"Sex? Oh, I understand. The difference between two of the lower soft races that makes reproduction possible. Our birds have it. No, we have abolished it of course, as all higher races have. Our young are produced artificially."
CHAPTER XVI
A Dash for Freedom
They stood before the big machine. "You must do exactly as I tell you," the Lassan informed him. "The machinery of this instrument is very delicate. First, to enter, you must reach up there, by that fin, and insert one of your fingers in the hole you will find."
As he did so Sherman saw a door, so closely fitted that when it closed there was no visible seam in the metal, swing back. They entered.
The interior of the machine was disappointingly smaller than its outside would have led one to expect. A narrow walk, railed on both sides, led down the center to the forward part. Along and slightly below this walk was a row of instrument boards not unlike those of the mining machine, and at each of these one of the ape-men lay, helmet on head, apparently asleep. "No, not asleep," the Lassan told him, "they do not require it, like all our mechanical servants. They have merely been thrown into a state of nothingness till we need them."
At the prow of the machine the cat-walk widened into a control chamber. One of the Lassan couches was here and above it dangled a helmet which was connected with those of the slumbering ape-men. The Lassan removed the helmet he wore and exchanged it for this. Before this was another seat in which Sherman took his position. A complex of controls surrounded him, most of them with the fingerholes which were the ordinary Lassan method of handling machinery. Directly in front of this seat was a ground-glass panel, now dark but which lit up as soon as the Lassan had connected up his helmet, to give an accurate picture of the hall in which the fighting machine stood.
"And can you see to a distance?" Sherman wondered. The answer he received was either confused or beyond his comprehension. He gathered that the four-winged birds of the Lassans acted in some way or other as their scouts, remaining in a kind of telepathic communication with the Lassan in the fighting-machine they were assigned to help....
Sherman was surprised to find how readily the enormous bulk and weight of the thing handled under the Lassan's skilled control. He understood, without definitely asking, that the power was furnished by that "substance of life" to which the Lassan had referred; in some way connected with the absolute destruction of matter....