George Henry Weiss

“ Listen," he said hoarsely, "can't you realize what a menace to men of the past, of your day, these Mentanicals could be? Oh, your weapons, your machine guns and gas, your powerful explosives! I tell you they would be as nothing against the deadly rays and indescribable forces these Mentanicals could bring against them. Can you gas something that doesn't breathe, shoot what is practically impervious to bullets, that can blow up, that can explode your powder magazines, your high explosives, at a distance of miles? ”

“ A Narlonian of giant proportions, his three supple feelers ringed with bands of precious metals, Pross Mere-Mer clothed the sinuous length of teeba, which terminated in the round body and twin steps with pieces of pliable lirum. The cold eye of the middle feeler turned this way and that as Pross Mere-Mer expressed his discontent with things as they were. The other two feelers sucked, with their sucker-like mouths, at the metal tubes which brought the energy from distant Rano for his morning meal. “What is this, Ra-Kooma?” he demanded of his chief adviser, who had sought an audience with him. ”

“ But none the less the attack went on. Though hundreds of planes scoured the sky, though great guns bellowed day and night and thousands of soldiers, state and federal, were under arms, still the incredible globes continued to advance, still more and more of the countryside came under the sway of the nightmarish jungle. And this losing battle was not waged without loss of human life. Sometimes bodies of artillery were cut off by globes getting beyond their lines in the darkness and hemming them in. ”

“ Since the dawn of our history, until the present moment, the Heads have maintained their lives by draining blood from the veins of thousands of Apexans yearly!"
The Americans' faces whitened. "What do you mean?" breathed Ward.
"I mean that the artificial blood pumped by mechanical hearts through the brains of the Heads—yes, and that is now being pumped through my own!" cried Spiro bitterly—"is manufactured from human blood. Human blood is the basis of it. And to get that blood every Apexan must yield his quota in the temple. Slowly but surely this practice is sapping the vitality of the race. ”

“ I, Zeera, was once the daughter of a Ked of Junius. A Ked is not a king or chief, a tyrant, but a governor elevated by the people for a brief space. We were a free nation with free workers – all of us were workers. Then came the Hadeans. Our city walls were leveled, our people butchered or enslaved. I was brought here to grace the Hadean triumph, the triumph of the Three. Since which I have labored as a menial in the palace here, bearing the burden yoke. Of late I have caught the fancy of the middle ruler, who desires me for his plaything. ”

“ Professor Reubens had succeeded in his last experiment. He had opened the door to earth for the bird intelligences from the atom and they had come through and slain him and spirited away his machines and established them in a secret place!
"God help us," cried Milton Baxter, "there can be but one conclusion to draw. They are waging war against us with their own hideous methods of warfare; they have set out to conquer earth!" ”

“ The Mentanicals would enter your age, not to conquer man—they know little of him, regard him as an inferior creature, an evolutionary hand-over of premachine life—but to expand, take over your cities, to...to...What do I know of their idea of profit, of self-gain and ambition, but doubtless they have it. Listen!"—The great head surged forward, the dark eyes fixed mine compellingly—"You must leap into your time machine before they can prevent, return to your own day and age, at once!" ”

“ A collision while underseas in a submarine is a serious matter.
"Where's Solino?"
Justus Miles ran the beam of his torch this way and that, and saw that the room was in a fearful confusion. The gyroscopic mechanism had broken from its fastenings and rolled forward. Somewhere beneath its crushing weight lay the control board and the swarthy operator. Then they saw Solino, still in his overturned wheelchair, the cloak drawn tightly about himself and it; but the top of his head was crushed in like an eggshell. Justus Miles had touched that head when he stretched out his hand in the darkness. ”

“ The middle ruler’s jell showed a frowning hue. Fo-Peta said, “Do remember your promise.”
“I will remember.”
But the heart of Fo-Peta was heavy with foreboding, and well it might be, for the middle ruler whispered in the receiving vent of a trusted adviser. Aboard the huge car, about the control table the scientists sat, waiting the order to return to Hade. Fo-Peta conversed with one of them. “But I still do not understand.” The other waved an indulgent feeler. “Nor do we ourselves – wholly. We know only the principle works.” ”

“ Beings from an atomic universe, from a world buried within the atom; beings attacking his own earth with uncanny methods of destruction. Oh, it was impossible, absurd, but he must look at them, he must see.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he squirmed, he crawled, and suddenly he saw. He was looking down into an underground crypt flooded with brilliant light. That crypt had been altered out of all recognition, its greater expanse of roof supported with massive pillars, the light screened away from the shaft. But it was not all this which riveted his staring eyes. No—it was the machines ”

“ There was incredulity in my voice.
"Yes," he said, "I am that old. And for centuries I have been chained as you see me. I was eighty when my heart began to miss. But I did not wish to die. There were many things I wished to accomplish before yielding up life. The world of man was growing bored, indifferent, but we scientists—a handful of us—lived for the gaining of knowledge. ”

“ Then, from the hundreds of floating cars, Hadean warriors wearing jell-protectors and carrying round disks swarmed. The fortress of Pross Mere-Mer fell without a blow. The Hadeans took over the Intelligence Towers, the centers of power, the weapons of the Narlonians which, though strange to them, they seemed instinctively to understand. The middle ruler looked at Fo-Peta, his feelers gloating arrogant colors. “Thus we make war, we rulers of Hade, and nothing can stand against us!” Fo-Peta swathed his jell in impenetrable gray. ”

“ Radium," he said, "that is the basis of the miracle you see; and my body was enclosed in its crystal casing. 'When you are tired,' they said, 'and wish to die...' But the Debacle came, and the accursed Mentanicals turned against me, and I was left alone, deserted. Before that my friends offered me death. Fool that I was," cried Bane Borgson, "I refused their gift. 'No,' I told them, 'this is but a temporary upheaval. Man will conquer, must conquer; I await your return.' So they left me, to hunt for food, and I waited, waited, but they never came back." ”

“ From a universe in a piece of matter no larger than a pin-head, from a sub-atomic world, the weapons of an alien intelligence were ruthlessly being hurled against man, to conquer, to destroy him.
And now it was made plain to him why the drifting globes had seemed to materialize out of thin air. Being infinitesimally small parts of an atom, these globes were released from the cabinet and soon assumed the size of peas; they were guided across the crypt, up the old Wiley shaft, and high in the air, somewhere in space, enlarged to immense proportions. How? Talbot could not guess. ”

“ He paused again, and Ward broke out hotly, "It is true that we came here to fight for gold, but who are you to speak of vileness? Have you not turned on the Heads, your benefactors, now your brothers, who raised you to their height? Are you not leading a revolt of the workers which would deny them the means of sustaining life? Are you not seeking to perpetrate—murder?"
Spiro regarded him slowly. ”

“ The middle ruler leaned forward, his jell showing intense curiosity. “What are those satellites of which you speak?”
Fo-Peta’s feelers registered amazement. “Surely you know of them, the nine moons circling this planet of yours?”
“No,” said the ruler slowly, “no, we did not know of them; never have we seen them: the metallic vapors are too dense to allow of our studying the heavens with any precision. But tell us – those moons you speak of are inhabited?”
“As you perceive, by inhabitants like to myself. All the moons are populated. ”

“ Close to the machine when Bronson turned the lever, Professor Stringer had been thrown to the floor, his head struck by a portion of the machine as it whirled into invisibility. We picked him up, unconscious, and for days he hovered on the verge of death. The next morning the business man went his way to the city, ignorant of what had occurred. "Time machines," he chortled, "time machines," and smiled fatly. ”

“ Miles and Ward stared at him, horrified; and after a while Miles exclaimed, "We never suspected! We would never have fought to maintain such a thing had we known!"
"Nonetheless," said Spiro inflexibly, "you fought for it, and many people died and more are afraid. Superstition is a hard thing to kill. Already there are those who murmur that truly the Heads are gods and have called up demons from the underworld, as they threatened they would, to smite them with thunder until once more they yield blood in the temple. ”

“ FEAR gripped the hearts of the most courageous of men. It was terrifying and nerve-racking to face such an unhuman foe—weird, drifting globes and invading jungles whose very source was shrouded in mystery. Against this enemy no weapons seemed to prevail. All the paraphernalia of modern warfare was proving useless. And looking at each other with white faces—not alone in Arizona, but in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—men asked themselves these questions, and the newspapers posed them:
"What if this thing can't be stopped?" ”

“ Yes, it was the time machine and seemingly undamaged. I believe I laughed hysterically. The road to escape was open. With a lightened heart I turned my attention to what was transpiring in the room. Bane Borgson was talking to the Mentanicals and it was uncanny to see his lips forming their incredible language, to hear them answering back. At length he turned to me. "Listen," he said tensely, "they have never learned to enunciate or understand human speech, but in many ways the Mentanicals are more formidable, more advanced than man in his prime." ”

“ A murmur of surprise was audible in the audience hall.
“Ern, as you call it, is big,” said the middle ruler, “and it is quite possible that savage lands far to the south where we have penetrated but seldom have come under foreign sway. But tell me, is this Narlone you speak of powerful and wealthy?”
“Aye,” said Fo-Peta, his jell showing the truthfulness of what he said, “wealthy and powerful. Tul-mills and gren-mines do they work with slave labor, and from the Ethor regions of Bar-Zee extract the rare and precious cana and tara.” ”

“ Ward smiled, though a trifle uncertainly. "We are not easily frightened," he replied.
"So! That is good. But now listen: my name is Zoro and I am Chief of the Heads of Apex. Ages ago we Heads lived on a continent of your Earth now known to scholars as Atlantis. When Atlantis sank below the waves—in your sacred book that tragedy is known as the Flood—all but a scattered few of its people perished. I and my companions were among the survivors."
The Americans stared at him unbelievingly. "But that was a hundred thousand years ago!" exclaimed Ward. ”

“ At the landing field Flight Commander Burns refueled his ships and interviewed the flyer who had flown over Oracle. That worthy shook his head.
"You're going out to fight, Commander," he said, "but God knows what. So far we have been unable to detect any human agency back of those globes. They just drift in, irrespective of how the wind is blowing. So far our only defense has been to shoot them down, but that does little good; it only helps to broadcast their seed. Then, too, the globes shot down have never been examined. Why? Because where they hit a jungle springs up. ”

“ Over a period of years the robot marched into action as a mechanical curiosity. It was not until the genius of Bane Borgson—and of a host of lesser known scientists—furnished the machine with brain-cells and so made it conscious of itself, as all thinking things must become, that the Mentanicals (as they were called) began to organize and revolt. Man—or rather a section of mankind, a ruling and owning class—had furthered his immediate interests and ultimate doom by placing Mentanicals in every sphere of industrial and transportation activity. ”