Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 10.djvu/78

78 I fear that your body will lose its delicate shape, your skin its texture.

"And I will build huge evolution-reversing force machines in the roofs of caverns over your cities, where they will be unseen, so that the people of your father's cities will turn into apes even as they walk about."

A cold chill settled on her heart.

"Can you reverse the process? Can you change your apes back into men?"

"Unfortunately, no. Evolution is like a tree with many branches. The human race is like a collection of caterpillars on one of the leaves of the tree. I drive some of those caterpillars back toward the trunk. If I set them climbing again very few of them will get back to the same leaf. I tried it, several times, but I got only a lot of queer freaks, very few of them capable of life.

"But do not let my apes worry you. I cannot make them into men again, but I can get rid of them. Once I am master of Mars I shall evacuate all of my men and everything of value from my cavern under the sea. My apes will be left there. My submarine will be the last to go out, and then my dissolving ray will cut away the rocks until the sea rushes in, and the apes trouble me no more."

They stared into each other's eyes, he grinning, she horror-struck.

At last he rose.

"I have given you much to think about. Now I will leave you to think it over. The journey to my sub-oceanic headquarters will occupy several days, and the negotiating of the huge locks requires care. You will have several days uninterrupted privacy in which to ponder on what I have put before you.

"In the next cabin you will see twelve cages and aquaria. Each of them holds what was once a man. They are former soldiers of mine who have annoyed me. Into the roof of the cabin is built a small evolution-reversing field machine. Some of them have been there longer than others, and you can trace twelve stages in the long journey from human form back to the primeval slime. Even in the little while that we shall be on our journey you will be able to see a change in each of them. You should find it most interesting and instructive."

He saluted.

"Power to Princess Wimpolo," he said, sneeringly, and went out.

HE cages were as he had said. An anthropoid ape glared at her from the first, growling and shaking the cage in its efforts to get out. In the next cage was a more primitive ape-man, squatting sullenly on its haunches and looking terrified. In the next a smaller monkey with a long tail climbed on branches. Then came monkeys of more and more primitive form, then creatures that were half rodents, half reptiles, then scaly swimming creatures in square glass vessels, progressively smaller and smaller until there were nothing but worms burrowing in mud. In the last bowl there was nothing to be seen at all.

Wimpolo stared at these horrors through a thick glass door. She could see that it was glass of a type that was opaque to rays of most sorts. Each day a man entered the room of the cages to feed the animals, first switching off the ray. He grinned at her, and wanted to tell her the crimes for which the men had been punished. Most of them had made offensive remarks about Bommelsmeth in private conversation and been denounced by spies.

"It's a lie!" growled the most recent and human of the victims. "I didn't say it. I didn't! I didn't!"