Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/116

116 marked "one hundred gens" and the dynamos within the anti-gravity cars are marked one gen or one neg it will take a hundred of such cars to equal the power of one such great fixed dynamo.

"But the weapons within the cars are more finely built for fighting, more flexible of focus and can achieve much the same effect by amassing some seventy-five of their beams in one path. This can only be done by lining up the cars so that their beams strike through the same penetrative bore or guide ray, then their kinetic sum overcomes resistance of the same amount as the single beam of the giant dynamo. But there are only one or two such great dynamos in an arsenal. We can overcome a stationary ray installation by lining up more 'negs' of power than they have in their dynamos. Understand?"

"I follow you, Eemeeshee. It can be done by careful work."

"It can be done. There is this drawback: we cannot see so well with the small screens of these cars as with the larger power augmentation screen. They can see farther and better. But I have a way of providing us with equal sight. We have put the anti-gravs under some of the great vision screens, mounted the power units to operate it on other anti-grav units, connected them together with flexible cables—and, behold, we have portable vision quite as good as their stationary vision. Because the anti-gravs float exactly level, it is quite as satisfactory, for there is so little vibration in the anti-grav devices that even when in motion we can see nearly as well as a solid and stationary device. We will approach this enemy, stop at the utmost range we can see them, line up our weapon cars in exact simultaneous line of fire—and let them have it."

Eemeeshee was speaking with his abstract thought language which Lane had learned to interpret even more easily than English, as in fact, it is vastly a more potent medium of communication than oral language.

OR the trip, Eemeeshee had squeezed his huge body into a smaller life-machine equipped with anti-gravs. When the central antigrav is tipped slightly, it acts as a frictionless drive of great power. The gravity devices on the perimeter of the lower circle of the half-sphere are never moved from their exact alignment. These cars can travel at any speed the human eye and nerve can control within the caverns. They cannot be used outside the caverns without adjustment, as they have a device in their top that, like an electric eye, watches the ceiling and shuts off the anti-grav flow automatically, keeping the car a certain distance from the roof. Taken outside the cavern, this device would fail to work, the car would shoot straight up, unless the manual height control were understood and operated by hand.

Their long lines of floating cars, parallel and beautiful in their perfection of ancient workmanship, was fronted by Saba and Lane in a great vision ray-mech floated on anti-gravs. In the center of the lines was the great living machine of crystal and gleaming metal with Eemeeshee puffing inside. And in the rear were four smaller vision devices with Saba's women inside. Bringing up the rear was Stevens, inside the hugest hemi-sphere, a great single ray mech of longer range than any of the smaller cars. The larger part of the car was packed with small powerful dynamos, all powering a vast vision and firing beam in one compact unit. Eemeeshee had assured Stevens that nothing portable could outreach it. Their only danger, until they reached the location of the enemy under Butte, was from carelessness. If they failed to see some scouting ray and allowed it to get too close to their ranks, they would lose many men until the ray was put out of action.

Swiftly, silently, the tremendous assembly of ancient power floated northward. Here and there on the shimmering pearly beauty of the pillared ways hung a dried human head, giving mute evidence of the warfare of the degenerate, savage peoples who had peopled these caverns nomadically.

Or, a crucified mummy would hang from the great T symbol which the ancient Elder race had placed occasionally along the ways, just as today we see now and then the Christian cross which has derived from the ancient symbolic use of the T. The savages who had roamed here and perhaps fathered the present day spider-like "creeps," had left such evidences of their warring, and the dry warm air of the underworld had preserved the flesh perfectly, just as it had preserved the ancient machines and handiwork of the Elder race no matter the eon of time that had passed.

Eemeeshee's vast portable living machine