"I notice that everyone here wears those heavy collars," said Margaret. "What are they for?"
"They are identification marks. When a child is nearly grown, a collar bearing his name and the device of his house is cast about his neck. This collar is made of 'arenak,' a synthetic metal which, once formed, cannot be altered by any usual means. It cannot be scratched, cut, bent, broken, or worked in any way except at such a high temperature that death would result, if such heat were applied to the collar. Once the arenak collar is cast about a person's neck he is identified for life, and any adult Osnomian not wearing a collar is put to death."
"That must be an interesting metal," remarked Crane. "Is your belt a similar mark?"
"This belt is an idea of my own," and Dunark smiled broadly. "It looks like opaque arenak, but isn't. It is merely a pouch in which I carry anything I am particularly interested in. Even Nalboon thought it was arenak, so he didn't trouble to try to open it. If he had opened it and taken my tools and instruments, I couldn't have built the educator."
"Is that transparent armor arenak?"
"Yes, the only difference being that nothing is added to the matrix to color or make opaque the finished metal. It is in the preparation of this metal that salt is indispensable. It acts only as a catalyst, being recovered afterward, but neither nation has ever had enough salt to make all the armor they want."
"Aren't those monsters—karlono, I think you called them—covered by the same thing? And what are those animals, anyway?" Dorothy asked.
"Yes, they are armored with arenak, and it is thought that the beasts grow it, the same as fishes grow scales. The karlono are the most frightful scourge of Osnome. Very little is known of them, though every scientist has theorized upon them since time immemorial. It is very seldom that one is ever killed, as they easily outfly our swiftest battleships, and only fight when they can be victorious. To kill one requires a succession of the heaviest high-explosive shells in the same spot, a joint in the armor; and after the armor is once penetrated, the animal is blown into such small fragments that reconstruction is impossible. From such remains it has been variously described as a bird, a beast, a fish, and a vegetable; sexual, asexual, and hermaphroditic. Its habitat is unknown, it being variously supposed to live high in the air, deep in the ocean, and buried in the swamps. Another theory is that they live upon one of our satellites, which encounters our belt of atmosphere every karkam. Nothing is certainly known about the monsters except their terrible destructiveness and their insatiable appetites. One of them will devour five or six airships at one time, absorbing the crews and devouring the cargo and all of the vessels except the very hardest of the metal parts."
"Do they usually go in groups?" asked Crane. "If they do, I should think that a fleet of warships would be necessary for every party."
"No, they are almost always found alone. Only very rarely are two found together. This is the first time in history that more than two have ever been seen together. Two battleships can always defeat one karlon, so they are never attacked. With four battleships Nalboon considered his expedition perfectly safe, especially as they are now rare. The navies hunted down and killed what was supposed to be the last one upon Osnome more than a karkam ago, and none have been seen since, until we were attacked...."