a source of gold like this we can hire all the men we need. Get this machine working steadily and produce a good supply of this stuff. We must send out more recruiting agents and get our strength up. There will be plenty to do now, Saba."
"I thought you would find a use for this." Saba was very pleased that he saw the possibilities for everyone rather than as a means of getting rich. "It is a similar flow of slowed particles which make the matter progressively into heavier and heavier elements by the same method by which nature produced them in the first place; the intake of tiny particles of energy until the atoms build up into heavier atoms—the original process of transmutation which has produced every element from its tiny tenuous beginnings in space is here speeded up to utility by a concentration of the same basic material from which all matter grows. The Elder race was not stupid, was it?"
"No, Saba, we must work very hard to retrieve some of this mighty science for modern men."
CHAPTER VI
Preparation for Battle
MONTHS passed swiftly. A business-like activity, an atmosphere of industry, had replaced the lazy, secluded ways of the deserted hide-out of Eemeeshee.
Outside the big rock door in the cliff which gave entry to the underworld, the buildings of a mock gold mine gave them a cover for their gold production by the machine for transmutation. Also a cover for their recruiting activities.
Down in the caverns several thousand men now had their homes; practiced, drilled and studied steadily. They were swiftly reaching a point of full preparation for Eemeeshee's planned conquest of the caverns under Montana, and particularly those immediately under Butte.
The spider people, called in by the hundreds, had been treated with the beneficial energy flows from the ben-ray mech. Now, their faces sharpened in intelligence by its effects, they conducted scouting forces northward. Under their clicking, knowing guidance, the caverns were mapped, the roads carefully explored.
In the midst of this mapping work, Tch Tch and his "men" captured two of the enemy set to watch their activity. Lane, watching them taken to Eemeeshee for a going over, got a good idea of just who and what the enemy were.
The two men were dark, scrawny samples of humanity, in appearance like Paris Apaches or the criminal cockney type. But Lane saw, though they were human enough in general appearance, something had happened to their minds.
This became clearer as Eemeeshee augmented their thought within his telaug screens, watched their progress across the continent, their murder of everyone of the old ray groups they had found; a steady progress of conquest by silent murder of every intelligent bit of life they had found in the caves. Some of the people they had killed had solved the cryptic puzzles of the ancient writing and were fast winning for modern men the ancient writings of science which would have proved as valuable in time to man as man could have developed in many thousands of years of perfect progress. For the ancient metal records contained scientific method which it had taken a vastly superior race eons of time to perfect.
These murderous ignoramuses under their woman leader, Debar Da Sylva, had wiped out many such quiet studious people in their uncomprehending grabbing for value, while the very murder by which they obtained gold and ancient stim mech wiped out knowledge worth infinitely more than the gain.
Both Eemeeshee and Lane had a pretty good understanding of what they were up against when the two captives died. Their opposition was a gang of ruthless and ignorant killers, who had for years been trying completely to wipe out all intelligent life in the underworld so that the whole mighty power of the underworld would be in their hands alone. That, in the process, they destroyed the whole future of men and set back progress another few thousand years, did not matter to them. They had no understanding of any duty toward other men. That, in the process, they had been destroying every surface man who knew of the antique world of wonder in the under-rock, did not matter to them; though many of these surface people "who knew" were the world's best medical research scientists and the health of millions of future men depended on their work. They were too ignorant to
