Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/188

 

his ideals and ambitions with that sweetly sympathetic understanding none but a maid of Venhez can bestow, had free access at all times to his workshop, wherein he toiled and studied for planetary benefit.

And she, one day seeing his distress at bafflement in his researches, saying naught, withdrew, returning shortly bearing in her arms her chiefest treasure, an instrument of many strings from which she proceeded to draw sweet strains of music, hoping thus to soothe his perturbed mind.

There came a wondrously sweet strain recurring in her melody, and the first time it sounded, the Lunarion winced. Repetition of that strain made him howl! And realization came to Ron Ti in one blinding flash of lightlike clarity.

"Harmony!" he shouted, rejoicing. "The blob-thing is discordant in its essential nature!"

Never a maid of all Venhez was so proud just then as that love-girl of Ron Ti's. She had, at least, produced some sort of impression on the fiend, made it suffer grievously. So over and over she played that selfsame strain, and, ere many minutes had passed, the Lunarion fell prone, writhing in anguish, howling like a thing demented.

"Enough, Alu Rai," Ron bade her after watching the captive's misery for a space. "You have rendered the universe a service! Now depart, for I would think. Herein lies the secret of the weapon which will purge an afflicted world of its wo!"

a mighty fleet which started for Aerth on that never-to-be-for-gotten expedition of rescue and reprisal. Practically speaking, all the craft were of similar appearance, for the Aethir-Torps had long been conceded to be the most efficient type for inter-spatial voyaging. Even the Aerthons had used them before they were subjugated, and Jon the 