"Yes, young one, there are many such thinks we know that surface men do not know, but guess at, and guess wrongly. It is too bad that they do not know some things. They would be building us some marvelous machines for pleasure, developing some strong and beautiful humans, some devastating female beauty, if they knew the ancient life science they could learn from the ancient records. They should know how the Old Ones lived."
"Sacrilege!" remarked Nydia, smiling in agreement at the gargoyle face of this dried-up representative of a family so dyed in blood as to be synonymous in name with Evil. He did not look so deadly, now that we had talked, but I was still worried. Would he turn his face from us did trouble develop, or would he shield us from such people as had driven us in here with the painful heat ray? He cut short my thought by ringing a gong hanging near him, with a small golden hammer. The thing rang and rang, a lovely sample of the antique metal work, its tone was a marvelous, mellow note.
Answering the ringing note came one of the servants of this mysterious old man on the throne. He was attired as was his master, in a suit of the gleaming, soft, yet metallic mesh that was the ancient work. I had watched some of the group in Nydia's home remaking these garments from the ancient suits that hang sometimes in the chambers, left like the machines so long ago. To be worn, they must be cut down by three-fourths, for the ancients were on an average twenty feet and more in height. But the glittering stuff is resistant to the penetrative rays[1] and is still used for that reason, as there is little else that will stop the passage of the penetray.
He was a dull faced man, the servant, his hands peculiarly mutilated, as though the fingers ends had all rotted off from some terrible disease in the past. His fingers were all stumps, and his face was scarred across one whole side with a fearful burn.
I had seen such hands before, in the zombies of the devil groups, men they called "ro." These they used as robots to handle the terrible weapons in a ray-combat. When such weapons overheat, the hands of the operators get a ray infection which rots the fingers off, sometimes does not heal, but goes on till death results, as in leprosy.
"We have guests, my Hugo. See they have good care, they may amuse me. You know how rare that has become for me." The old man nearly smiled at Hugo, but did not move.
"Aye, Master. They will not want for comfort, if they can relieve the dull life we lead of late."
The great shoulders of Hugo, gleaming in the dim light from the worn out wall tubes, preceded us out of the tremendous room, and down an endless corridor whose far reaches were lost in the gloom.
As we turned a corner into another similar corridor, a sultry-eyed, wide-hipped young woman paused to watch us pass. Her long, strong and well-shaped legs spread wide, her hands on her hips, she laughed at us as we came near and recited a cryptic bit of doggerel, that sounded like this:
"Meat for the butcher
Fuel for the fires
Visitors come healthy
But soon turn 'liars!"
I grinned back at her, and said:
"Just what can you mean by that?"
She leaned against the wall of the corridor. Her long, glistening skirt, split to the thigh, ended in a golden girdle riding low on her wide hips. Her torso, bare and narrow-waisted as a young girl's, was a sensuous invitation to the eyes. A pair of metal breast-plates completed her costume. She looked at me quizzically and a little pityingly in the eye as she answered.
"I mean that the hangers-on here will make the old man think you are no-good "liars" if they can. All Mephistos are mad, and the old one, sane enough ordinarily, has his weak spot. And he kills all "liars" painfully, the very word turns him berserk. So you, too, will soon be caught in a lie if these crooked devils that lick his boots here can manage it. For they are all so inherently bad that they cannot let anyone
- ↑ Some of the war-ray is housed in rooms built of metal of similar qualities, opaque to the rays, and there is a refuge from which no modern fighters with ray ever yet blasted a quarry. But seldom does a foe have time to get into one of these refuges when attacked, for the suddenness of unseen attack by ray is disastrous so quickly—death is on one before one realizes there is trouble. Only continual and unceasing vigilance keeps one alive in the caverns.
