Zigor Mephisto's Collection of Mentalia

METHINKS the most sinful and,
therefore, fascinating bits of this
Collection of Mentalia, as the
old heathen, Zigor Mephisto, called his
spools of antique thought-wire, will be
found on the seventh level, in that den
where he used to retreat and bid the whole
world defiance."

"A grisly place of past dread and death
it is, too. The souls of men who have died
under Zigor's hand do howl about these
walls like great winds. Eg Notha, it is
called."

"Mayhap they are but winds?"

"Nay, nay! You'll see."

"So, you are game to seek the place out!
'Twill be a hard bit of traveling. Lord
knows what dangerous deviltry of these
mad cavern people we may have worked
upon us in these forgotten Hell-warrens."

"Aye, which is why I must get to the bot-
tom of this wisdom, must follow every
lead till we learn to protect ourselves.
There is wisdom in Mephisto's Collection
of these spools that magically store the
thought of the great beings who built these
endless cavern-mansions. I like it not
when an unseen thing burns the shoes off
my feet, and no one to see, no way to
know who or what may be adoing of the
mischief."

"Yes, I would have us learn this hidden
magic the mad imps work upon us, myself,
afore we are undone entirely."

"Who would have thought the mysteries
of magic the wise men talk of were but
the mad people of the lost caverns, play-
ing with these ancient works of the Devils,
or of the Gods? Who would have known
that any one could work magic, had he but
access to the old machinery of this for-
gotten hell, and some little know-how about
that same machinery."

"Aye, Francis, the know-how! There's
the rub! Last night I pushed a button,
thinking to have one of the delicious
dreams that such a button had brought me
before, and what happened? The mon-
strous metal thing picked me up, wrapped
me from head to toe in plastic butcher's
paper, and tied a neat plastic string around
me. Had it not been for you I'd have
ended my days done up as a bundle of
old clothes."

"And that was not so bad as last week,
when we entered the mad maze of mirrors.
Had it not been for luck, we would have

spent our life in there wondering whether

the dancers we saw were real or . . ."

"Yes, and had it not been for that maze

of mirrors the mad dwarves would have got

us. They could not tell whether we were

one or many, far or near, and gave up the

chase. There is much to know down here

to stay alive, and little we do know of

that needed. These wights have been

brought up around these mysteries."

* \* \*

r\N THE tail end of one of the long,
enigmatic thought-records of the life
of the Elder Race, I heard these voices talk-
ing in an archaic but understandable Eng-
glish, somewhat of the flavor affected by
Shakespearian actors. Since the record
itself was of a time when the modern
English language had not yet been born
of the mother Atlan tongue, I couldn't
figure how the voices got there. I decided
that the machine must record any voice or
sound around, when it was played over.
Then I asked Nydia. She explained that
when the recorder switch was thrown on
the record augmenter, it would also record;
that the two were the same machine except
for a slight adjustment.

"Is that all of the talk in our language
that exists?"

Nydia considered.

"Yes it is. But it tells of men being
down here, long ago — though quite recent\*\*
ly compared to the antiquity of the records
themselves. Who they were, what they
were doing, we will never know. Surface
men, apparently, who found their way
down here and learned something of the
mysteries of the ancient magic."

"This Zigor Mephisto's palace of dread,
they speak of it, but I have never heard of
it before? I wish I could see it, and read
the store of records of which it speaks. If
the Mephisto of whom they speak is the
gentleman of whom I know, I imagine the
records are vastly more than interesting.
What do you know of him, Nydia?"

"Mephisto is an old family name, and a
dread and powerful family it has been.
They have ruled over much of the under-
world at different times, though their for-
tunes have varied as the centuries passed.
As far back as we know, there have been
rich and powerful Mephistos, some not so
evil — some terrible in their slaughter of the
cavern people. This Zigor of whom these
voices speak, I know not. He is forgotten

ZISOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

33

today. This is America, and of those of
the family of whom I have heard, only
Europe was mentioned as their home. But
he may have come here from Europe
through the great under-sea ways, cen-
turies ago. He may have been very great
and powerful here, and still have been un-
known in Europe. There were always many
secret groups, you know. They fear to be
known to each other, as the ancient rays
are such terrible weapons that it is better
not to be known at all to each other. But
hereabouts, he may have ruled in great
power for long, and then his family wiped
out by the mad nomads some night when
all were drunk and forgetting to guard
the ways from the mad ones."

"Nydia, would it be safe for us to go
there? I would give an arm to see this
Collection of Mentalia. Could we avoid
death from the distant devils, and get
through to this forgotten palace of Zigor's,
or is the risk too terrible to face at all?"

"It could be done. It is in truth needed.
We must always be finding and learning
to use new and more deadly weapons. This
place of the Mephisto's should contain
many and terrible and strange weapons,
ray-mech of which we know nothing. We
could bring some of them here, and sur-
prise these besieging dero with them. Or
we might find the place an impregnable
fortress, and find it of benefit to move
there entirely. Eg Notha, the name tells
nothing. I will call a meeting and plan
for the work."

* \* \*

CO IT was that Nydia, the lovely young
^ daughter of the hidden cavern people,
and myself — an escaped convict who had
found refuge in these unknown dwellings
of the forgotten Gods of earth, and Solaris,
the son of the leader of our little group of
sane cavern dwellers, a slim, dark, well
built young man, and a little dwarfish maid
who loved Nydia and attended her, whose
name was Truly, entered a huge half-globe
that lay in one of the numerous borings.
This half-globe was the usual traveling de-
vice used by the ancients, and there were
several of them in the vast borings under
the chambers in which we made our home
and our fortress. Solaris pressed a stud on
the puzzling keyboard of the controls that
filled one segment of the circular chamber.
I gasped, for all weight had left my body.
The control was one that operated an

anti-gravity device. I looked at Solaris.

"Don't ask me how, I only know the
electric from the old generators charges
some plates on the flat under-side of the
half-globe so that it floats. You will have
to find the scientific words to tell yourself
what the mech is all about. As it rises, an
automatic electric eye shuts it off before
it strikes the ceiling, and we float midway
in these tunnels. They used these cars a
great deal, the Elder race. They ride like
wheels of air, and they are equipped with
gravity controls coupled with auto-eyes
fore and aft, and overhead, so that one can-
not bump into anything even if one wished.
It is only in landing the thing that any
skill is required, and that is very simple."

"I won't try to explain it, Solaris. If
gravity is really a kind of electric or mag-
netic force, they must have known how to
generate and control gravity in reverse.
What is the ancient name of this car?"

"There is the name on the panel. Any-
way those letters are on the panels of all
these cars that I have seen. You read it."

"The letters look like Z-O-N-T-O-N. A
'Zonton' is what they may have called it, or
it's the name of the man who invented it."

"I suspect the thing can also be used as
a space ship. It is tremendously powered
for its small size, and fitted with mighty
weapons. One can never turn on but a
fraction of the propulsion dial — the drive
force will propel it at terrific speed. We
have used this one many times for short
trips through the longer borings in our
search for the things we need. For hunt-
ing trips to the great water-filled caves
where the blind monsters live, for fishing —
But as for really knowing this ship, I do
not. I can use it, but there is much I do
not know, and fear to try to learn. For
instance, if I press this stud, the protective
auto-ray controls are released, and then if
I press this lift control, it goes up at terrific
speed, the "governor" is off: — possibly for
use in high-flying outside the caves. It
would crash one who did not know against
the roof. I did that inadvertently once
over the water in the water-caverns, and
nearly drowned us all. Only the strength
of the antique materials saved us. We
bounced off the roof, knocked loose a small
avalanche of stalactites, turned over,
started for the water just as fast as we had
come up- — went under water traveling at
terrible speed, and I managed to shut it

AMAZING STORIES

off and we floated again. They were built
sturdily, or we should all have been dead.
Some of these guns pointing out here we
can use, but some I do not know how to
use. I will teach you what I know."

\X/"E FLOATED in the exact center of

* \* the circular boring, the smooth, an-

cient, time-mottled rock of the floor glided
away beneath us. The dust stirred slightly
under the forcefields of the magnetic de-
vices which held us afloat, that was all. A
smell, as of an old bookstore, filled the
globe, the smell of time itself, familiar to
me now as the "smell of the caverns." The
bright, glittering metal, untarnished and
speaking as of work created yesterday, was
here and there belied by dark streaks of
corrosion where some less hardy metal had
been used in the construction of some less
essential part. Solaris advanced a huge
lever a fraction of a notch, and the great
globe started forward down the cavern at
a speed of perhaps forty miles an hour.

"It won't go any slower, and if one went
faster, the automatic eyes would keep us
from bumping. But I cannot bring myself
to trust my life wholly to such antique de-
vices for safety. I can shut off the power
and thus slow down, but it is seldom neces-
sary. Watch the far screens for the ray-
paths of some bush-whacker nomad. They 1
often lie in wait along the ways with a ray
to kill anything that passes. We must see
them first and that without fail. They will
know we are traveling, our thought will
have been heard, our plans known. They
will try to trap us."

Beside me as I swung the vision ray in a
slow arc across the approaching network
of ways, was Nydia's fair hair, curling
softly about her gardenia face, her huge
imseeing eyes that yet saw, much more
than others. My heart pumped that blind
loyalty she had inspired in me. I knew
that Nydia's mental eyes, trained from
her years of work with the telaug and

1 "They" whom Nydia fears are a group of wild
savage cavern dwellers who live not far from the
home of Nydia's group, as described in "Thought
Records of Lemuria," a former story of the same
people. There are many groups of these wild, evil
men, and this particular "bunch" are descendants
of the so-called "Efrits" or Afreets of Arabia and
Persia, recently come to the U. S. and are wholly
evil. Small, wizened and devilish, they delight in
killing and torture, and the ancient weapons they
use make them invulnerable.

similar mental apparatus, were seeing me
in a wealth of detail no ordinary eyes with
light-ray vision could attain. She was see-
ing my inner spirit, my will to bend life
into what it should be, my own opinion of
my body and inner-self was in her mind
adde to all our friends inner vision of me
to make a composite image of greatly in-
creased accuracy to those held by ordinary
mortals. This inner vision she held of me
was what I strove to keep clean and bright,
and that effort was good for my soul. Her
kind of eye is a far more exacting one
than that which never sees beneath the
surface at all. For I am an ordinary fel-
low, of near six foot in height, 170 lbs.
weight, well muscled, — with a potato nose,
large teeth, a heavy chin — no beauty,
though not entirely ugly. But Nydia saw
far more than that, which was why she
loved me. For I do have a will to make
life what it should be, and that was the
thing in me which she prized.

Nydia spoke softly in my ear.

"This Zigor's palace of dread, this Eg
Notha, I have heard of it from travelers, —
it is shunned, but some have looked upon
it from afar. I hope we get to see it. To
read that store of records, collected from
the whole cavern world by the family of
Mephisto. God knows what we may learn."

T WISH I could put the actual scenes
A of this cavern journey into your minds,
but Words to depict the ultra-beauty of
the ancient work do not exist. The walls
of the caverns, sometimes vast connecting
chambers where cavern ways cross, and
sometimes longer chambers along the "way"
sides like subway platforms where the
trains stop, are decorated with vast bas-
reliefs, of a meaning that sometimes glim-
bers through the clouds of ignorance that
are modern man's inheritance — glimmer
through in a blaze of terrific meaning that
shakes the soul inside a man, but never
quite completely registers all that it con-
tains. Their picture symbol system of
thought was vastly different from our own
uncultured one, springing from a long
heredity of knowledge of goings and life-
forms of which we know nothing. One
sees pictured gatherings of beings, no two
of them alike, and knows that it is a
recorded scene of some past meeting of the
life of many planets of divergently formed
races, gathered to listen with their indi-

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

35

vidual 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 intri-
cate 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 de-
velopment 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 pos-
sible they were but the vague imaginative
work of some artist of their liking who
amused them with weird creations of im-
possibilities. 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 win-
dows 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 pal-
ance 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 some-
thing 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."

THE place lay about five hundred miles
from our home. We dtew 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 1"
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 expres-
sion on Solaris' face, like a trapped animal.
"You know your way around. Take up out
while the taking's good!"

36

AMAZING STORIES

Solaris threw the great lever to center
and then delicately jockeyed the stick back
along the notched path to reverse. The
great globe stirred back a few inches along
the path into the tunnel we had just used
in entering, then stopped. Solaris gave it
more and more juice, finally pulling it back
all the way. A cloud of the fine, time re-
veiling dust of the caverns rose about us as
the force field's flows aroused fury con-
tended around us, but the globe held still
as though frozen in place.

"Heh, heh!" cracked a fiendish crackle
in our ears. "The little innocents think to
escape."

"Grandma, they sure walked into it,
didn't they?" It was a child's voice, one of
those we had learned to fear, a child who
has never had any pleasure except the
sadistic thrills of watching his evil elders
torment some unfortunte. A voice from an
older man, masculine.

"We'll have rare sport with these fools
before they die."

I looked at Nydia and she looked back
— a hopeless look.

"This is it, Rich! There isn't a chance
from the sound of them."

"They'll boil us alive," moaned Solaris,
"and when we ask them why, since we're
perfect strangers, they'll tell us: "Why it's
customary, we always do.' These damned
mad ones of the caves."

"Do you know who they are? Is that
why you are so sure?"

"Their actions tell us they are the mad
ones."

I swung my own view ray up the cliffy
side of the building, which was really a
great shaft of the natural rock, shaped
somewhat rectangularly, and bored with
round chambers and air-shaft apertures.
Windows, as such, are rare in the caverns.
But my penetrative beam blinked out as
soon as it struck the stone of the wall. A
series of pops inside the case told me the
antique, irreplaceable, incalculably valuable
and well nigh indestructible tubes had been
blown from the distance.

"How do they blow the tubes like that?"
I asked.

"Just hit 'em with a powerful dis-ray.
The overload burns them out rapidly."

So it was that we left our ship, hanging
there a foot off the rock on her degravity
beams. With a painful heat ray burning
our buttocks, we entered the great open

doors of the forgotten den of Zigor
Mephisto, Eg Notha. The howling noise
which the old record with the strange voice
had spoken of was present. To me it
seemed to be water flowing from far over-
head down through great metal tubes, down
and down into the rock, under the great
hulk of stone work that was the home of
past power. For some of the vast dynamos
one sees deep in the under-rock, I surmised.
Time had marred the weird building little,
and the huge stone figures of animals that
never existed in modern man's ken; winged
dragons flanked the doorway and across
the stone face was sprawled a fretwork of
sculpured figures of hybrid animals — hy-
brid of some mad-man's dream with the
life forms of the ancient vari-form tech-
nique, or perhaps none of them had ever
existed outside the imagined weirdness of
some artist's mind. I could not venture an
opinion, nor had I time for one. These
stone figures glared down at us from a
dozen impossible angles of the walls, con-
structed as they were by a mind with a
vaster knowledge of geometry and the
qualities of structural material than any
man now living.

UP THE many tall three-foot steps we
scrambled as best we might, the heat
ray hastening us more rapidly than our
natural reluctance to be so coerced.
Through the open valves of the monstrous
doors, the deep dust swirling dryly in the
still air, and settling slowly as we passed.
Th\*e dust is the one true tell-tale of the
awful time that has passed since the caverns
were lived in by the multitudes that did
live there when they were built. It is ever
present, choking, cloying, smelling of eons
of dry jforgotten time, and concealing with
Its death-grey blanket the beauty of the
antigue master-work.

Down the long corridors, with their
height-shadowed, vaulting ceiling, the place
echoing our footsteps above the eery howl-
ing of the water in the depths — and about
us now showed some sign of occupancy
later than the original gigantic men who
built the place — signs not reassuring. For
a skeleton, clothed, lay here; a thonged
whip rotted over there; and nearby a long
old sword blade had not yet rusted away.
Relics of a near past that no one now alive
here had the grace to remove. Then we
were in the lower levels of the place,

ZISOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

37

beneath the level of the great road-tubes
through which we had approached. Now
there were great hangings in their places
over the doorways, the tremendous, unrot-
ting, metallically shining weaves of the old
Gods, glass threads colored and inter-
mingled with gleaming metallic threads into
patterns and pictures, depicting the mighty
scenes of that life that is to man but an
enigma of mighty mysterious meaning
hung from the walls, hiding the stone - .
Much of the stone itself is covered now with
metal as we descend, worked metal, in
patterns reminiscent of no world of my
knowledge, of no world I had yet seen in
the old records. For that matter, a great
deal of the cavern world is covered with
solid metal, which looks as though it were
sprayed on the cavern walls in a molten
state and then worked into artistic designs.
The work depicted beings, men occasion-
ally, but as often like no life we know, at
work, at play, at love, and at war. But
principally these figures are engaged in
work or study or experiment of a nature
at which one can only guess. I surmise that
someday some man will decipher the mean-
ings of these great metal histories upon
walls and find there complete and detailed
decriptions of vast scientific discoveries,
of the nature of matter and energy upon
which the scientific base of their stupend-
ous life rested.

For the most part the message is too vast
for one mind to grasp in passing, and I
doubt that many of them would yield up
their super-world mental concepts to any
mind but the genius prepared especially for
the job, and that after years of study. And
I think, too, that no other study would
yield him such a rich reward.

We passed through many of these metal
chambers and corridors, our minds awhirl
with the overpowering beauty of the place,
here cleaned of its time dust, and revealed
in near its original beauty by polishing.
Then we entered what had been the throne
room of the ancient Lord of the place. We
were drawn now by a pleasant, overpower-
ing ray-impulse rather than driven by a
burning in the seat of the pants, as before.
Drawn to the figure that sat upon the
throne, dwarfed into insignificance and
ugliness by the beauty and size of the massy
seat of the ancient God. He was a Me-
phisto, my mind decided, that lean satur-
nine face, that lank black hair, that over-

long, over-slender figure, that smile that
was mockery itself, added to a certain
consciousness of power, a certain cynical
wisdom, all told me here was one of the
antique ray-grbups whom I have chosen to
call the Latter Gods — the first successors
to the original homes of the true ancient
Gods. His voice was dry and shrill, his
age one would not know, as he spoke:

I WATCHED your coming on the great
wall-screen, 'tis set to watch always the
one open approach to this place. Is it true
what I saw there in your minds, that you
came here but to read the old records in
my ancestor Zigor's collection?"

Nydia, who trusted her own subtleties
better than my straightforwardness, an-
swered :

"Yes, that is why we came, my Lord.
Are you of the family of the ancient Zigor
Mephisto, or some other, since come here?"

"I am some kind of grand-nephew of the
old fiend, I suppose. I have always borne
his name. It does not matter much. I
came here, like you, to read the collection,
one of the greatest still in order from that
time when men still had sense in their heads
of one kind or another. I stayed, for I
have given up hope of finding wisdom on
earth, and my old bones crave less tiring
pursuits than searching for it."

Nydia, nearly purred, for his words had
opened hope in her heart.

"Oh, you are one who studies that an-
tique science revealed in the thought rec-
ords, one who knows; I am glad we found
you! I — we, have studied somewhat, too,
but there is so much to learn and only one
life to learn it in."

The cynical, weary expression of the
seated figure's face lifted a little at Nydia's
sweet ways and he leaned toward her.

"Don't try to tell me there is life in the
caverns with wits between its ears? I will
have you boiled in oil, the lot of you, if you
lie to me about that. As for you, you little
blind beauty, if you are stuffing me with
wool, I will have your lovely body gold-
plated, and added to the collection. I have
had enough lies in my life to satisfy me."

I spoke up, a little nettled at his way,
but relieved in truth that he was interested
in something beside sadism, which is, too
often, the case of the old cavern families of
power.

"She tells the truth, always, does my

38

AMAZING STORIES

Nydia. And even if you do have her gold-
plated, you may not keep her, for she is
mine."

"Well, if you have told the truth about
your studious natures, and can tell me
things I do not yet know, you may live
through this meeting and go your way
when you have read the collection. But if
you lie about yourselves, I will wash my
hands of you, and I assure you that the rest
of this menage are not as well-natured as
myself, and let few go from here alive that
I do not protect." He waved a hand to
some gold and scarlet demon masks decor-
ating the wall behind the throne. "Know
you at what rites those are used?"

Solaris spoke up, laughing a little forced-
ly. He had figured that he understood this
lonely man upon the throne.

"We shall keep you interested, never
fear. I have assisted at some such rites to
the Dark One myself . Thrilling, but apt to
be dangerous to strangers."

"You have been held by Satanists before?
And how did you escape the usual fate?"

"In the only way possible. The altar
took a liking to me."

"Aye, you were young, and she fell in
love with you. Yes, that is one way of
surviving. Methinks you will not have that
chance here. You see, except for me, you
are now in the hands of Satanists. And I,
of course, am also supposed to be an en-
thusiastic servant of the Dark One. But,
of course, you children could be my guests
if I so willed. But will I say you are my
invited guests, or will I let my besotted and
mindless, cruel and half -mad retainers and
relatives have their will of you? I know
not myself why I should be kind to anyone.
It never got me much in this world to be
kind."

Nydia answered.

"It got you what friends you have, I am
sure. They are often valuable, are friends.
A friend can stop a knife from your back
or a ray from your heart — if he is a true
friend." Nydia's little nose wrinkled, she
was playing his game, and feigning fear.

"Yes, if he be not' over-avaricious and put
the ray on the heart himself. There is that
about it! But do not worry overmuch; if
they do manage to kill you, I will manage
to make it not too painful in ways you
know. I may have inherited more of my
mother's weak emotions than my father's
will to destroy. You never know."

CUDDENLY the figure on the throne
^ scowled down wildly upon us, and a
rage with no cause passed over his face. His
fists clenched and he raved at us.

"Who do you think you are, to come in
here and tell me what to do in my own
holding? You shall die a thousand deaths,
you dogs!"

As swiftly, the causeless rage passed from
him and his face resumed its tired, cynical
half-smile.

"Don't be frightened, my guests. 'Tis
but a blood-thirsty and wholly mad relative
trying to dream himself me over his ray-
control mech. If he could remember what
he was doing he would be dangerous. But
as it is he has forgotten what he started to
do with me, and has returned to his antique
toys upon the floor. There have always
been mad Mephistos; I suppose there al-
ways will be. It is what has given the line
such a bad name. But there are not so
many any more. We are few."

At the side of him crouched a huge dog,
or what I thought was a dog, its great head
on his foot. But when it arose to stand
beside its master, I stifled a gasp of horror.
It was distinctly not a dog! It was scaled,
its hind quarters web-footed and huge, and
its back maned with queer spines. I stepped
back in alarm, but the thing was intent on
scratching its ear on the great carved arm
of the throne.

"Be not startled, Dick," said Solaris,
clapping me on the shoulder. "I have seen
them before. They, too, are a relic of the
far past, still to be found in some of the
southern caverns. Once the ancients bred
all manner of fearful beasts, as the old
pictures tell you. Still some of them exist.
On the surface, men have their theories of
evolution, but down here we know where
animals and man, too, came from. Is that
not right, Master?" and Solaris turned to
the Dark One's servant on the trone.

As the lean, old face studied its answer
to Solaris, I recalled the children's tales I
had read of alchemists and sorcerers and
their "magic" books, with which they pro-
duced such fabled beasts from their test
tubes and alembics as the "cockatrice." It
could be those books came from these cav-
erns, and that the cockatrice was but one of
the simpler beginner's experiments in the
magic of life's chemistry that they taught.
Then this descendent of Mephisto's made
his answer:

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA 39

"Yes, young one, there are many such
thinks we know that surface men do not
know, but guess at, and guess wrongly.
It is too bad that they do not know some
things. They would be building us some
marvelous machines for pleasure, develop-
ing some strong and beautiful humans,
some devastating female beauty, if they
knew the ancient life science they could
learn from the ancient records. They
should know how the Old Ones lived."

"Sacrilege!" remarked Nydia, smiling in
agreement at the gargoyle face of this dried-
up representative of a family so dyed in
blood as to be synonymous in name with
Evil. He did not look so deadly, now that
we had talked, but I was still worried.
Would he turn his face from us did trouble
develop, or would he shield us from such
people as had driven us in here with the
painful heat ray? He cut short my thought
by ringing a gong hanging near him, with
a small golden hammer. The thing rang
and rang, a lovely sample of the antique
metal work, its tone was a marvelous, mel-
low note.

Answering the ringing note came one of
the servants of this mysterious old man on
the throne. He was attired as was his
master, in a suit of the gleaming, soft, yet
metallic mesh that was the ancient work.
I had watched some of the group in Nydia's
home remaking these garments from the
ancient suits that hang sometimes in the
chambers, left like the machines so long
ago. To be worn, they must be cut down
by three-fourths, for the ancients were on
an average twenty feet and more in height.
But the glittering stuff is resistant to the
penetrative rays 2 and is still used for that
reason, as there is little else that will stop
the passage of the penetray.

HE WAS a dull faced man, the servant,
his hands peculiarly mutilated, as
though the fingers ends had all rotted off
from some terrible disease in the past. His
fing ers were all stumps, and his face was
2 Some of the war-ray is housed in rooms built
of metal of similar qualities, opaque to the rays,
and there is a refuge from which no modern fight-
ers with ray ever yet blasted a quarry. But sel-
dom does a foe have time to get into one of these
refuges when attacked, for the suddenness of un-
seen attack by ray is disastrous so quickly — death
is on one before one realizes there is trouble. Only
continual and unceasing vigilance keeps one alive
in the caverns.

scarred across one whole side with a fearful
burn.

I had seen such hands before, in the
zombies of the devil groups, men they
called "ro." These they used as robots to
handle the terrible weapons in a ray-com-
bat. When such weapons overheat, the
hands of the operators get a ray infection
which rots the fingers off, sometimes does
not heal, but goes on till death results, as
in leprosy.

"We have guests, my Hugo. See they
have good care, they may amuse me. You
know how rare that has become for me."
The old man nearly smiled at Hugo, but
did not move.

"Aye, Master. They will not want for
comfort, if they can relieve the dull life we
lead of late."

The great shoulders of Hugo, gleaming
in the dim light from the worn out wall
tubes, preceded us out of the tremendous
room, and down an endless corridor whose
far reaches were lost in the gloom.

As we turned a corner into another
similar corridor, a sultry-eyed, wide-hipped
young woman paused to watch us pass.
Her long, strong and well-shaped legs
spread wide, her hands on her hips, she
laughed at us as we came near and recited
a cryptic bit of doggerel, that sounded like
this:

"Meat for the butcher
Fuel for the fires
Visitors come healthy
But soon turn 'liars!"

I grinned back at her, and said:

"Just what can you mean by that?"

She leaned against the wall of the cor-
ridor. Her long, glistening skirt, split to
the thigh, ended in a golden girdle riding
low on her wide hips. Her torso, bare and
narrow-waisted as a young girl's, was a
sensuous invitation to the eyes. A pair
of metal breast-plates completed her cos-
tume. She looked at me quizzically and a
little pityingly in the eye as she answered.

"I mean that the hangers-on here will
make the old man think you are no-good
"liars" if they can. All Mephistos are mad,
and the old one, sane enough ordinarily, has
his weak spot. And he kills all "liars"
painfully, the very word turns him ber-
serk. So you, too, will soon be caught in a
lie if these crooked devils that lick his boots
here can manage it. For they are all so
inherently bad that they cannot let anyone

40

AMAZING STORIES

simple and good like yourselves stay here
for long, as the contrast would show up
their true characters to the old man. They
all fear to lose their place in Mephisto's
regard, and strive always to please him, for
to be kicked out of his protection here
would mean to face the caverns alone." 3
None of us knew what to say. Our re-
ception by the old man had seemed so
favorable after our scare upon our arrival
outside, that the sudden news that we were
not out of danger was not welcome. Nydia
offered:

' We can get along with old Mephisto, if
you can help us with the others for a day
or so. We do not intend to stay long."

The woman looked at us, as though sizing
us up more carefully, then launched into a
swift series of instructions.

"Watch yourselves all the time. When
you are' with the old man, disclaim im-
mediately any strange words that issue
from your mouth, for they will control you
and make you say exactly those things
best calculated to set him into a rage; and
when in anger he is still a bloody, ruthless
man, who cares no more for human life than
does a shark. If you fail to watch every-
thing of the kind, if you let this blind girl
say things you think are not her words, it
will be too bad. You must say at once
any one of you seems under evil ray con-
trol: 'That is not his self speaking, that
comes from some make-ray around here
somewhere.' The old fellow will know
then what is going on and not blame you.
Buit if you fail to watch such things, sooner
or later they will cause him to lose his tem-
per and destroy you, even though he would
regret it later terribly, he could not help
himself. His hangers-on do not allow any
one else to live here for they are all half-
mad. I have had the ear of Mephisto for
many years and he trusts me, but even I
am sometimes under his suspicions. It is a
place full of mad people, and I would get
my business over with and get away from,
here before something happens — you gflrf-
not survive. If you need me, ask for Ch'iio."

SOLARIS was much taken with the sul-
try, insolent yet friendly stare of her
3 Travelers in the caves must keep a watch fore
-mi aft, and to both sides, with long range ray-
v'ew beams. It cannot be done by one man alone.
To travel alone means to be shot in the back by
the mad. flesh -eat in'- nomads of the caves, who
rc.isb. nothing so much as a human carcass.

eyes, and with the warm life in the curves
of her. Little Truly, who was sweet on
Solaris herself, watched them both with a
jaundiced eye. Solaris said:

"Could it be that one like you would care
to leave with us when we go? You must
be weary of this old hole and want to see
somewhat of the rest of the world before
age creeps into your bones and rots the
beauty out of you. With Solaris, you
would enjoy life."

She smiled a warm smile at Solaris.

"It might be that with such as you I
would go if minded that way. I will think
upon the offer. Now go to your ro"oms and
I will try to watch over you while you
sleep. And it may be you will one day
watch over me and see that no harm comes
to me."

"That may well be, if I have my way,"
was Solaris' answer, and we all knew that
what was meant was a great deal, for we
had often stood watch — in fact, all of us
took our turns at watching over the sleep
of the rest every night. Yet here we had
no rays with which to watch. So we knew
she was going to watch and felt more easy
about going to bed weaponless and un-
guarded.

That night we composed ourselves to
sleep, but with little success. Some of
Mephisto's mad company, whom we had
heard but had not yet seen, decided we
needed entertainment. In the night we
were drifting into unconsciousness, among
the soft covers spread on the floor which
Hugo had brought us when "it" began to
happen.

The long couch, which was the largest
piece of furniture in the room, and on
which Nydia and Truly had made their
bed, suddenly refused to obey the old-
fashioned law of gravity and took to
floating in the air. We knew it was some-
one playing with the levitator mech some-
where in the great pile, trying to frighten
and mystify us, as is the mischievous way
of so many of the mad of the caverns. But
this was worse than that, for the great
weight of the thing kept trying to crush us
against the wall. Nydia and Truly clung
desperately to it as it reared about the
room like a captive balloon in a gale. Then
the heavy couch rushed toward the ceiling,
trying to smash the two girls against the
stone, but they slipped off the side into our
arms.

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

41

Instantly the great couch fell like a stone
upon us. As it crashed to the floor, two of
the metal legs of the thing bent like putty
with the force of the fall. The crash must
have awoke Chlio, our sultry-eyed friend,
for she called over the invisible telaug beam
into the room.

"Is anyone hurt?"

I answered a little roughly, for falling
asleep on watch is unforgivable under the
conditions of cavern life. For it is by
inducing sleep with a nerve deadening ray
that the dero's overcome a watch and kill
a whole group in their sleep.

"No, but small thanks to your careful
watch. Some of us had better help you
keep awake."

"That might be wise," she answered,
laughing. "Particularly if it were you or
that nice young Solaris. Come, I will guide
you."

I looked at Nydia, and stood in doubt,
for the sensual, frank thought of Chlio had
not been entirely concealed from us on the
beam, and she was no woman to spend a
night with without suspicion and Nydia's
heart was one I had no wish to hurt.
Solaris understood, and nothing loath, went
to the door and left, guided by a thought
beam from Chlio, somewhere overhead.

ONE would have thought that would
have ended the night's mysterious
happenings, but I was reckoning without
knowledge of the mad bunch who festered
there under old Mephisto's once iron hand.

I was just drifting into a dream of days
when Nydia used to come to me in my pris-
on cell, and her flower-sweet face was drift-
ing closer and closer to my own, my mind
was slipping into a soft blackness that was
her imagined embrace crossed with the
gentle blackness of night itself, when the
face that was Nydia's contorted savagely,
swiftly — and facing me instead was the red-
lit eyes, the snarling over-ripe lips, the
sharp teeth, the reaching hungry hands of
some horrible vampire. A demoness was
wrapping her mental self about my soul.
I woke with a curse for it is great mental
pain to see the image of one's beloved turn
into the face of a revolting ghoul of the
medieval darkness, and as I opened my
eyes, I cursed again.

For still before me in the darkness floated
the very face that had frightened me awake.
It was not unreal, not a projection, it was

the living flesh of a fiend in a woman's body,
and from her bands streamed the lure, the
doping compulsion of the pleasure stim-
rays I was familiar with as the most seduc-
ing and irresistible of the ancient's works.
This force of irresistible allure surrounded
this evil-eyed female with a strength greater
than any physical force could resist.

I felt her hands on my shoulders, and I
was frozen. She bent and her sharp teeth
sank into my neck. And even as I felt that
in spite of all my knowledge that such
things were always an illusion produced by
the antique mechanisms, a superstitious
horror froze me immovable in her terrible
embrace. Then as gradually as dawn-light
another presence grew into being in the
room, and the face of the luxurious lipped
Chlio came out of the shadow, filling the
room with an unearthly, almost divine aura
from the God-ray mech she was using. She
seized the solid-seeming hypnotic-powered
ray projection of the mad girl by the shoul-
der, and led her back — out of my sight. The
twin vision, as opposed as Heaven and Hell,
disappeared.

Soon after, I heard a mad screaming, as
of an insane woman being beaten, and I
was bothered no more that night.

THE next day we were called to re-enter
the presence of Mephisto at an early
hour. In the ever-dark caves, time — sun-
light and dark; noon and midnight — are
exactly the same except for the clock. Too,
there is always a ray watching something in
the sunlit world overhead, piercing up
through the rock to bring the vision of sun-
light and green leaves down to the screens
of the vision rays, and one senses day and
night by these two things.

We found the lean old Lord of the Dark-
ness in his library, this was that library
where countless ancestors' acquisitions had
accumulated, brought from far ends of the
cavern world to one or another of the Me-
phisto's homes, and then to this place where
the Mephisto's great Zigor had assembled
it all together in the single great collection.
Records and spools of thought were stacked
in endless tiers in a vast room, and several
great record-reader-mech stood about the
chamber. This modern, aged, scion of the
ancient family waved a hand at his ances-
tor's collection of the immense and usually
enigmatic ancient wisdom that the spools
of wire and metal micro-film represented,

42

AMAZING STORIES

and we felt as though the door to all wisdom
had been opened to us.

I wish I could tell you the marvels those
antique records made live in our minds as
the records played and we were wafted into
the ancient times when the world was young
and life was perfect— a wonderland of rich
experience — a place of no death and less
disease — a place where accomplishment
and learning were the order of every day
and no man lay down to sleep without
his hands having seen a mass of work and
play accomplished, such as we moderns do
nof get into a lifetime. For there is no
telling in our weak modern words and
thought symbols what the ancients were or
what wisdom and life experience are packed
into their thought-records, for one gets but
a sort of "skim" over the vastness of such
a display of mighty thought energy, and
that thin sight of ours sees more than one
man can ever convey to another with this
poor medium.

Old Mephisto proved tireless and very
knowing as to what we most wished to see,
and I suspected as the day wore on that
our dark-eyed friend, Chlio, of the evening
before was still watching us sleeplessly over
her telaug beam and was reading our minds
for our purposes and telling the old man's
mind what it was we wished to learn; that
he was really laying himself out for us
because his dark-eyed "watcher" wished
it so. And I was mightily pleased to see
this evidence of love and care for us in
these two and realized from many strange
happenings that these two were all that
kept the ancient pile of wonder and wisdom
from becoming such another horror-hole
as one can find only in the madness and
wonder and struggle of the world below
the earth.

We learned much of different kinds of
weapons and their uses that we proposed
to apply when we returned to our home and
to our struggle with the human djinni, the
devils migrant from far Africa who beset
us there.

We learned, too, that the make of these
things was not beyond us, that we could
now repair and get into running order
many things we had been unable to use
before. The dero from afar are full of
unthinking, and never try to do aught for
themselves, often making of wonder-work
a wreck and an ugly nothingness, over
which they gloat.

"VTOW the old man opened up a new
^ section of the record files, saying:

"What have I been showing you are from
the very far past before the original Elder
race left our earth. But this section is
from a later time, and is the history of our
family from its beginnings, both before and
after they came to earth. As the story
comes down into historical times, I will
pick the most revealing; those bits of rec-
ord which show what are, to me, the turning
points in the history of the caves and the
fortunes of the Mephisto family. The
records cease about one hundred years ago,
after the first Mephisto came here under
America and established himself, the Zigor
of whom you have heard. I came here
with my following much later, quite re-
cently, and this pile had been deserted for
fifty years when I arrived.

"Luckily the place had remained un-
touched, as the nomads have a superstitious
fear of the place."

We reclined in a circle on lounges about
the massive dream-mech, with which Me-
phisto had chosen to display this part of
the collection. I thought to myself how
fortunate it was that this store of cavern
history had been preserved through the
vagaries of time and fortune to this day,
and how infinitely valuable they would be
to a group of ambitious young technical
men from the surface and how much they
would get of value to men from it all.
But now old Mephisto had swung a ray
separately upon each of us, and as he
turned the record release, we drifted into
a land of dream, a vivid place of more
reality by far than the world of the ordi-
nary senses, for the old records were made
by the master race and are productive of
much stronger sensations than natural
when augmented by the powerful aug-
mentors.

* \* \*

VX^E AWOKE upon a world of metal,

* " where titanic towers plunged upward

into the blinding white of the clouds and
were lost to view. The soil of the planet
had been, as far as the eye could see, sealed
over with rustless, impervious metal, and
on this foundation the vast metal living
places of this race of the past of some
far world of space had been reared — and
reared so tremendously that nowhere could
one see the top of anything. Between the

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

43

towers so fantastically vaulting skyward
were suspended the roads, the connecting
arteries of the huge planet city's parts. The
world whirled giddily as the eye of the
recorder swung into a focus upon the Gar-
gantuan structure near at hand, and whirled
again as we seemed to be borne in the
air and magically inserted within the in-
terior of the building.

Somebody was in hot water! A group of
swarthy men were scatered about the great
chamber, peering out the windows over
the snouts of ugly ray-weapons into the
cloud-wrack of the sky outside. Far in the
distance, the gleaming bodies of a dozen
planes swung down from the shielding
clouds as they neared, and as swiftly swept
up into the alternate white-and-grey hov-
ering mass of mist again. For the men
within the chamber threw a bolt of deadly
energy at every gleaming sky-fish that
showed a fin. Some preparations for de-
parture seemed going on, files were burned
and an elevator appeared, was swiftly
loaded and shot upward out of sight again.
Ten minutes of this intensive defense went
on, the swarthy men then dropped their
weapons and boarded the elevator. It shot
up and up dizzily, and when we stepped
out, the windows through which one peered
at the sky outside were shrouded and wet
with the clouds obscuring all sight.

Now they mounted a flight of steps and
emerged on a platform, the height of which
must have been dizzying. Poised on the
platform that was the center of the down-
sloping roof was a long, slim ship. Its
nose, from which projected a deadly looking
ray-cathode for space use, slanted up at a
sharp angle. The men scrambled in and
the ship blasted up and away — into the
space above that was swiftly the utter cold
of space.

Far below a pursuit of five long ships
flamed after, but the men laughed ex-
citedly, and seemed confident that their
ship would not be overtaken.

Now the mind was told of the lapse of
some twenty years 4 and then the ship was

* In a record such as this, long periods of time

are indicated at times, by simple "indication" —
that is, one is mentally told that a certain period
has elapsed and believes it — although in truth but
a few seconds elapse, the seeming impression on
the memory can be of years or even tens of thou-
sands of years ; but for that matter, light years may
have been meant, and not actual earthly years.

circling down, down and crashing into the
water of a great, calm sea. The record told
me in some way that this was the Mediter-
ranean before it had acquired that name.

Our great penetray beams reached out
and down, searching the water and the
rock below, for still afar could be heard
the thunder of the pursuit rockets aug-
mented by our detectors. Now down and
down, we crashed toward some hiding-hole
the rays had spied out of the rocky bottom
of the sea. A long tube of hollowness could
be seen on the screens far below, and this
ended in a great metal door on the sea's
bottom. This hollowness I knew was the
surface ending^ of one of the under-earth
tunnels that form a network over all earth.
Our beams reached out ahead of us, wrench-
ing magnetically at the mechanism of the
door, and the lock swung open as we came,
letting us in — closing behind us. As swiftly
the inner door opened protestingly, creak-
ingly — an age already had the door waited
unused — and we shot through, flying now
just above the dry floor of a cavern under
the sea. On and on, down and down, the
ship careened, narrowly missing the fate
that the slightest unsureness of control
would have meant: death in a crushing
blast of weight and momentum as the fuel
exploded in the crash against the walls.
But it did not happen, and at last our
leader cried out and pointed ahead — where
arose the great doors that meant: Within
lies a city, a forgotten city built here by
some ancients unknown to us.

/^\VER the great gates of the city were
W these words, "THE CITY OF DIS."

These doors likewise opened to the
searching, pulling rays under our leader's
swift fingers. This leader's name I knew —
"Mephistopheles." Into the vast city of
tremendous dwellings we shot, turning and
searching — for what? At last I knew as we
settled on a huge square pile from which the
long electrode snouts of ray-cannon pro-
truded. With shouts we piled out of the
ship as she slid to a halt.

"Now let them come — with this arma-
ment we will give them a welcome."

I knew again, from the dogged pursuit,
that no twenty years had elapsed since we
lifted from that unbelievable city of metal,
gargantuan towers, but that some paradox
of space-time-speed had conquered some
unit of space called by a mental symbol

AMAZING STORIES

similar to our year. One can never fully
understand these alien concepts involving
a knowledge of the nature of energy and
space unknown to us.

Behind us the pursuit had found the
water-lock into the caves on the sea bottom,
and had followed our ion trail, "smelling"
us out painfully through all the turns and
branches of the tortuously contrived cav-
erns of the Elder Ones. As they came into
sight of our penetrays, we blasted at them
with the mighty old cannon, and one by
one the ships heated under the fearful
force-flows, and exploded under the titanic
charges of Jovian lightning thrown right
through the living rock. Not a ship es-
caped to tell where we had run to cover,
for we searched, after the battle, for their
ion trails left by the jets, and even the
guard-ship they had left outside was caught
by us. We were safe from the knowledge
or pursuit of the hated Patrol. This would
be our home now.

When we returned from hunting down
the last of the pursuit, and settled again
upon the great square-cut fortress in the
weird, lost City of Dis, a strange thing
happened to .us that changed our lives for-
ever from the path in which they had been
cut.

As we set up our homes within the great
chambers of the fortress, and busied our-
selves repairing the ravages that time and
some slight corrosion had occasioned to the
weapons and life-machinery of the place,
as the water flowed again into long unused
pipes and fountain bowls about the great
city, a strange great voice came into the
fortress! It was a giant's voice, and lone-
liness and despair had ingrained themselves
into the timbre of the voice, so that it
seemed the soul of the great empty city
that spoke.

"I have watched your interloping activ-
ity! This is my home, but I have done
nothing, for I did not know whether to
kill you or not. But now that you have
decided to remain, to make a home here,
you may as well learn who is the Lord and
Master here, and whom it is you will
serve."

The titanic strength of the voice, the ter-
rible nature of the character as displayed
by the voice, impressed us as no thing ever
had before. We searched and found no
source — the voice was wholly within our
minds, by our finding!

"Where are you and what is this about
Lording it over us? We serve no man but
our own interests only. Come, show your-
self that we may know what you are."

Far below the fortress we heard a great
rumbling, and a clanking of chains. We
shot a penetray downward, searching, but
the ray was blocked by a great mass of im-
pervious metal that is sometimes used to
sheath shelter-chambers and war-ships from
dis-rays of all kinds.

We followed our ray down and down,
by many winding turns, and found at the
last a tremendous sealed door. And on
the door was written a legend of warning,
which we might not wholly read, for it was
in a strange language and not the universal
Mantong of all space. Heeding it not, we
burned off the metal seals of the door, and
found within a sight that wrung our hearts,
for we still had hearts of a kind then.
Ruthless, warlike, grasping we may have
been, but still warm human emotions some-
times held us in their sway as well.

A VAST giant of a man lay inside,
wrapped in endless turns of heavy
chains and beside him a food-tablet syn-
thesizer machine showed us what had kept
him alive. A water-pipe poured into a
fountain at his side. The stench of the
place was frightful. As we loosened the
giant's chains, he smiled upon us. But
there was that about him which should
have given us pause, even though we were
not men easily given to fear. Horns there
were upon his head and a dark and sour
face, but such imprisonment does not make
for beauty or a cheerful face. We our-
selves were dark men, and of a hairy breed,
and the cloven hoof upon his right leg —
the beast that was crossed into his ancestry
sometime in the past we recognized for
what it was — the mark of those Titans of
the parts of space where they breed with
other strange races called the "variform"
Titan, a thing we had heard of but had
never seen.

We unwrapped the massive chains from
about him, for a Titan is known over all
space for wisdom, and we could use such
knowledge. The while he discoursed in his
thought-voice, in phrases and picture sym-
bols strange and outlandish to us, and
smacking of a vast antiquity. Of the fate
that had come upon him, the mighty
Sathanas of Nor. Of Nor, the great space

ZISOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

45

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 ex-
plained 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 imprison-
ment 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.

THEN 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 some-
thing 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.

HpIME 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 un-
noticed by the mortals that served him,
for they came and went, were born and

46

AMAZING STORIES

died, while Sathanas went on immortally
from the great strength that was in him.
And this change was greater and greater
blood madness, a viler cruelty, an insanity
that grew and grew until all his days were
spent in tormenting and murdering the
poor mortals, and his servants spent their
time in bringing more and more victims
for the pleasures of the mad thing that
Sathanas had become. And his chief men
became those who flattered him by affect-
ing the same madness for blood that brood-
ed in Sathanas, and he drew his favor from
all others and gave it only to those who
pleased him by devising new and longer
lasting torments for the hordes of humans
that were brought before him.

And Mephistopheles at last left the
bloody mess, and went Northward, and
the records showed no more of Sathanas,
but only the family that was now called
"Mephisto" and their ways. And they
fought northward through the cavern
mazes, and the hordes of the people called
"Pixies," called gnomes, called trolls,
fought and fled before the might of the
vast giant that was Mephisto 's power, be-
fore the great and irresistible weapons that
he bore on his air-floating ships, and ter-
rible was the waste and death as the Me-
phistos carved out a waste of emptiness in
the cavern life in which to live alone.

And a sadness at the slaughter that con-
sumed always the best of the life and
things in these records was with one always
as the scenes passed, as the time sweep
reached into the tens of thousands of years,
as the Mephistos changed faces, and gen-
erations came and went, but ever the war
and the killing went on, and ever the
people who were called "Faerie" fought
with them, little blond people of a mighty
science, but fearfully handicapped by their
lack of size, and the power that was Sa-
tanism spread, and the power that was
good and gentle in the caverns diminished,
and the number of faces that were gentle
and sane grew fewer and fewer as the cen-
turies flashed past on the rapid flowing rec-
ords, and the madness and degradation of
the people that yet lived in the great cavern
world great ever greater, their lives less
and less cultured, their artistry of pleasure,
of science, disappeared, and at the end of
it all nothing remained but the lean, dour
face of one old man, who was gently shak-
ing me awake. And he said:

"Yes, I am what is left of all that, and
I am as discouraged as you at going on
with it all. For what is it all but a steady
slipping from the great pinnacles of the
rich life of the past into the poverty and
ignorance and misery of these present
days. But still, even in me who inherits
the evil, wild blood of those Mephistos,
even in me flows some hope that the future
may turn a path back into the light that
is science and wisdom again. So it is I
befriend you, though my instincts say to
kill you and be left in peace; left no need
of thought or effort; left to lie in the stim
and enjoy the smile of Chlio, and her
artistry with the stim. Instead of that, I
send her with you, and the Devil help my
last days without her."

T SAT up, and looked about. Chlio had
-\*- come in while we dreamed in the record
sleep, and she smiled upon us, and all the
sensuous soul of her was in her eyes, warm
and alive and somehow good in spite of
her life, or perhaps because its evil had
taught her that after all only goodness was
sense.

Old Mephisto reached up a claw-like
hand and stroked the firm, smooth flesh of
her arm, saying:

"It's just as well the rest of the crew
here have kept out of your way, as I told
them. Saved us all a lot of unpleasant-
ness. Now go, and may our Mother Earth
watch over you. Hugo will watch the mad
ones, and the others had better mind their
step, for my temper has a short rein as I
grow older. And no Mephisto was ever
noted for mildness." And for an instant
a Hell-flame smouldered in his eyes, and I
knew that old Mephisto was watching,
guarding his emotions, fearing the insanity
that had come sooner or later to all of his
family, and I pitied him.

As we rose, thinking how best to say
our goodby to this old man, who had
brought from out of his inheritance of an
evil nature — of a character the reverse of
noble — the power to be sane and noble,
as we thought how to say what we thought
of this effort that showed on his face in
lines of great strain — as we all of us hesi-
tated in an inner awe at this old man who
had managed to be human in spite of every
influence to be inhuman — those creatures
who had so far remained hidden from our
eyes in frustration, in an embarrassed frus-

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

47

tration at being unable to wreak their will
upon us — now found their opportunity.
Into the room of the ancient records, into
this library of sinister but somehow hal-
lowed antiquity, into this room where the
wisdom of the whole vast past of earth had
miraculously been preserved under the
fragile hand of one old man, under the
watchful guardianship of one old man, one
young woman and one loyal servant — into
this room where we feared to breathe too
heavily for fear of obliterating one little
thought wave from one brittle old metal
micro-film staggered the blood-dabbled fig-
ure of that servant — Hugo.

"Master, your son . . ." and from Hugo's
straining lips gushed, instead of words, a
torrent of blood and he fell at his aged
master's feet. Behind him in the doorway
stood a tall, lean unkempt figure that must
have much resembled the old Mephisto,
fifty years ago. The old man leaped to
his feet in a moment's return of his young
strength at this intrusion of sudden death
upon our peaceful parting words. The old
man croaked out:

"Zigor, what the Devil has happened?
Is this your deed, you young fiend? Ordered
I not you to keep your quarters while
these children from afar were with us?
Must you bring your vileness before the
eyes of humans . . . ?" The sudden strength
that had come to the old man at the
emergency left him, and his attempt to
over-awe the young scion of the evil line
failed of weakness. He sank to his chair,
gasping for breath. As he looked down
at Hugo, tears came to his old eyes, and he
looked what he was — a broken old man
with no reed to lean upon, now that his
loyal servant was dead.

"Your time has come, father!" Young
Zigor's voice was exultant, evidently this
was a deed he had planned for a long, long
time.

"I have taken your orders for the last
time. From now on you will keep to your
quarters under my orders, and eat your
crackers and gruel in peace. I will shoul-
der the burdens of authority. You old fool,
think you a Mephisto can be cooped up like
a chicken? There is more in the blood
than that, in spite of the squeamishness
that has come over you of late. This night
Satan will receive his due, and you, Chlio,
will take your rightful place ... at the
altar. . . ."

"DEHIND the tall, unkempt, fierce-faced
figure of young Zigor appeared now
the face of an old woman. Her hair was
a tangle of madness, nearly white and un-
combed for years, apparently. It hung to
her knees about a body that betrayed
with every move a kind of madness that I
knew too well, and feared too much — the
madness of Evil. Her toothless mouth was
split in a hideous grin, and she cackled
constantly, evilly, a cachination that no
witch of legend ever equalled for its hor-
rible glee.

"Hee, hee, you old double-crosser — you
think to keep your own wife and son shut
here in these dungeons, when the whole
cavern world should be groveling at our
feet."

Old Mephisto, for some reason, looked at
blind Nydia, and began to speak in a tired,
defeated voice.

"Nydia, when I came here, I thought
much as these two mad creatures do, that
with the wisdom of the nature of the
antique weapons those records of the past
contain, I could regain the ancient dominion
over the caverns that the Mephistos en-
joyed in bygone times. But when I had
read them all, and seen what evil and de-
struction, what terrific loss and sorrow and
horrible endless pain the Mephisto family
has meant to all the world for so many
centuries, some fragment of manhood still
existent in the Mephisto fibre — or else the
spirit of my mother within me — rose up and
choked the Devil of madness within me, and
I resolved that never again, while I had the
will to stop it, should a Mephisto rule any-
one or fight for anything with these destroy-
ing weapons on this dark globe of pain and
blood and endless loss. It was then I shut
these two up in their rooms, and have since
left them out for no reason. Now all has
gone for naught — all those good intentions
I formed after much thought upon what the
records revealed to me — what they meant
in truth. I am sorry that it must be you and
your friends who suffer, for I can see no
fault in you, and I know I am right. There
is no wisdom in Evil, but only foolishness 1
One sweet word from such as you, Nydia,
is worth more, someway, than all the do-
minion that Evil can offer. But, in truth,
Evil destroys its own dominion, so that it
is a false thought that Evil can offer any-
thing."

Nydia, smiling in the face of our sudden

48

AMAZING STORIES

ill-fortune, answered the broken old man.

"You have that word, my Lord. Your
wisdom, from one who has tried both Good
and Evil, is worth to me quite an equal
amount. I thank you, for the wise old
man that you are."

"Another reason for my anger," cried
young Zigor, who I noticed was not going to
leave anyone else the center of the stage,
"is the fact that you. show these strangers
the secrets of our ancestors when you have
not allowed me even inside this room be-
fore. « Well, it is my room now, and here-
after I shall say who comes and goes across
the threshold!"

OEHIND the old hag, who had once
-\* J been, perhaps, a regal creature and fit
mate for a rich and powerful Mephisto,
but was now only a crazy old witch of the
under-world, were trooping in a score of
creatures, carrying various weapons, and
ranging themselves behind the young Zigor.
They were, some dozen of them, dwarfish,
twisted-limbed products of the more ig-
norant life of the caverns, for only those
with the wisdom regularly to use the more
beneficial rays of the old mech grow up
without rickets or worse, a complete dwarf-
ing and distortion of the whole frame due
to lack of sunlight. On their faces was a
frustration, a pouting, as of a drug addict
denied his drug — it was evident that the
old Mephisto had not let them do as they
pleased of late, and that the young Zigor
Mephisto had promised to let them have
their "usual" pleasures. Having seen some-
what of these "usual" pleasures among
various nomadic people of the caves, I
had no wish to be the victim. The other
eight of the score of people behind the
young Zigor and his mother, the bent and
evil crone, were tall, well-formed, and not
ugly, but on their faces was the stigma,
the sign of enslavement to evil, and it was
all too plain that with Zigor they expected
gratification of those appetites, the in-
dulgence in which has rendered all life in
the cavern world sterile and barren of good
for men. For the use of stim rays can be
a good thing, a glorious enrichment of life;
or it can be a horrible vice, a complete tool
for evil enslavement of all the appetites and
inner action springs of a man's mind. Under
the tutorship of such as the old crone, I
knew it could only be an evil thing, a false
stimulation of the pleasure senses during

the torture of victims, resulting in the
mental conviction that only in sadistic in-
dulgence could "real" pleasure be obtained.

No defense was possible \o us, the over-
turn of directive power was sudden and
complete. They all carried hand rays,
deadly little wands that paralyze, or car-
ried coils of rope, whose purpose I did not
have to guess for long. Swiftly Solaris and
myself were bound, and the little men did
not bother to carry us, they just dragged
us down the corridor and dumped us in one
of the innumerable vacant rooms — those
vacant rooms that served as a continual
reminder of what should be there and isn't:
wise men from the surface studying the
antique mechanisms for the tremendous
science that still lies here waiting for the
intelligent inquirer.

What would become of the three girls,
how they would fare at the hands of this
young heir of a line as bloody and fiendish
as the Mephistos — this young Zigor, whose
temper I had surmised from his father's at-
titude towards him; was what mainly wor-
ried me, rather than my own fate. The
awful dark of the caverns closed in on us
with the clanging of the metal door, and
into that black was plunged all my hopes
for a future with Nydia; a future of build-
ing from the ancient science a new race of
men, wise and able as the ancient races
were. Too, I knew that death by torment
was the least evil we could expect. May-
hap something far worse would be our fate,
for the tales I had heard, and the things
I had seen done by those raised to the evil
tradition of cavern life — such as the things
from Africa which had laid seige to our
home-place— told me there are fates far
worse than death. Which was what wor-
ried me about Nydia, for the more sensi-
tive a person, the more idealistic and finely
tempered the person, the more greatly do
the mind-wrecking rays of the sadists cause
pain. For to see your own mind made a
thing not your own, not yourself at all; to
see all the careful work of years in building
the thing that is "yourself" made into an
unrecognizable morass of uncontrollable
desires, of filthy overpowering lusts that
seem one's own; of made desires to kill
and maim and torture arise and take root
in your own brain as part of your charac-
ter; that sort of thing can cause a mental
anguish more terrifyingly painful than any
physical pain.

ZISOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

49

To do these things to the brain of men
was one of the arts, the traditional teach-
ings of Satanists, the allied cults and pro-
ceedings of the mad life of the caverns —
and all the good and wise work that tries
so hard, so tenaciously through the years
has been unable to wipe out these age-old
practices — those practices by which normal
children are made to grow up into devils —
by which sane men are made into ravening
beasts; by which a wise man is made into
a sleepwalking zombie whose will is only
to do as he is told if he be able. Those
things were what I feared for my gentle
Nydia, for her knowledge of the wisdom
of the antique mechanism's uses and care
made her invaluable, but she could hardly
be used by Evil without some change in her
inner Nature being brought about to bend
her to such purpose.

HPHE dark hours dragged by, filled only

* with these apprehensions. At last the

dwarfish minions of the younger Mephisto
returned, and once again dragged us out
and down the corridor like two bags of un-
wanted rubbish.

Into that great old chamber of past mag-
nificence and might, the glorious throne
room of the Elder ones who built this
mighty fortress — the same vast chamber
where the older Mephisto had welcomed us
— the dwarfs dragged us, casting us before
the throne where the young Zigor sat now.
He stretched out a foot and stirred me with
a touch on the shoulder, looking down tri-
umphantly into my light-dazzled eyes.

He was no longer the disheveled prisoner,
but had donned finery, some old suit from
the stores of his ancestors had tickled his
fancy. It was, I swear, two hundred years
old if it was a day, preserved by the magical
hermetic sealing of some antique closet,
adopted by these latter day interlopers for
that use. It was a suit such as Hamlet
might have worn, such as John Barrymore
would have delighted in for the part, a
brilliantly bejeweled short coat, with belt
and dagger, sparkling in the light with
jeweled hilt and scabbard. His hose were
sleek and reached clear to the thigh, where
the puffed and slashed short breeches com-
pleted the ensemble. I snickered, for the
theatrical attempt to look the great Lord
was so palpable.

"So, you find me amusing!" Zigor glow-
ered down upon me, his lean dark face

sufficiently Mephistophelian for anyone's
taste. Inside me a cold shiver grew swiftly
to a great dread, a glimpse into the dark
wastes where human emotions and human
nature do not dwell, but where Demons
and similar unbelievable products of life
are birthed— a glimpse into an inferno of
ice, fire and evil where this modern Devil
had acquired his basilisk stare, his veno-
mous soul, his pride and will toward death
for all things not immediately useful to
him.

How did I know this Zigor was evil, you
ask? How does one know the winter is
coming when the leaves turn brown and fall
from the trees? How does one know that
fire burns? How does one know anything?
How does one know the scorpion is not a
thing to fondle? One glance from his eyes,
now that he had thrown off all need for the
hiding of his nature, now that he had
seized the reins of his life from the aging
hands of his father — some evil thing had
leaped from concealment and taken its
place upon his face. The heritage of the
past had claimed him, I knew. No wisdom
would turn his face from the fire of evil by
any lovely "syllogism," no matter how
correct. For us there was only a waiting
and at the last a death. I knew that no
words would change this creature's intent
toward us and toward all men's sons.

Zigor leaned forward over me, his face
moody, anxious to have someone envious,
anxious to show what he had done in seiz-
ing back the ancient power of his family.

"You think that I over-estimate my own
importance, that I have but a score of
half-mad creatures to do my bidding, that
it will not be long ere some coup of the
wild ray-fighters of the far caves will end
me, eh? Well, I know the power that lies
in possession of these antique weapons. I
know what can be done in a short time with
these things, does one have the will to do
it. I have that will and I know the way!
I have read a part of these records denied
me by my father. I have seen just how the
ancient Giant from far space, Sathanas,
sent above ground for men and women to
build his power down here to a great and
overwhelming machine, which none other in
the caves could withstand. Well, I shall
do precisely the same. Every weapon that
Sathanas used, every move he made, can be
copied precisely. Those weapons can be
found again, and the technical engineers

50

AMAZING STORIES

and mechanics I shall bring from the sur-
face will make all my work easier than his,
for he had to train every one of his men,
while I can get trained men from a dozen

sources.

"Gold lies by the ton in these vaults, and
the sheathing of many of these abandoned
machines is of gold, and of alloys even more
precious to the upper world, did they but
have them to know the value. I shall build
such a trade with the surface as the under-
world has not had since Sathanas drew his
last earthly breath and lifted again into the
night skies in his vast ship. For men, I
shall give gold; for slaves, jewels; and for
information, I shall barter crumbs of tech-
nical information from the vast store repre-
sented by these machines. Yes, the surface
shall staff my palaces with slaves, my
armies with well paid soldiery, my labora-
tories and workshops with willing workers.
You will not live to see it, too sad to tell."

"T do not blame you for ambition, Zigor.

-\*- Every man is ambitious, but why did
your father thwart your ambition? He is
not a fool, your father."

"He fears that because I am a Mephisto
everything I do will turn into blood and
war and death, as it did for all our ances-
tors. He does not know that great things
cannot be done without a little bickering,
and eggs cannot be eaten without cracking
a shell or two. And I fear yours will be
one of the first to crack.

"Why should you wish to do us harm?
We have nothing whatever to do with you
or your aims."

"It so happens that the tools I must use
right now require some sating in blood and
torment} it is their nature, as you may
have observed if you have lived long in the
caverns. To use them, I must pander to
their appetites. So, to make my omelet,
I must begin by breaking eggs."

"It would seem wiser to begin your ca-
reer with tools more amenable to the hand,
than things that cannot be controlled with-
out pandering to their every whim. For
instance, ourselves here are valuable, and
know much of these things you must know
to get far on your chosen path."

"It might seem so to you, but they will
serve. I have a method of doing what I
intend to do — to grow great and powerful,
to build myself a machine of these available
men and weapons — a tool for the acquisi-

tion of all those things in life which may
be enjoyed. To you, of the surface people,
enjoyment of life is not so much a goal as
with those who know about such things,
here in the caverns. For money and power
may bring you better food and more wom-
en, but cannot really greatly enhance any
of yours pleasures — and any poor man with
a beautiful wife gets more of the goodness
of life, than a rich man with an ugly wife
and the gout in his feet by far.

"Down here, that is not true. For power
can bring a man a multiplicity of the
pleasure machines, of variant stim rays, of
which there are in the endless caverns a
store never touched by latter-day men
since the Elder race abandoned earth.
Power and money can bring a man bene-
ficial rays and health machines which vast-
ly increase his life span, his health, his
ability to withstand the pleasures of dis-
sipation. Growth rays can build vast
strength within the body, strength that
among other things increase his ability to
enjoy women and stim rays. These things
you do not fully understand, though
you may have seen somewhat of them. You
do not fully understand all the intricacies
of their influence upon our life. This is
what my father was depriving me of — and
what no man is going to deprive me of.
Do you hear! No man shall stand between
me and my will to have the endless pleas-
ures of those ancient Gods!"

"Well, I see little to stop you except your
own fumbling ineptness. Why think that
we oppose you, except insofar as you are a
danger to our existence? Why make ene-
mies of us when we wish nothing but to go
our way in peace. It has always seemed to
me that ambitious men defeat themselves
chiefly by their habit of making enemies
where none existed, and of fearing what
would not happen did they not fear it, and
so move against it and make of a nothing a
combat. Is that not your chief trouble,
the enemies that stand between you and
your will?"

"There is truth in what you say, but my
method will automatically eliminate error.
I intend to take those records you have
been so studious as to examine under my
father's eye, hook them up in a ro-mech,
and run the whole outfit from that ro-mech
at full aug. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't understand. What is a ro-
mech?"

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

51

" A ROMECH is a device which aug-

* + ments thought so strongly that any-

one who hears it obeys it and does as it
dictates. These Sathanas records should
reproduce in actual occurrence those same
events which led him to power on earth."

"But you are not Sathanas! The record
will make no one but an actual Sathanas
master. Who, then would be the master,
and the other characters on the records —
how could they respond? These people
are not counterparts of those characters."

"The ro-mech doesn't worry about such
details. It reproduces in actual life as
nearly as possible the same events which
take place on the records. You will see."

"And if it doesn't all work out as you
plan? Suppose you want to change the
course of events? You will be powerless —
in the grip of those terrible old records of
inhuman oppression and slavery. You,
yourself, may become one of those pitiful
victims such as Sathanas gloried in tor-
menting — yourself may become one of
those mutilated, mindless zombies who
served in his stronghold. How avoid such
a result?"

"I have 'tagged' the records with an
imposed identification projection from my
own mind augments — fixed them so they
indicate exactly whom I wish to indicate
and no other."

So it was that we found ourselves un-
willing participants — actors — in a play that
was as pre-determined as the hours on a
clock face. The ancient ro-mech, one of the
wonderful entertainment machines with
which the Elder race had amused them-
selves, augmented a thought record till
everyone within a mile radius had to do
exactly as did the characters in the re-
corded action.

On the great crystal throne, shimmering
with mysterious color glowing and chang-
ing in the depths of the carven crystal, sat
young Zigor— but my mind knew him
now as "Sathanas," the terrible, and my
master — glowering, gloomy and conscious
of his terrible power; sat and an intense
activity was springing into life about him —
with this Zigor as the center of it all,

Before him postured and writhed Chlio,
her clothing nothing but a golden circlet,
clasping about her swaying hips a wisp of
Same-colored sheerness, and about her high
breasts a similar scanty wisp of material.
She was clad precisely as a certain dancer

of Sathanas' possession had been clad in
one of the early records of his rule in the
caverns, and it was a strange and outre
sensation to be reenacting the whole ancient
scene again — a sensation of living over
something one had not lived, but knew of.
That sensation one has sometimes unex-
plainedly — looking upon some strange
scene, one realizes one has seen it before,
but in truth one has not. It was like that,
only infinitely more so.

One seemed to be another person en-
tirely, living another life; but one was
completely conscious of self, a self without
will, a self borne upon the wave of tre-
mendous command from the "ro-mech";
and knowing that what was to happen
would happen and nothing one could do or
say, but go on. There is no more terrible
sensation than to be thus caught up in the
compulsion of the "ro-mech" and not any
way to use one's will or wits, but only to
feel one's body and mind answering and
obeying some outer command, steadily,
awfully going through another life as an-
other person.

"VfYDIA stood before Sathanas-Zigor,

* ■ ' who she was and what she was going

to be and do, I could not remember, but
only fear that it was the usual fate of those
who stood before Sathanas as supplicants.
She lifted her blind eyes to that lean, merci-
less, proud and somehow idiotic face, a
terrible trying was on her face — her will
was struggling with the compulsion of the
machine uselessly — her hands lifted to Sa-
thanas and the chains about her wrists
clinked mournfully, and within me from the
ancient record rose a sensation of glee —
another poor mortal was going to meet
death, was chained already for the show
to come, and was pleading for her life —
how pleasant was that fact.

And even as these devilish, sadistic joys
arose in anticipation of coming torture for
Nydia, my own inner self, bound by weak-
ness to be ruled by the powerful synthetic
thought of the ro-mech records augmenta-
tion, writhed and shuddered with self-con-
demnation. How could I get joy from poor
Nydia's plight? Yet joy was mine — I was
evil now!

At the side sat the father of Mephisto,
taking no part, evidently the record had
no place for his participation, no "charac-
ter" was assigned to him upon its surface,

52

AMAZING STORIES

as it unrolled, and the inner mind of "me"
leaped as I saw that he alone, of all these
people, swarming in incomprehensible ac-
tivity about me was free of the terrible
compulsion. Or was he?

One of the dwarfish men led Nydia away
and I saw her no more. I seemed to know
she was placed among other slaves to await
a certain terrible fate that all who were of
no use to Sathanas met sooner or later.

A fury of activity, of building, pulling
and hauling, carrying to and fro, was going
on around me. I myself was busy tinkering
with a great old mechanism — it was a ray
which my conscious mind understood not
at all, but my hands, obeying the compul-
sion of the ro-mech's powerful waves of
thought, knew what they were doing and
rapidly set the thing to rights, though I
somehow knew that whatever I had done
to it had been done unnecessarily, and that
it was not needed.

Now, my inner mind became aware of a
much greater number of people about than
I had observed to be living there. There
were rushing about me at least a thousand
people, wild, staring-eyed men of the far
darkness, and somehow I knew that the
terrible compulsion of the great ro-mech
had caught up in its field some strange tribe
of nomads from the caverns outside the
Palace of Eg Notha, and had made them
a part of its activity. A certain worried
expression on Zigor's face told me that his
inner mind had seen the unwanted additions
to his ranks, as well as myself, and was
wondering what would come of it when the
record had played itself out and it had
come time to insert a new roll of the ancient
record-wire in the ro-mech.

For the most part, these undisciplined
nomads of the caves were a'bloody, canni-
balistic lot, and once the restraint of the ro-
mech was off them, no force could restrain
their seizing the opportunity to loot and
kill. I guessed that his idea of using the
ro-mech to build once again the ancient
power of the Mephisto's was not going ac-
cording to schedule. Myself I knew it
could not, for there were too many missing
links for the chain of circumstance to be
forged again as it had been, so long ago.

BUT there was one series of events in
that record which had caused Zigor to
choose it as the first! I soon realized what
this was, for Zigor walked to a great ma-

chine near the throne; activated the inner
dynamos, and from it leaped a beam of
blinding white light. This light he played
over the dancing form of Chlio, where she
undulated before his throne.

That light was a terrible thing for a
reason no man alive knows enough to un-
derstand, and it was a thing Sathanas had
used much for its after effects upon men.
Some slight details of its use remained in
my mind from old Mephisto's display of the
record to me. It was a thing that acted
upon a man in exactly the same way a
flame acts upon the senses of a moth. It
blinds the will, even such a synthetic will
as was acting within us from the ro-mech,
replacing it with a terrible desire to lose the
self, such a desire as the masochist knows:
to be enslaved; to give up to another all
self; to^ become the property of another.

But why was Zigor using this thing
upon Chlio. As the light bathed her, she
ceased her dance and stood, frozen in a
strange and awful beauty, with tears
streaming down her face from her disap-
pearing inner self. And as the light burned
on, I realized why he was using Chlio as
the point of focus of the beam — for a
terrible compulsion reached out to all of us,
and we inched, crawled, scrambled and
raced, at the last, to place ourselves at her
feet — her "things," her slaves. This beau-
tiful, white, woman-thing was absorbing
ourselves magically within her.

What still remained of reason within me
told me that a terrible kind of soul-stealing
was going on, that "Chlio" was but the
focus, and Sathanas — Zigor, standing out-
side the direct beams and ruling its power
by reason of the directive action of the ro-
mech review of the ancient scene, was the
recipient. For even as we gave up forever
our "selves" to "Chlio" in a terrible and
complete hypnosis — from which my mind
knew we could never rise again free — even
so was Chlio in turn giving all up to Zigor
at the source of the terrible beam.

This terrible bit of ancient magic upon
the record Zigor had noticed, and was using
to make us all captives forever of his will —
even as had Sathanas, so long ago!

A man will walk through fire to reach
that awful devouring whiteness when it is
played upon the body of a woman, and
about me writhed the bodies of all the
others, those strangers from the outer dark-
ness and the mad sadists who had chosen

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

53

Zigor as their leader. All of them, were
beside me, prostrate and wriggling ever
closer and denser about the white and
straining pillar of compulsion that was the
body of Chlio under the full strength of the
awful, ancient ray of power.

And as men or as souls or as beings of
any kind we ceased to be in that white
light, and our minds ceased to remember or
think, but only listened for the voice of
Chlio and that voice itself waited for the
order of Zigor to speak.

Zigor walked now to the great ro-mech
and shut off the record, for it had accom-
plished its purpose. And he looked at his
white-headed and shaking old father where
he sat bound and watching, and he laughed
in triumph.

"Now, father, try and give orders here
contrary to my own!"

But the older Mephisto answered not at
all, nor did he look at the younger man or
speak to him. And upon his face was a
repugnance, as if he regretted ever having
left such a thing as his son live one day.

Still we groveled there before the white,
frozen form that had been Chlio — the
sultry, the scornful, the beautiful — and
Zigor looked at us and laughed. He picked
up a thonged whip from where it lay near
the throne, and tossed it to Chlio, who
caught it dutifully.

"Beat them, my Chlio, they are yours, as
you are mine. Beat them; they deserve a
reward for all the work they have been do-
ing."

Chlio, her face as blank and empty as
stone, swung the whip and brought it down
upon the scrawny back of a dwarf. Not a
howl of pain came from the blow, but a
gasp of exaltation, a sound as of Heaven's
gate opening before his astounded eyes.
Again and again she brought the whip down
upon us, walking through and around us,
and we writhed and crawled to get under
the descending whip, and our s'ides ran with
blood from the thongs of the whip.

"Enough, Chlio, send them to bed. We
will find work for them all in the morning."

Chlio gestured with the now dripping
whip, and like mindless servants of her
will, we scuttled out of the room, and found
places in the many empty rooms about.
And because the order had been to sleep,
we, at once, became unconscious, oblivious
of pain as well as of life itself.

Nydia, still herself, was unaware of the

change that the young Zigor had brought
upon her friends. Her despair at the
change came later, when Zigor put her
before a telaug to vaunt his supremacy, his
acquisition of power over the minds of all
the others.

Old Mephisto, still sitting bound where
he had been placed, looked at her pitifully,
and said: "I am sorry" and relapsed into
the silence he had assumed. Zigor had him
taken to his former place of imprisonment,
where he himself had spent such a long time
under locks and bars.

ZIGOR, who had small regard for or fear
of the blind girl, used her to attend to
his duty of the records in the collection —
most of which he had never seen, as the
Elder Mephisto had never allowed him ac-
cess to the great old library which con-
tained the secrets of the lost power of the
family.

So it was that Nydia, alone in the huge
room with the glowering young scion of the
most evil family in Earth's history, selected
the records in chronological order, played
them one by one for his half attentive eyes.
Subtly she inserted her own thought inter-
pretations into the recorded scenes and
thought sequences, so that the records
meant what she wanted them to mean.

This can be done by moving a single
control beside the projection nozzle, a
great "V" shaped opening, which, by means
of a double beam converging upon a single
focus gives a solid appearing image. Upon
moving the control, one can comment with
subtle, unnoticeable abstract thought,
merely by looking at a small aperture near
the record augmentative tubes, where a
pickup-detector takes the thought from the
natural body-magnetic beams of the eye
and augments them along with the augmen-
tation of the images and thought patterns
upon the record.

And so it was that Zigor was educated
according to Nydia's ideas of what he
should think — rather than from the true,
raw evil of the terrible old records of Sa-
thanas' life. (Which did no harm, but little
good, for Zigor's mind was incapable of
correct logic; being, like all evil people,
infected with sun-polarized cell matter in
his ego centers, which convert all impulses
of the mind into detrimental will.)

"This magic of those ancients, if I could
but master it, the world would be helpless

54

AMAZING STORIES

at my feet I" muttered Zigor— Nydia hear-
ing him. Nydia answered him.

"What the word 'magic 5 means, trans-
lated into our own derivative tongue, is
'magnetic' or the 'science of magnetic'.
Only by an age of development by a great
race, following directly in the footsteps of
those mighty by-gone teachers, could their
man wanted to make the miracle of 'magic'
live again, he could only lay the foundation
by organizing a vast study group of young
'magic' be recreated whole and alive in any
one brain. We can only learn simple bits
of their true wisdom. These machines we
can learn to use, but that is only somewhat
like a monkey learning to drive a motor-
car. It is not the true wisdom that built
these mechanisms of mighty 'magic' If a
man wanted to make the miracle of 'magic'
live again, he could only lay the foundation
by organizing a vast study group of young
technicians and student scientists about the
existence of these machines of the Elder
race. Then in time, many centuries after,
those people's children would begin to
glimpse the true greatness of the Elder race
and perceive how such a race might again
be made to grow from the science of 'mag-
netics.' 'Magic' is infinitely more difficult
than it appears on these records of the
activities of men, who understood far more
of the science than ever we shall."

"Bah!" ejaculated Zigor, taken aback at
the difficulties she laid before his grandiose
plans. "You are but a foolish blind girl —
what can you know of such things?"

"T AM not foolish, Zigor Mephisto! You

* stupid bearer of a great ancient name —

you nincompoop who plans what no man
can fulfill! You are the foolish one, and if
you do not lean on my wisdom, you will
accomplish no tiny part of your plan. You
have begun your work by destroying the
thing most valuable to yourself — the minds
of those about you. Now, without those
minds, all thought must originate in your
mind, and certainly you are no mighty
thinker, certainly your mind will never con-
ceive a plan capable of growing into a
-mighty kingdom such as you want it to. If
you go on destroying and binding these
peoples minds to your own, you will paral-
yze all possibilities of growth about you —
nothing will happen that you do not' order
to happen, and from what I have seen of
your mind, that means that nothing will

happen. Within weeks, in all the surround-
ing country under the rays from this old
fortress of Eg Notha, there will be no activ-
ity that you do not order, as you have said.
What then will you do — will you think for
all these people? Because Sathanas worked
that way, do not think yourself able to do
that. You do not have the mind to think
for hundreds of people. For the most part,
as soon as your mind turns from your rays
to other things, all these people will drop
their work and sink into immobility.

"You think that Chlio will keep them
going, because you tell her to? That will
not be the case, my foolish friend. Your
first act was your most foolish one. You
have stopped the main spring of life —
thought. There will be no life spring from
that act, but only sterile sloth; only shuffl-
ing, mindless animals about you; so long
as you persist in such ideas. Sathanas,
with all his might and power and wisdom,
was inherently a jool, and if you look at the
later records of his life, you will find him
completely and irrevocably mad, wallow-
ing in his own filth, while the remains of his
empire stood mindlessly waiting for orders
from a mind that had died of sheer stupid-
ity — a mind that had persisted in wrong
thought until his very acts had killed all
possibDity of life in him or those who
followed him — a man who wallowed in vice
and sadism till no thing about remained
clean enough to live, and so died. You had
better look at all these records before you
conclude they contain a recipe for power.
They contain quite the reverse.

"Sathanas was an adult immortal, driven
from the realms where immortals dwell be-
cause he was insane, and his insanity did
not thrive on this bitter earth where all men
die, but only increased in its mad destruc-
tiveness till he had destroyed all hope of
recovery. He had even lost the way back
to space where men do not die — through
sheer stupidity unknowing how to operate
a ship in space. Sathanas was an exile who
waited too long before returning to the dark
spaces where immortal powers live — and
his waiting was the cause of his death. I
doubt that Sathanas had any real wisdom,
or he would have known what caused death
here on earth, and he would have fled that
old age as men flee leprosy. Sathanas was
a fool, one of the greatest fools ever to set
foot upon this sad earth. Wise men flee
our sun — all others stay and die!"

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

55

"Cease your foolish chatter, you blind
little croaking fool! You think you can tell
Zigor what to do? I'll have you beat till
you can't walk, for talking like that! I'll
have you burned alive— do you hear— you,
you—"

"Zigor, in all your life, did you ever have
a friend, or did you always live alone?
Never having any one to love — never say-
ing 'Friend, to me you are more than any
other?' Zigor, I pity you, for you do not
know what life is made of, nor what to do
with it. You are a fool."

"Get out of my sight," screamed Zigor in
a rage, for something of the things she was
saying to him cut him as no other words he
had ever heard. He could not listen, the
fire of her words seemed to burn into his
mind with a terrible meaning he had never
glimpsed before. He could not face her,
for something in him admitted she was
right, but his lack of true courage would
not let him face the fact.

NYDIA waited not, but left the room on
a run, for she had a great respect for
the mad anger of deros, having observed
a great deal of it. She had no wish to make
this Zigor mad with anger, but was taking
a chance on angering him to make him see
the light of wisdom if the ability to save his
mind were still alive within him; which she
doubted, for there is no more stubborn or
blind mind than that of the dero. s

Nydia knew this, as it is one of the
cardinal teachings of the ancient race, upon
which all its vast mental science and much
of its language is based — but she knew
there are people who think evil is correct
logic, merely because they have always
heard and seen it about them, and never
had a chance to learn current logic, reason,
mercy and beneficence. If Zigor was evil
from this cause, she hoped to show him
differently, but she knew she had not suc-

5 A dero is a thing that has never received any
thought correctly, never understood any syllogism,
is a mass of completely incorrect thought due to
the reversal of polarity of the magnetic fields of
thought about the mind cells, which in a dero are
sun-polared into detrimental due to induction of
disintegrant energy-flows from the sun. Thought
is either earth-polared, integrant and therefore
constructive, or it is sun-polared, disintegrant, re-
ceiving by polarity atunement constant impulses of
energy from the sun which convert all its thought
images into destructive patterns.

ceeded.

As Nydia fled through the throne room
from the shouts of the enraged Zigor, she
thought of the old man, and sped up the
great stairs to the upper floors— somewhere
up there were the chambers where the old
man had been placed. She passed Chlio,
leaning against the wall — a dazed, unhappy
expression on her face and a sharp feeling
of pity, for the fate that had struck the
beautiful woman arose in her. She stopped,
asking:

"Chlio, where have they placed the old
man?"

Chlio gestured toward a nearby door,
closed with a great lock, such as the an-
cients fashioned, and which no man can
get undone without the particular key de-
signed for them. She knew there was no
hope except in the cunning mind of the old
man, and turning to Chlio, guessed that the
key was on her person.

"Give me the key, Chlio, hurry!"

Mindlessly the unhappy woman handed-
her the huge key, made for hands so much
larger than human, and Nydia flew to the
door, reaching up to the great high lock
placed almost above the reach of her small,
frail hands. The great, time-resisting
mechanism creaked slightly, and the door
swung open. Nydia darted within, know-
ing she had only that time in which the
caution of young Zigor was distracted by
his rage — and began to struggle with the
ropes about the wrists of the old man, who
had been left still bound, out of the great
respect Zigor had for his father's abilities.
Then the old man spoke:

"Within my inner pocket you will find
a tiny gun, a heat ray of the little people.
Take it out and cut the ropes with its
beam. Be careful, for it is a terrible
weapon for all its size. Even at my age,
I still do not wish a hole burnt through me,
especially by your gentle hands, sweet
girl."

Seconds later, the old man stood up,
stretching and rubbing his aching limbs.
His height, which Nydia had failed to ob-
serve before, was impressive here alone
with him, and his eyes burned with a fierce
fire of rage at his treatment by his own son.
Granted he had kept the youth imprisoned,
still — events had proven him more than
right. This time, the old man swore to
himself, there would be no leniency. This
time —

56

AMAZING STORIES

I\_JE STRODE out the door, Nydia flut-

* -\*■ tering at his heels and guiding herself

by the sound of his feet — the purposeful,
grim sound of rage' ringing in every foot-
step. The old man walked to the wall
near where Chlio still stood in her mind-
less, waiting trance and as he saw her con-
dition, fresh fire blazed in his eyes, for he
loved Chlio above all other people. She
and Hugo, now dead, were the only two
people who had proved faithful to him
always.

The old man pressed upon the wall, and
a panel opened in the apparently solid
stone. Within was a cylinder of metal,
with a control box at the side of the cylin-
der. He stepped within, and Nydia fol-
lowed after. He pressed the control box
lever, and the panel swung shut — the cyl-
inder dropped swiftly downward. Nydia
caught her breath, but was not really sur-
prised. She had long ago learned to expect
anything in these ageless warrens of won-
der.

After long moments the dropping cylin-
der stopped, and now Nydia's ears that
must serve her when she had no telaug
instrument as eyes as well as ears were
filled with that eerie roaring that above
had sounded like lost souls fleeing forever
from some dreadful wrath, but now
sounded like many chained, titanic beasts
all roaring in frustrated rage — but was,
she knew, water rushing down through
some ancient metal turbine inlets; down
and down to those seas of endless extent
that do lie within the heart of earth, where
rock itelf from the dreadful pressure pre-
cipitates out as the pressure forces the
particles of dissolved matter to flocculate.

Here was some long gone scientist's
workshop, concealed from prying eyes and
rays by its great depth, and by an imper-
vious metal sheathing which excluded those
penetrative rays so generally used by the
Elder race.

This was the birthplace of "magic"; and
mysterious and awful the place was, in
truth. All along one vast wall were tier
on tier of retorts, twisted tubings, great
vitra-glass containers, full of curious col-
ored chemicals and tall, oddly shaped dyna-
mos with the old metal cables still
connected to the equipment. On several
long tables an array of mysterious tools
lay just as they had been abandoned so
long ago, and over the whole vast gloomy

room the hush of age — an age of terrific
work — lay like a blanket. Through that
hush vibrates the howling water outside the
thick walls, and through that hush the
blind Nydia trailed the purposeful steps of
the fearful old man, who had proved,
strangely, a friend in need.

Toward the opposite wall his steps led
to where a monstrous enigma of metal
loomed, with all its mysterious bowels laid
open by that forgotten workman of the vast
science of the past. He looked at the ma-
chine for a moment, then hooked up one
of the cables where it lay half out of the
opening in the machine. For a few mo-
ments he worked. Nydia listening with
her ears that served her nearly as well as
eyes, could not understand what the clever
old hands were doing, but when he pulled
a switch in the wall and the six foot tubes
of the machine lit up, and power sang a
terrible song of vast strength within the
machine, a glimmer of the monster of
strength that lay here under Eg Notha
came to her. Then upon a screen at the
side came a picture of the surface miles
above, a tree and a horse standing under
it in the noon day sun.

^TYDIA could see this screen quite as
■\*■ ^ well as if she had eyes, for the rays
which activated its screen penetrated the
skull, and acted directly upon the inner
eyes of the mind, so that even the blind
may see with the ancient rays. Many of
the antique instruments are so built. For
a moment old Mephisto tinkered with' the
dials of the mechanism, centering the horse
upon the cross wires of the screen. Then
pulled a great lever at the side of the
screen. The horse abruptly turned into a
mass of queer looking gray jelly upon the
grass.

Mephisto looked at Nydia and laughed
shortly.

"Ha, wonder what that is supposed to be.
I always wondered just what this thing
was, and intended to find out — now I still
don't know."

"Try another control, perhaps it is one
of those multi-purpose ray-mech they
sometimes built. Turn the dial to a new
marking, and the whole purpose of the
machine becomes another thing. Do you
want to kill your son, or do you just want
to put him back in his coop till he comes
of age and saner viewpoint?"

ZISOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

57

"I don't want to kill him unless I have
to. At this age I had little more sense than
he has today. If I had something by which
I could teach him what time has taught me
— that in evil lies only frustration and
defeat and that in the things my ancestors
despised as lily-livered goodness lie true
wisdom ; if there were such a machine, then
my problem would be solved."

"Let me try. I have seen something that
looked like this before."

Nydia twirled a graduated dial upon the
enigmatic machine. Still within the focus
of the rays, centered in the cross-hairs of
the machine, lay the quivering mass of
strangely alive protoplasm which had
shortly before been a horse. Nydia again
pressed the great lever at the side of the
screen, and again the vast machine sang
its song of magical power. As they watched,
the mass of jelly quivered more and more
violently, and from it a slow movement
arose, a mist formed at the center of the
focus, and abruptly within the mist move-
ment and matter became one — life was!
Something living was being created before
their eyes from that strange jelly! What
was it going to be? Their eyes strained
at the quivering picture, and the image
grew stronger and stronger as the mist
quivered into solidity.

They stood aghast, for out of that mass
of gray quivering nothing, out of the focus
of life generating rays was growing — a tiny
woman. Like Minerva from Jove's fore-
head, she was fully formed, adult in ap-
pearance and lovely as the paintings of the
ancient goddesses that survive on less ex-
posed walls, lovely as are the great statues
of the Elder race; mystically lovely, quiv-
ering upright on two symmetrical limbs,
her eyes lifted to the bright sky in wonder
at the miracle of life so suddenly given
her! She lifted her hands to the sky, to
the tree, to the bright sun so far above.
From her lips came a coo of ecstacy, and
from her back came a fluttering, growing,
vibrant wonder of color — wings! Mephisto
swore.

"By the gods, so that was where the
little people came from! A creation of the
mystic science of old— a synthetic form of
life — this machine, by some means, takes
a gross form of life and from it creates more
perfectly developed forms of life — and I
had thought it a weapon. Yes, those an-
cients did create wonders from life about

them, and we are watching one of those
wonders."

AS THEY watched, the infant, winged
being; who was yet as strangely adult
and complete as is a new hatched dragon-
fly, vibrated her bright, rainbow wings, and
with a strange cry of infinite delight in
movement, flew up, and out of the focus
of the rays!

"Perhaps that is the answer we are look-
ing for. Oh, Lord of Darkness, of the fam-
ily whom I know once ruled the caverns
far and wide, mayhap with this machine
we can do what so many have tried and
failed. Maybe we can take those gross
creatures above and change them into some-
thing more valuable, less threatening;
something that- is not dead, but greatly
more ailve! Methinks the souls of those
who have gone on, the great who have
lived her in Eg Notha, have guided us to
this machine that it may answer our needs
with its work. Let us try some more of
the markings on its dial, there is still some
more 'horse' left."

They turned back to the machine, but
even as they had talked together, another
and another tiny creature had formed
within the focus of the rays upon the gray
jelly. Swiftly they grew; one male, one
female and swiftly their wings spread and
dried in the bright sun, and then lifted them
up and away into the sunlight.

"It seems sacrilege to touch the dial,"
Nydia said, stretching out one trembling
hand to the mysterious, titanic majesty of
the face of the machine that was the
product of a mind who had mastered the
source, the meaning and creation of life
itself.

"There are markings on that dial that
my old eyes can't see. But they are raised
markings— see if your clever fingers can
make out what they are."

Nydia ran her fingers, those sensitive
tools of her mind that had served her as
eyes so often, over the broad face of the
dial.

"Yes, yes, at each long dial indentation,
at each of these rulings, there is a tiny
figure drawn, but I cannot see clearly with
just my fingers. Get a light, or, better, get
one of those mirrors of the impervious
metal and reflect some of the light from this
screen upon the dial. Then our minds may
see the marks if our eyes cannot."

58

AMAZING STORIES

Old Mephisto went to the table and fum-
bled about, returned presently with an an-
cient oil lamp left there by some former
occupant in the near past, as well as with
a shiny bit of the ancient alloy, which is as
opaque to their penetrative rays as is mer-
cury to light. As he held the lamp up to
the dial, Nydia took the bit of shiny metal
and held it before the screen, and the rays
which it gave off were reflected by the metal
toward the dial. Now she could see, and
so could old Mephisto. Both looked and
marveled at the meaning.

"Oh, Lord Mephisto, there are many
little animals, one to each dial mark. Do
you know what the meaning of that is?"

"Yes, my blind little witch, I know
what that means! It means we can take
any flesh and turn it into any creatures
we wish with this machine. Let us try a
few of the markings."

"Look, there are a whole series of the
man-shaped little figures, each a little
larger than the others — let us see what
they turn out. After all, those winged
fairy-like creatures will find it hard to be
accepted in that dull life up there."

FORGETTING for a moment their

* troubles in wonder of the ancient

magical instrument, that was not magic
at all, but only the mystery of birth and
growth worked out to decimal points of
energy within patterns of magnetic matrix
within the machine, activated by the
growth-stimulating rays which the an-
cients had mastered, they played like chil-
dren — producing from the slowly shrinking
body of the horse a series of people, each
of whom was more wonderful than the last.
As Nydia found at last upon the dial a
drawing similar in all respects to men, and
graduated in relation to the size of the
others so as to make her realize that this
human would be neither a giant nor a
dwarf, she showed it to Mephisto with a
nudge of reminder.

"There is what you are seeking. Try
that on the horse, and then we will go for
the mindless things upstairs."

"I wonder why the machine requires the
step of melting the basic animal down to
that grey substance?"

"I don't believe it does! I think we had
it turned to a dial setting of some micro-
scopic life form. Perhaps that grey sub-
stance is itself a life form — some earth

microbe which they needed for their farm-
ing, and created in this way from other less
useful life forms."

"You could be right. Try the new dial
setting as we have it on another horse."

Nydia swung the great old ray nozzle
about, and the scene on the screen changed
as the ray swept about the field overhead.
The only horse they could find was hitched
to a hayrack, but the hay-rack was stand-
ing still — its driver asleep in the shade with
his lunch by his side.

"Somebody's going to be darn surprised
when they wake up," Nydia whispered to
Mephisto, desiring not to wake the farmer,

"Pull the lever, let's see what this setting
does? Never mind the farmer — he'll get
over it and explain no matter what wonder
he sees — that the sun affected him."

Nydia centered the dozing horse on the
cross wires, pulled down the big lever. A
soft haze immediately enveloped the horse,
and a faint shimmering movement ran all
over his body. Slowly, subtly, the horse
changed — a startling development ran
through all his frame. The legs elongated,
the ears shortened, nearly disappeared, the
skull broadened and the whole frame of the
creature underwent a transformation, a de-
velopment, an opening out of the nature of
the animal — a fearful kind of flowering was
evident, the end product of an age of evolu-
tion was coming to life before our eyes! Not
a man, as had happened on the previous
dial settings, but the ultimate horse of
horses — a creature never seen by living men
before stood now between the shafts! No
longer horse — but a thing as far above a
horse as a man is above the first lunged
amphibian that crawled from the water to
become the ancestor of modern man.

"VTYDIA'S eyes shone with the wonder of
■\*■ ' what they had found. She knew that
such miracles were to the ancients a part
of life — an accepted thing, and from read-
ing the ancient thought records she
dreamed of doing such things, but the
"how" of such wonders was always ob-
scured on the antique records by the ab-
struse, difficult symbolism of their technical
thought, much too deep for the modern
human to hope to decipher. By some ac-
cident of their fumbling hands upon the
dials, they had found the secret of evolu-
tion through speeded growth — the trans-
formation that ages of time make upon life

ZIGOR MEPHISTO'S COLLECTION OF MENTALIA

59

forms was here accomplished within mo-
ments. Like so many of the antique
machines, the thing was multi-purposed,
had many adjustments designed to broaden
the scope of its use; hence, their transfor-
mation of the horse into a jelly, and the
jelly into a winged tiny human.

But Nydia divined, now they had hit
upon the prime purpose of the mechanism
— the overcoming of the obstacle of time
in the evolving of superior forms of life.
Now they had one of the secrets that had
made the ancients the tremendous people
they were, and Nydia swore to herself that
nothing would be able to cause her to lose
this secret — one she had known hazily
must exist, but was now a concrete actual-
ity before her! Her shining, tear-wet, blind
eyes turned to the aged man beside her.

"Thank the Gods, we have found one of
their greatest secrets. Now you and I can
re-make life into something that can grow
toward the ancient goal again."

"Now try it upon one of the wild, mad
dwarfs that my son has enslaved to Chlio.
See what it does to such a creature — if it
does what I think it may do, we have won
our battle, as well as many an unfought
battle of the far future. The men this
thing may produce! If we are right, those
men should change this sad, mad world into
a more pleasant place for a man to live
upon."

Wasting no more time, Nydia swung
the great ray in a short arc, centering the
screen upon the great hall of the throne
in the rocky chambers over their head —
the center chamber of all that time-for-
gotten pile called "Eg Notha."

Soon upon the cross hairs one of the
unkempt, twisted-limbed dwarfs appeared.
He was upon his knees before the blank-
faced Chlio, who stood beside the great
crystalline sculpture that was that ancient
seat of power. Young Zigor sat brooding,
his chin upon his hands. It was evident
that the dwarf was reporting failure in the
search for the old man and the blind girl.

Nydia pulled down the great lever that
released the flood of strange and eerily po-
tent power through the conductive pene-
trative ray upon the dwarf, where he
kneeled before the throne.

Intently the old man and the blind girl
watched the dwarf, and strangely behind
them stirred the vast mysterious life that
was somehow the still living vital force

and inner soul of those forgotten ancients.
Somehow, if one had been sensitive and
alert, at that moment, one would have
sensed the mystic living hand of some
vague, but potent life, reach out frem the
rock where it had waited away all those
empty centuries — touched the bowed, in-
tent heads of the old cynical Mephisto,
the young virginal gold hair of Nydia, and
return to its sleep within the ancient rock.

The powerful ray upon that degenerate
product of an age of retrogression began
to work its wonder. Slowly, slowly the
twisted bowed legs straightened, the
humped back became more erect and the
bullet head rounded. The sparse, bristly
hair became more abundant— began to curl
gracefully about the brightening face!
"Something" sprang to life upon the lined
and evil face — something came to life
within those beady eyes; the eyes them-
selves broadened, and as the power
hummed on, and gladness came to dwell
again in Nydia's heart, there stood before
Chlio not a twisted, evil-minded dwarf, but
a straight, slim young Godling, eyes won-
dering about him at the sudden beauty and
meaning in what had been before but dull,
grey, "usual", hideous, unwanted life. And
as they watched, the mouth that was no
longer a sour gash across an ugly dull face,
but the luxuriously curved lips of a son of
the Gods — opened and the man that was
not a man but had now become a man
spoke — his voice a soft, wondering music in
his own ears and a startling wonder to
Zigor's suddenly awakened ears.

"A/TY CHLIO, you have suddenly be-
-l \* A come a beautiful thing — but why do
you stand and gaze at nothing? Why do
you not show joy, the joy that has sud-
denly sprung up within me? Why do you
not feel it too? Speak, my Chlio, that I
may hear you — my ears hunger to hear in
your voice the gladness that rings in my
heart at sight of you."

Chlio did not answer, the spell from
Zigor's use of the evil hypnotic ray re-
mained upon her; but Zigor sprang to his
feet as his eyes took in at last the unbe-
lievable change that had come over the
ugly, mindless dwarf. But even as he
sprang to his feet in wonder, Nydia swung
the ray upon Zigor, carefully centering his
figure upon the cross hairs and the terrific
power of the ancient wonder-mech droned

60

AMAZING STORIES

on its song of evolutionary magic.

Swiftly, swiftly, the wonder mounted in
Zigor's face, and his arm, which he had
involuntarily thrown aloft as he felt a ray
upon him, fearing death from the unseen
source of the ray, dropped again, as the
miracle of the transformation sent the
ecstasy of mighty growth through every
cell of his body. Swiftly the body of
Zigor became that which it would have
been had he had been raised in one of
the nurseries of the Elder race. And as
that wonder grew within his body, as the
evil of dis-infection died within his mind
and the wonder of curative integrant force
took its place within his mind, that ancient
spirit which the Elder race had left to guard
the ruins of Eg Notha turned within the
under rock and quietly went again to sleep.
For with the change in Zigor, the danger
for the world which had been potentially
present in Zigor Mephisto disappeared.

"Chlio, Chlio, God's hand is upon me, I
change! Ah — what has happened — what
have I done? Father, father — " Zigor
sank again upon the throne and burst into
tears, for a lifetime of struggle with his
father had to be atoned for within moments
of sudden realization, and he could not
bear it.

NYDIA, who had given Zigor double the
dose of ray that she had given the
dwarf, now swung the ray upon Chlio, and
all that beauty that had been hers began
to blossom fiercely, to become the most
beautiful woman of all earth.

"By the Gods, those elder men knew
what to want on this green earth," swore

old Mephisto, watching his beloved Chlio
become a symphony of terrific lure! A vital
aura of womanhood pulsed about her as
the rays transformed her who had been
merely "beautiful and good" into the vast,
and ultimate, end-product of an age of
beautiful and good forebears! Chlio, the
most beautiful woman living on the whole
earth. Ecstasy spread over her shudder-
ing form, the sleeping mind awoke to a
wonder it had never conceived possible —
every cell of her lovely body quivered into
a change into the perfect cell.

A long, long time Nydia kept the ray
upon Chlio, then swung it again, looking
for me. Yes, that is why I am able to tell
you this, and get it published — because
she found me with that ray, and the thing
that was a mere mindless tool of Zigor's
will awoke again to life — the body that had
been a mere, ordinary, well meaning hu-
man's became — well, not the best looking
man on earth, but Nydia loves me vastly
more than formerly.

So it was that an end to trouble within
the ancient walls of Eg Notha came about
through the miracle of growth. So it was
that the old cynical, beaten man we met
when we entered the sinister ancient fort-
ress is now younger, handsomer and wiser
than any other now alive.

And so it was that we sent our flying
globe back again to our former encamp-
ment, and the little band who had fought
for life with the evil things that beseiged
us moved — to Eg Notha, and left the be-
siegers holding an empty bag. And when
they come to attack us in Eg Notha, I
think the Mephistos will be ready for them.