Ralph Milne Farley

“ If Yuri wishes you dead, he doubtless will enjoy killing you with his own hands. But I rather believe that he would prefer to have you alive for bargaining purposes. Do you not think that your princess would trade even her beautiful body in exchange for your safety?”
“No, I do not!” the earthman stoutly declared. “You do not realize her intense loyalty to her country. For little Kew, she might have done so, as he was not only her baby, but also her king. But for me, never. Yuri misplayed, indeed, when he killed little Kew, for I am sure that Yuri would rather have Lilla even than the throne.” ”

“ Cabot was manacled, and then was led into the presence of the king and queen: Yuri, the man with the heart of a beast; and Formis, the ant with the brains of a man. Together they stood beneath a scarlet canopy, which set off to perfection the shiny black naked body of the ant queen, and the black toga which her ally was wearing in honor of their alliance.
“Well, this is indeed a pleasure!” King Yuri exclaimed, rubbing his hands, as Myles Cabot entered the throne-room. “Welcome to Kuana, your cursed spot of sunshine. Formis, permit me to present to you the arch-enemy of your people.” ”

“ The night was warm and moist and fragrant, as are all nights on Poros, but it afforded no balm for the aching head of Myles Cabot.
Among the dead Cupians in the barricade were many bodies of the ant-men, still grappling with their adversaries, even in death. Myles counted the bodies of the Cupian slain and was reassured to find that they represented but a mere negligible fraction of those who had stormed the redoubt. Of course, it was just as hard on the dead to be dead, regardless of proportions; so Cabot did not have the heart to rejoice at the fewness of the slain. ”

“ About fifty priests, dressed like Cabot’s conductor, were seated along the walls, some on special raised thrones; and in the center of the opposite side, on a raised platform, sat the leader of the faith, Owva, the holy father, who was the only cowled figure in the room. Owva’s face was the most serene and to-be-trusted that Myles Cabot had ever seen on any human being. One look at that face, and all Myles’s troubles passed away.
The holy father inspired him, as a mother inspires a child, to absolute trust and confidence in the future. ”

“ Yuri arose, and spoke into the self-same broadcaster which the present victim, before his downfall, had rigged up for the use of the venerable King Kew.
“People of Cupia,” he declaimed, “behold Cabot the Minorian, the beast from another world. Long has he deceived you by disguising himself as a Cupian being; but now he stands before you in his true nature; hairy-faced, long-locked, filthy and bestial. It is he who brought war upon this peaceful planet. For that crime he is to die, to be torn to pieces by other creatures no lower than he. ”

“ Formians are no swimmers, having a horror of water. There were plenty of boats along the shore of Lake Luno, but he was certain that his enemies would not venture out in the night, for fear of a spill. The only danger was that they might send some of their Cupian allies across; but he doubted this, in view of the fact that they probably thought him still armed with the rifle and respected his marksmanship. No, he was fairly safe for the present.
Darkness had completely enveloped the planet as Cabot pulled himself wearily upon the beach of his own island. ”

“ Just as Cabot was about to turn in at the gate, a Formian appeared at the door. This was unexpected. His friend had never before been known to entertain ant men. Ant men were the last creatures on the planet whom Myles desired to see at that moment, so he hastily passed by.
At last he topped a rise, from which he could see the whole of Lai stretched beneath him. And what a sight met his eyes. Not a Cupian stirring in the usually bustling little village, but instead all the streets patrolled by ant men. ”

“ Then tuning back to the shorter wave length, the earthman continued his conversation with the bee.
“If you Hymernians have the intelligence to understand and to talk our language, how is it that you have no more sense than to attack the ant men, whose rifles render them invincible against you?”
“I know not,” Portheris replied, “save that we cannot resist a fight. I suppose it is for the same reason that smaller insects seek a light, only to be destroyed.”
“Then if you must fight,” Cabot suggested, “why do you not fight in swarms, and thus overwhelm your adversaries by sheer weight of numbers?” ”

“ Cabot passed the binoculars back to Lilla, and again all the Cupian searchlights became dark to him. It was most mystifying. He glanced at his companions in perplexity and suddenly saw the teeth and eyeballs of Nan-nan glow phosphorescent. Then, and not until then, did the truth dawn on Cabot.
“They are using the black light!” he gasped.
“The black light?” Lilla inquired. “What is that? How can light be black?”
“They are using the black light,” Myles continued, “just as my country, America, did to protect our convoys in the last great war on my own planet, Minos. ”

“ Imagine tackling single-handed an ant with the brain of a man, the size of a horse, with razor-sharp mandibles! But it was Cabot’s only hope. If he could get the better of the Formian before the latter fully came to his senses, Myles had a bare chance of victory.
As bad luck would have it, the ant man came to his senses before Cabot did get the better of him. But not before Cabot had placed both hands under the edge of the ant’s head, preparatory to twisting his neck, which is the weakest and most vulnerable spot on a Formian, the spot always sought in their frequent duels. ”

“ Now that you have revealed his whereabout, know you that Cupia will consider no propositions from Formis until Yuri is in our hands. I have spoken.”
Then suddenly the eyes of the whole multitude shifted from their ruler to the aged ant man. To the horror of all, the entire upper half of his body was opening as if on a hinge! And in the cavity thus exposed, there lay a Cupian! The aged ant man had not been an ant man at all, but merely a clever piece of mechanism, like the wooden horse at Troy.
The Cupian now sprang to his feet and approached the throne. It was Prince Yuri himself! ”

“ Lilla exclaimed. Then caught herself, and to King Yuri she replied: “I have chosen, king. You may kill Myles Cabot, if you can, but I will never disgrace Cupia by marrying a beast. There may be some doubt about Cabot being a Cupian, but there is no doubt that you are a beast. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ Now I have spoken.”
“Which reminds me,” said Yuri, not in the least perturbed, “that I must kill Poblath too, and add his lovely wife, Bthuh, to my retinue. Ho, hum, ’tis a weary job being a king. There are so many details to look after. Take them away; I am tired.” ”

“ Yuri halted. Then, to Cabot’s surprise, he grinned.
“What was it that you quoted from Poblath a while ago?” he said, with seeming irrelevance. “Oh, I know. ‘The saddest thing about a fool, is that he doesn’t realize he is one.’ That revolver which you now hold, and which terrorized you into bearing me in safety through your lines, is empty, wholly empty! Better throw it away, you poor fool.”
And he gave a mocking laugh. Myles flushed with shame and humiliation. Bluffed again by the arch-trickster of Poros! So he started to throw the weapon to one side. ”

“ The next morning, as the invisible sun rose over Poros, there rose also the serried ranks of the orange and black air navy of the bees, led by Myles Cabot, mounted on the back of Portheris, the striped King of the Hymernians. Each bee carried a Cupian sharpshooter, armed with a rifle and a basket of bombs. The whole formation flew over the hills and ravines which housed the gathering armies of Cupia, then out across the broad valley which divided the two contending forces. ”

“ There Portheris, the leader of the whistling bees, joined them.
“First,” Myles Cabot asserted from the head of the table, “let me lay down the principle that the mistake of the last war must not be repeated. We must ask no quarter, and give none. We must go on until there is not a single Formian left living on the face of all Poros. For there is no room on any given planet for more than one race of intelligent beings. What do you say?”
Hah Babbuh, his chief of staff, answered: “I agree with you. And I believe that the rabble have learned their lesson. But it all depends on Count Kamel. ”

“ Yuri exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Then we shall have capital fun, for I plan to have you fight all five of them in the arena day after to-morrow, for the delectation of our sport-loving people. The two sangths will then be up, and the princess has not relented.”
“But please, Yuri, do me one little favor,” begged Lilla. “Please let Myles shave, and give him a clean toga for the occasion.”
Cabot smiled. How feminine of her! If her husband had to be a corpse, she at least wished him to be a presentable one. ”

“ And he was right, for in a few paraparths the fighting was directly over the city. But what puzzled the observers on the palace top was the fact that many of the contending planes and all of the contending bees appeared to carry no searchlights. No, that wasn’t exactly correct—they carried searchlights, but these were unlit. Not an air fighter on the Cupian side was directing a single beam on the enemy; whereas each of the ant flyers carried a light on a long pole, which it could project in any direction so that the light would not reveal the true position of the craft. ”

“ Myles flung a protecting arm about her.
“My poor, poor, dear girl,” he said comfortingly, “our little darling lies dead and buried in the courtyard of Luno Castle.”
Indignantly she broke away from him, and stormed: “I’ll not be soothed as though I were drunk with saffra-root. I know what I know. And—”
But suddenly Nan-nan exclaimed, “Look! Look at the street below!”
Instantly all were attention. And no wonder, for the street below was filled with the ranks of marching ant men!
“Is it a coup?” Cabot shouted. “Are we betrayed? You, whose religion tells you everything, answer me that.” ”

“ Or had Lilla done this?
“Stop!” Cabot thundered, covering the king with his revolver.
Yuri turned and faced his accuser, but still kept one arm around the princess, who stared at Cabot almost unseeing out of dull and weary eyes. The king appeared a bit surprised, but nevertheless maintained the calm which was so typical of him.
“Yuri, your end has come,” the earthman announced, “and with your death there begins a slaughter which shall not cease until every black Formian is driven from the face of this planet. For only so can war be banished forever.” ”

“ As the fifth woofus charged across the sands, the other four heard his battle-cry, and, pausing in their approach toward Cabot, turned and faced the newcomer, who at once stopped in his onrush.
For a few paraparths, the five beasts, four on one side and one on the other, confronted each other with bristling antennae.
Then “Sic ’em!” shouted the earth-man.
At that, his pet woofus, electrified, sprang at the other four. A clawing, snarling ball of purple hate resulted, out of which finally catapulted one huge woofus, which fled across the silver sands. ”

“ Shortly after, or perhaps it was during, his narration of his adventures, it occurred to me to ask him about the device which had shot him from Poros back to earth.
“How were you able to transmit yourself through space?” I inquired.
“That is a secret known only to Prince Toron, Oya Buh and myself. I doubt if the world is ready for it. And yet, it is very simple. Invention merely consists in realizing a need, and then in devising means to fulfill that need.” ”

“ Some of the guard possessed revolvers as well as the longer weapon, and so were able to defend themselves manfully at close range, but they were merely thugs who fought for the love of fighting, whereas the attackers were inspired by the enthusiasm of an ideal, the ideal of Cupian freedom which had been engendered by Cabot, the Minorian, in the first War of Liberation, and which now had been born anew in the second. Their onrush proved irresistible, and soon the few remaining survivors of Yuri’s guard had fled into the interior of the palace. ”

“ Cabot waved again to Lilla.
“Be of good cheer, my princess,” he called up to her. “My enemies have had me nearer to death than this before. But ‘they cannot kill a Minorian.’”
His supreme confidence reassured Lilla somewhat, and for a moment even Yuri’s brow darkened with uncertainty. But then the king smiled quizzically, as one who knows a very amusing secret. ”

“ Then Buh Tedn formed for the charge. This time the entire Cupian force advanced together, scaled the redoubt and beat back the black defenders.
As Cabot went over the top himself, he looked down the muzzle of an enemy rifle and discharged his own revolver in the Formian’s horrid face. Then he knew no more.
He came to in jet darkness, buried beneath an overwhelming weight, which required long and patient effort to dislodge. Finally, however, he struggled to the surface, and found that he had been lying in the ant-barricade, covered by the dead bodies of his comrades-in-arms. ”

“ The dense Porovian darkness would serve as my toga for the present, and also would enable me to avoid any approaching kerkools by virtue of the warning radiance cast by their headlights, even before those lights themselves became visible. You see, Cabot, I cannot hear a kerkool, as I could an airplane, for kerkools have trophil engines, which do not radiate, and I do not possess those funny cups on the side of my head, with which you exercise that uncanny earth-sense that enables you to hear things which make no sound. So it is only at night that I could be safe from approaching cars. ”

“ At towns, and even at isolated farms, he had to detour with exceeding care, in order to escape detection. In some places where the woods happened to be fairly open, this was not so hard; but wherever the undergrowth was thick and tangled, this detouring proved to be most laborious.
All day long he pressed on, day after day, northward, ever northward, toward Luno Castle and his loved ones. His thoughts consisted mostly in worrying, and wondering what had occurred to Lilla and to baby Kew, of fearing for the worst, and of blaming himself for whatever might have happened to them. ”

“ Like a purple streak of lightning, the newcomer shot across the arena with a long-drawn crescendo howl!
The sound of a woofus is indescribable. Myles Cabot has tried many times to describe it to me, but has failed. The nearest that he can come to it is to say that it resembles the noise obtained by placing the receiver of a telephone-set over the mouthpiece, when one wishes to get even with the girl at Central for being particularly and unusually ornery. ”

“ The young priest smiled. “Great are the ramifications of the lost religion. For instance, I might tell you who it was that loosed your pet woofus in the arena this morning when you appealed unto the God of Minos. But, for the present, my duty is merely to lead you to the princess. Follow me.”
And back he led Myles Cabot, down again into the depths from which the earth man had so laboriously fought his way. ”

“ Bearing a child, and the subsequent sorrows and horrors which had crowded upon her, had made her a woman since he had left her on the fatal morning many sangths ago, to fly to the Peace Day exercises which had turned out so fatally. A beautiful woman she was. Her sorrows had not marred her fair face, and she still outshone all the other women of her race, or of any race for that matter. Cabot noted with a pang that she was dressed, not in royal blue as became one who was in mourning, but rather in black, presumably by order of Yuri, in honor of the visiting queen from ant-land. ”

“ The reply was astounding, for it revealed a bit of the history of Poros which somehow had never before come to Cabot’s attention:
“We are the lost religion of this planet. Innumerable ages ago, we sprang from the ground, fully formed and possessed of the only true key to the mysteries of the universe. From our ranks came the Cupians, who were destined by the Master Builder to populate this continent. But the leaders of the faith remained within the Caves of Kar, as you see us to-day, excepting those of us who went forth to officiate at the temples of the Cupians. ”

“ He had feared that such might be the case and might disincline the Cupians to accept the baby as their king; for, much as the country admired and respected, yea, even loved, Myles Cabot, they still regarded him as not one of them; a hero, even a demi-god perhaps, yet still not quite human.
But Cabot’s fears proved groundless. Baby Kew was earless, and had antennae, vestigial wings, twelve fingers, and twelve toes.
“I shall have to invent another line for ‘This little pig went to market,’” Myles remarked, and then explained to Lilla that rite of Anglo Saxon babyhood. ”