Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/45

Rh Empire that lay between our own regions and that dark and impenetrable region taboo to all but the Gods of the Dark Spaces called the Elder Ones, who rule over Nor and other Empires from afar. We had heard of these things, and it did not lessen our respect for the evident great strength and apparent ability of this giant that he was of that race. I knew myself that the men of Nor are not variforms, but his thought pictures as he talked explained all this and more, and his vast size and age as well explained much to us, for we had heard of these immortal races but did not believe in them, and had ourselves then not any great length of life; none of us being known to live for more than a thousand years. It seemed from his talk that the "accursed" Aesir had imprisoned him there instead of killing him when they had evacuated all the better groups of people from earth—those people known as the Lesser or Latter Gods, and had not killed him for fear they might lose their way in space and have to return here to their old home to prepare a new start toward their goal—"goal" being a life under a dark star that gave no light. This we did not understand, and the giant gave us no light on the matter. Except that the "Aesir" had considered his brain valuable, yet had hated him so much they could not bear to kill him. They had chosen to condemn him to an eternity of imprisonment here deep under the rocks of Mother Earth's thickest crust—an eternity of longing and waiting. We pitied him, but that only shows what great fools men can be when confronted with the devious ways of a superior brain, for Sathanas was taking no chances of estranging our hearts until he had us in his power. So the days went by while the giant slept and ate and drank, and studied us and our ways of life.

HEN the day came when Sathanas calmly took our loved leader in his great hands and shut him up in the same dungeon from which he had been released. Hence forward, he announced, Sathanas would give the orders in this City of Dis. And day by day the orders increased and we brought in slaves from the upper world—wild men of the forests, cultured men of cities of the east, the big white bodies of the barbarians of the North and all the people of earth we culled over to get fuel for the fire that consumed this giant of lust. Sathanas had fastened himself upon us and his brain was such that we could find no way to loosen his hold upon us and only death rewarded those who tried. We could do nothing but serve slavishly, and those who did so serve, he debauched with pleasures such as we had never imagined existed. And in time he released our leader who became his chief lieutenant. His name was Mephistopheles, and he could not resist the persuasive mind of Sathanas, nor could he resist the tempting pleasures that made up the life of Sathanas' inner confidants. And our leader became one of these—and somehow we knew that this wizard from alien space had done something to Mephistopheles, for he was never the same man—but a dour, unpleasant fellow and not himself at all.

And the record showed us the vast under-world rule that Sathanas built with the aid of these men, a world of tremendous slavery, of endless debauchery, of utter distortion of the character of man into another thing by his arts with the growth rays and cutting rays with which he changed both the bodies and brains of the men and women under his rule. (And the Hell that Sathanas built was understood by me as no other thing could explain it—for I saw it as it was, and the record was so made that I was conscious always of being one of these people, though which one was I, I could never quite learn). And that vast city grew under his vile hands into a thing where no man had a will of his own, but only a will to serve his master Sathanas, and no woman wanted any pleasure or love or admiration but only Sathanas, and all the children that were born there were the children of Sathanas. Some few men, such as Mephistopheles, whom he needed for their skills in ways he lacked, he was careful to allow them some modicum of self-will, and these men had their own women who bore them children. But the rest of the city seemed to exist only to serve the will and the whims and pleasures of this vast body of appetite—Sathanas.

IME passed, and men grew and died about him, and gradually the mind of the thing that was Sathanas changed, though the gradual change was almost unnoticed by the mortals that served him, for they came and went, were born and