Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 08.djvu/60

Rh all industry, all machinery, all our moat wonderful accomplishments. And yet, here was a nation of highly intelligent creatures, a race which had advanced immeasurably beyond humans in annihilating space and time, beings who had tapped the very source of nature's storehouse of power and who had made marvelous discoveries and never used a wheel in any form. To them the wheel was as obsolete and as useless as a stone axe or a flint knife to us, but instantly, as they saw wheels, they became fascinated with their uses and possibilities. Not that they were of any real benefit in their lives or occupations, but merely because they were strange, antique curiosities which afforded the beings new amusements and sports. Soon, carts or wagons were everywhere, and being most adaptable creatures, the inhabitants were not long in fitting the vehicles with power receivers and were rattling and bumping about in crude motor cars, or rather motor wagons, as pleased as a lot of kids with new toys.

I could not help thinking how this same power applied to modern automobiles would revolutionize motor cars in our world, and I fell to work with a will striving to construct some sort of car which would be an improvement over the solid wheeled, uncomfortable things the creatures were using. I cannot say that the result of my labors and inventive powers would have been a worthy rival even of a tin Lizzie, but it had a greater vogue among the beings than even Ford's famous product had among humans, and motoring became the favorite sport of the entire country. Incredibly swift airships were abandoned, save for utility and business, and just as we human beings—or a large number of us—prefer sail boats or rowing, or even the primitive savage canoe, to the steam or power boat when it comes to recreation, or choose a slow-going horse and carriage rather than a railway train or a motor car for pleasure, so they preferred the crude vehicles bumping over the earth to the silent, smooth sailing, meteor-like airships. I cannot describe, cannot hope to give a picture of the ridiculous, grotesque appearance the creatures presented in their new toys. And accidents were innumerable. Indeed, I believe it is the danger, the risk in using land vehicles, that appeals most strongly to the creatures. They seem to delight in collisions, in broken limbs, and are reckless beyond words. No doubt the dangers are a relief, for their airships are so constructed that accidents are next to impossible and collisions cannot occur, for there are devices which operate in such a way that if two ships come dangerously close the mechanisms automatically operate to repel each other.

Few fatalities have, however, resulted from the use of wheeled vehicles, but beings lacking one or more appendages or even antennae are seen everywhere. And they are marvelously expert in avoiding mishaps by a hair's breadth. Never have I seen such mad driving and the worst traffic jams of New York's thoroughfares are nothing compared with the congestion here in this metropolis of this strange land. And the wheels are used for many other amusements too. There are contraptions for which I am responsible which might be called bicycles, and hoop-rolling is a sport over which the beings grow as excited and become as interested as human beings over golf or tennis.

And of course, having seen the wonderful results of my efforts and my, to them, prehistoric knowledge, I tried my hand at a thousand and one other matters. Bows and arrows were most astounding things to these beings, and you can imagine my amazement when, not content with using a single bow, these weird creatures armed themselves with three bows at once and discharged a perfect hail of arrows at the targets. What warriors they would make, I thought. What unconquerable foes, with their ten appendages or limbs, eight of which could be used for handling weapons. Each in fact would equal eight men in one, and for the first time it dawned upon me that herein was largely the secret of their great achievements, that they had been able to accomplish eight times as much work as humans, and I wondered what the results would have been had Edison, Ford, Marconi or any of our great inventors and geniuses been equipped by nature to do eight times the work they have done.

Their aptitude with such primitive weapons as bows and arrows aroused my interest as to what they would do with firearms, and I bent my energies and inventive powers to the task of making such things. There was an abundance of sulphur, of course, saltpeter was to be had and charcoal was not an impossibility, but it was a long time before I succeeded in making a mixture that would do more than sputter and burn. But at last I had an apology for gunpowder and the rest was simple, I had a small cannon made, and having loaded it and placed a sheet metal target before it, I touched it off. My powder was poor, slow burning stuff, but it served to throw the hall and made a respectable detonation, but I was greatly disappointed at the effect upon the assembled creatures who had gathered to watch the demonstration. The noise and smoke did not surprise them in the least, but I might have foreseen this as they possessed an explosive far more powerful than powder or even dynamite. In fact it was altogether too powerful for use in firearms, as I discovered with almost fatal results to myself long before I tried my hand at powder making. They examined the ragged hole torn by the missile in the metal target and they showed some interest in this, but their greatest wonder appeared to be that an explosive capable of doing so much should have been confined in the metal barrel of the gun. Aside from this, however, the whole experiment failed to appeal to them. They had no use for such things as guns and powder, no need of offensive or defensive weapons, and their own explosive was a thousand times more valuable than powder for their purposes.

And scores of other things which I made, after endless failures and by dint of hardest work, were as useless to them as the cannon. And then at last it came to me that in this strange place man's greatest inventions, human beings' most marvelous labor-saving devices and our most prized luxuries and conveniences had no place. That here was a race or nation of beings where there was no struggle for supremacy, no real industry for personal gain, no riches, no poverty, no competition; that conditions, life, everything, were totally unlike those of my world and that these creatures, ages before my ar-