In the manuscript, which Myles Cabot shot from Venus to the earth in a streamline projectile, and which was published to mankind under the title of “The Radio Man,” it was stated that the Cupians had no basis for any Darwinian theory; but now Myles began to doubt that statement of his. Perhaps this was the true scientific basis of the legend of the subterranean origin of mankind. Perhaps the Cupians were descended from the blue apes of the Caves of Kar.
This particular ape appeared to be a slave or servant of the old man, for at an inaudible command of the latter he brought a basin of warm water, with which the old man tenderly bathed his guest.
Then, still wondering where he was, and why, Cabot dropped off to sleep again. When he reawoke, the old man was sitting in the room, and with him was a younger man, of the same general appearance and garb.
The older handed over the following message: “Myles Cabot, this is Nan-nan, one of our electricians. He is at your service.”
At once Cabot caught the drift of these remarks, and wrote back: “Bring me my apparatus, and let us try to repair it.”
His two hosts glanced significantly at each other, and Myles began to fear that his radio set had been lost beneath the waves of the river Kar. But no, for an ape slave came bringing it, together with a bench and tools which they placed beside the couch. Then the electrician and Myles set to work.
It took a long time, several sangths in fact, for the earth man was very weak, and all conversation had to be carried on in writing.
The present occasion reminded Myles of those days at the ant university at Mooni, shortly after his arrival on the planet Venus, when he had struggled for many weary sangths to produce artificial antennae and a portable radio set, in order to see if this would not furnish a means for oral communication with the lovely Lilla, Princess Royal of the Cupians, whom he then worshipped from afar. Before he had completed that experiment, he had had no means of knowing whether or not the beings of this strange planet used radio waves to talk with.
Their own scientists, both Cupian and Formian, had doubted it decidedly; but the earth man had persisted, basing his hopes on the speculations of some American savants, which he had read shortly before his departure from the earth, to the effect that insects communicate with each other by means of exceedingly short Hertzian waves.