lost interest in everything.
My stomach gnawed. My knees wobbled. My mind began to cloud. And from
that time on, I wandered as in a dream, for I know not how many hours.
I vaguely remember falling on the roadway, and then crawling along for a
while. Silly thoughts obsessed my brain, such as wondering whether my
tail light was lit, and what made the weather so foggy. Finally I
collapsed utterly, and had just strength enough to drag myself off the
concrete lest I be run over by some passing car.
As I lay there in the bushes by the side of the road, there came to my
nostrils a smell which partially revived me—a smell seemingly of griddle
cakes and maple syrup. Opening my eyes again and following my nose, I
discovered that this pleasant odor emanated from a large bowl-shaped
leaf only a few feet away.
Upon dragging myself toward it, I discovered that in the bottom of the
bowl there was a brown mass, looking very much like a stack of wheats,
covered with some sticky substance. But unfortunately this delectable
dish was quite obscured by little hopping lizards, now much bemired and
hopping no more.
So I reached out my hand to brush them away, and instantly the leaf
closed upon my arm like a steel trap.
My brain cleared at once, and I began a frantic struggle to extricate my
hand; but it was too late, for with a gentle massaging motion the plant
commenced to swallow my arm.
Inch by inch my arm descended into that rapacious maw. It was the steady
slowness of the procedure that was so nerve-wracking, for without a
pause my arm disappeared at a rate of about an inch a minute.
I braced my feet against the plant and pulled, but this cut off the
circulation in my arm. Then I wiggled my fingers rapidly so as to keep
my hand from going to sleep, whereupon the plant swallowed all the
faster.
The mouth of the plant had closed very much like a clam shell, so, just
before my shoulder disappeared, I braced my body crosswise of the jaws,
in the hope that this maneuver would prevent the swallowing process from
proceeding any further.
But the plant merely opened its flexible lips, and closed them the other
way, taking a firm grip on my chest, and just missing getting hold of my
right ear. I craned my neck as far as I could to the left, and shrieked
aloud with terror.
Was it for this that I had escaped the ant-men and the spider—to be
eaten alive by a plant?
The soft jaws now fastened on the back of my head and began gently
drawing that in, too. At last only my nose was free. In a minute that,
too, would be enveloped, then strangulation and death.
At this moment something fell upon me, and I felt the plant quiver and
shake. The swallowing ceased. Then the soft lips were torn away from one
side of my head, and I heard a familiar rattling sound.
A few seconds later the plant went limp, releasing my arm, and I lay
upon my back, free once more, gazing upward into the eyes of my old
friend and captor.
“Doggo, Doggo!” I cried with joy, but he did not seem to hear me.
Nevertheless he picked me up gently in his mandibles and trotted off
with me down the road.
After about a quarter of a mile, we turned aside into a field, and there
was Satan, the other ant-man, standing beside a crumpled airship and the
dead body of its pilot. Satan did not seem overjoyed to see me, but
Doggo rummaged through the wreckage and finally produced a bowl, into
which he put some water and some medicine, which revived me greatly.
Then he laid me on a pile of grass, covered me with leaves and stood
guard over me as the pink twilight deepened and the night fell.
As it began to grow dark I could hear an occasional tinkle like the
sound of a Japanese wind bell, first on one side and then on another.
This music gradually increased, until it assumed the volume of a fairy
orchestra. I had never heard such dainty bewitching tunefulness in my
entire life. Many weeks later I learned that this was the song of the
large purple grasshoppers I had seen; but even the knowledge of its
source has never robbed the sound of its sweet mystery for me.
The fading silver radiance of the sky shed a moonlike light over all
below. A faint breeze sprang up, gently fanning the moist fragrant
hot-house air against my cheeks. The foliage around us waved like a sea
of silver grain. And the tune of that elfin melody quickly lulled me
into a soft and dreamless sleep, secure in the confidence that a
faithful friend was watching near.
The next morning I was awakened by Doggo stripping off my leafy
coverlet. Satan was not to be seen, but grazing near us were some more
of those peculiar large green insects, with long trailing antennae,
which I had seen in my flight from the spider web.
As I sat up, Doggo presented me with a bowl of pale green liquid. But I
was at a loss to know what to do with it. Was I supposed to wash in it,
or drink it, or to rub it in my hair?
My friend solved the question by lifting it to my mouth. So I drank, and
found the taste sweetish and agreeable.
All morning we stayed by the wrecked machine, apparently waiting for
something. Satan did not show up. Around noon, Doggo took the bowl and
approached one of the green beasts grazing near. I followed with
interest.
Two horns projected upwardly from the tail of the beast, one of which
Doggo proceeded to stroke with his paw; and to my surprise, a green
liquid spouted from the animal, quickly filling the bowl. So that is
where my breakfast had come from! Green milk from green cows! Strange!
And yet how much more logical than on earth, where a red cow eats green
grass under a blue sky and produces white milk, from which we get yellow
butter.
Shortly after lunch I heard the hum of a motor, and presently Satan
landed near us with a new plane. This strange plane of the ant-men
stopped abruptly, hovered for a moment, and then settled just where it
was, like a helicopter.
Doggo carried me aboard, and we started, Satan at the levers and Doggo
standing guard over me. But whether this was to protect me from Satan,
or to keep me from falling out again, I could not say.
We cruised along for several hours over much the same sort of country as
I had seen before, except that we crossed several rivers, and once a
small lake.
At last the ship hovered and landed on top of what seemed to be a
helter-skelter pile of exaggerated toy building blocks, exactly in
keeping with the size of the ants. As far as the eye could see on all
sides, these blocks were heaped. They resembled a group of Pueblo Indian
dwellings.
Doggo and the fierce ant-man whom I called Satan now picked me up in
their jaws, the former gently and the latter not so gently, and carried
me out of the airplane and down an inclined runway into the interior of
the edifice. The passage was long, narrow, dark and winding, but
presently we emerged into a room about thirty feet square by ten feet
high, lighted by narrow windows opening toward the western sky. That is,
I call it “western,” for it was in this direction that the sky turned
pink at eventide.
In this room I was laid on the floor. The unpleasant ant-man departed,
and Doggo placed himself on guard in the doorway.
Presently two strange ant-men entered, carrying a couch, which they set
down in one corner of the room. Then they walked several times around
me, viewing me from all sides with evident interest, until, at a
stiffening and quivering of Doggo’s antennae, they hurriedly left the
room. I noticed that Doggo no longer carried the green weapon, which
seemed strange, as he was evidently on guard.
Then I fell to wondering about the couch. It was a simple affair, and
yet quite evidently intended for a bed. Upholstered with some kind of
dark blue cloth, at that!
“What need have ants of a bed?” I mused. “Certainly they cannot lie
down; and, even if they could, such a couch as this would be of little
use to one of them, for this is only a man-size couch, whereas these
ants are about ten feet in length!”
My perplexity was tinged with a hope that there might be human beings
here.
My perplexity and my hope were both increased by the return of one of
the ants who had brought the couch, this time bearing a sleeveless shirt
or toga of white matted material, like very thin silk felt, reaching
about to my knees, with a Grecian wave design in light blue around the
bottom edge and around the neck and armholes. But what increased my
perplexity still further, and at the same time destroyed most of my
hope, was the presence of two vertical slits, with the same blue
trimming, in the upper part of the back.
The two ant-men watched with great interest while I put this toga on,
and were evidently pleased to find that I knew how to do so. The
messenger ant then withdrew, and presently returned with a bowl of green
milk, which I drank as usual.
By this time it had become quite dark outside, but the room still
remained light, due to two long glass bulbs, set in the ceiling, and
containing some sort of incandescent substance. At that time I little
guessed what a part those bulbs would come to play in my life! They
resembled the fluorescent lamps familiar on earth.
These lamps showed that the inhabitants of this planet were well
advanced in electrical engineering. Was it not strange, then, that they
had not developed radio and communicated with the earth? And yet not so
strange, either, when one considers that they had no sense of hearing.
Dismissing these thoughts from my mind, I lay down on the couch. Then
Doggo was relieved as sentinel by a new ant-man, who carefully and
inquisitively inspected me, but from a safe distance. This guard, too,
was without any green weapon.
Finally the two lights went out, and I slept, my last thoughts being to
wonder what was in store for me, and what was the significance of the
couch and the strange blue-and-white article of clothing.
_4_
go to the ant, thou sluggard
As I slowly awakened the next morning, I vaguely remembered a terrible
nightmare of the night before.
But no, it was no dream, for I opened my eyes upon the same plain
concrete room with its slit windows. I was lying on the same couch. The
same strange ant-man was standing guard at the door. During the night
some one had placed over me a blanket of some sort of light fleecy wool
felt.
As I lay in bed I studied the walls of the room and noticed, what I had
not seen before, three dials sunk in the opposite wall close to the
ceiling. Each dial had twelve numbers or letters around the edge, and
also a single pointer. The pointer of the right dial was slowly
revolving left-handedly; the pointer of the middle dial was turning even
more slowly; while that of the left dial appeared motionless.
Absent-mindedly I started to time the right-hand pointer.
“One chim_pan_zee. Two chim_pan_zee. Three chim_pan_zee,” I counted in
sing-song; that being a formula which I had been taught as a child, to
count the time between a lightning flash and the resulting thunder, in
order to estimate the distance of the stroke.
For, if carefully done, each chim_pan_zee equaled one second of time,
and each second meant one quarter-mile of distance. Of course the real
object of the game was to distract the child’s mind from his fear of the
lightning.
I now found that it took about fifty chim_pan_zees for the right pointer
to move one of the twelve graduations. This fact I verified by several
trials.