Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/35

Rh telaugs to the thought of some mighty leader or teacher, or ruler. Or one sees pictures in a series that seem to tell of the peopling of a planet by the use of some life manufacturing machine—for the people are emerging from the bowls of an intricate mechanism and proceeding from it in streams to build cities, roads, dwellings and tunnels into the earth. Yet no one enters the machine, only a flow of some mud colored fluid. Some of those pictures seem to tell me that the Gods did take mere mud and make men as the Bible tells us. Maybe they did synthesize men and set them to work to fulfill the pattern of development planned into their synthetic matrix. It is perhaps the real explanation of the old "legend" of Adam and Eve. Such seemed the meaning of some pictures, but their thought was so different from our own that one can be sure of little accuracy in the interpretation of these scenes or their writings by modern man.

But of other pictures of vast cubes and spheres inter-acting, seeming to give birth to tinier rounded cubes and angular spheres, of vast worlds with continents and oceans seeming to give birth by budding of younger, smaller spheres, globes that looked like tiny planets—of much of such work one could make nothing. It is quite possible they were but the vague imaginative work of some artist of their liking who amused them with weird creations of impossibilities. One does not know. But this I know, they often pictured Mother Earth as an entity of beauty and wisdom, speaking with a mighty mental voice that moved life to effort, thinking with great thought that reached each man of her millions and reflected in his mind so that each obeyed. Speaking across space with flows of matter and flights of great ships, Earth was to them a living being, and they loved their Mother "Mu" and did as they thought she wanted. Could such a wise race have been deluded in thinking a planet itself had life—that the planet "thought," such great thought that they listened and obeyed? Is our Mother Earth now dead? Is that why the great race of the caves is no longer here? I wonder many things for which there is no answer, as I watch their mighty pictures flash past the "windows" of the floating speedy globe. For the windows are not "windows," but great screens fed by the impulses from the powerful view-rays outside and they can be made to pick up such a picture and keep it in focus as long as one wishes, and they can be made to watch the far distance for danger, too. So it was that I could spend little time on the picture walls of the great tunnel through which we sped toward the forgotten palancepalace [sic] of one Zigor Mephisto, whoever he may have been. The name aroused a vast curiosity in me. Is he the servant of the legendary Satan? Was the Mephisto of our stories and legends an actual person? Or is it just the surface cognizance of a powerful name of the under-world for centuries. Or does the name mean something else entirely? Did Satan exist? Was he an ancient retainer of Mephisto's or vice versa? Was he an acquaintance of the Sathanas of the Mutan Mion Series of records? Well, I would know when I had read his "Collection of Mentalia."

HE place lay about five hundred miles from our home. We drew near, about ten hours after leaving. As we came out of the cavern way tube into the rocky sphere or bowl in which the palace lay, the projection of a great human figure in front of us stopped us. Its hand was raised, palm out, and it spoke.

"Wait here. Before you come further you must be examined. Eg Notha is not easily entered!"

I turned to Nydia.

"I had understood the palace was empty of life. Who do you think is doing this?"

"I had heard it has been deserted for many years, for the last fifty years or so. Little is known of the place, as it is avoided. The legend of the Mephisto family is one to cause fear. Let us hope that it is not a Mephisto who has taken up his life here in the ruin."

Solaris snapped a view ray toward the great bulk of the place. Under the domed and immense cavern roof, the building bulked huge, the great bowl too small to hold it. The ray went through the walls, poked and pryed about, abruptly went out!

"They blew my tubes," Solaris cried, futilely, snapping the switch stud on and off. "I don't like it! Let's get out of here."

"Okay, buddy!" I didn't like the expression on Solaris' face, like a trapped animal. "You know your way around. Take up out while the taking's good!"