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:
“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.”