Richmond planet., 1930-12-13
underground

So41Se S&tSSS
kingdoms housed over a billion souls,
the Elsians being ugly-looking, SUI
perStitiouS little creatures, backward,
while the Pragians approached a
type somewhat more often the pat
tern of earthly man
1t was Sto who gave u the answer
to the great riddle which had dwelt
u~-.solved on our minds. How come
the language of Mars to be that OF
earthly man? Ever since our ship"
had crashed in the snow outside and
above the Kingdom of Els, at which
time we we're taken captive, this mir
acle had hung heavily on us.
The answer lay in the fact that, a
thousand years before, the black
scientists of Mars had stumbled up
on an amazing idea, and today there
stands upon the white waste outside
of the Pragian kingdcn a great met
al tower. To a majestic height OF
a thousand feet it rises, and on the
occasion of our inspection of it, we
were amazed to fine that, with the
aid OF a sort of ear phone, we could
hear faint murmurings, which, after
listening intently finally formed
themselves into faint. scarcely audi
BILE words-words from earth! "The
great heavenly mystery" they called
il.
This, then, was the answer to the
riddle of why theirs was the language
of earthly man, although when Cap
tain Sto said, II shall take you to
see it, esteemed one," it sounded
much more like acknowledgements
sect, esteemedone!"
And, by the way; the Marian
women. Never in all of my life had
I seen such beautifully dark women!
Everywhere, by the tens of thousands,
I saw these wonderful little creatures
about the size of the sixtee--year-
old Negro girls one sees on the streets
and in the schools of the great stone
cities Of earth. Beautiful! This puz-
zled me al first, because the Pragians,
like our former captors, the Elsians,
are not handsome; far from it.
Mr.. Turner, however, advanced the
theory that this condition was caused
by countless generations of the Pra-
gians' protection of their women from
the cold, dating, perhaps, back to the
prehistoric era, before they hit upon
the idea of building their settlements
into the ground.
Quite often I was a guest at Cap
tain Sto's richly furnished apart
ment, in the northernmost part of his
beloved kingdom, and it was ON one
of these occasions that he gave me
the story of Ioane.
His manservant received me and I
found his young master seated in
what I would cal a trophy room,
with a bottle of fingo-ewtul stlff!-|
at his side and quite retrospective
loo in his queer-loo' ng eyes. When
I entered, however, he set his glass
down and jumped to his feet. "Ah!"
he exclaimed, cit do be honor to me,
esteemed one! Every courtesy at
your command, Quano Brent.
Lunug, you do bring at once more
lingo for the guest Of your masterl"
"The pleasure is all NINE" I cried,
taking the indicated chair. This
sort of -graciousness always did upset
me. However, before very long I had
recovered, and, with a sparkling glass
of the deadly lingo in u hands, we
were talking Of various things, and 1
was secretly admiring his trophy
hung walls-the dried head of an Ell
sian warrior, Enthusiastically, c%uriously-
shaped guns, knives, bits of brilliant
metals-several scores of interesting
objects.
On a sort of stone shelf, directly in
front of US, sat about twenty small
stone statues. Each was quite differ
ent from the other miniature
monster of some sort, a tiny kneeling
woman, another with knife raised to
strike
AS Sto went on talking in that
6~-A. - n~.. Es~kt