—R. M. F., 1926.
Contents
I [(untitled)] 5 II [Too Much Static] 8 III [Yuri or Formis?] 14 IV [The Coup D’etat] 18 V [Lost Amid the Rocks] 27 VI [The Vairkings] 36 VII [Radio Once More] 42 VIII [But Why Radio?] 49 IX [A Prisoner] 60 X [The Siege of Sur] 69 XI [Att the Terrible] 80 XII [Companions in Misery] 85 XIII [Further Progress] 93 XIV [Old Friends] 101 XV [Plans for Escape] 108 XVI [Afterthoughts] 117 XVII [The Battle for Vairkingi] 124 XVIII [The Fall of Vairkingi] 133 XIX [The Battle in the Air] 142 XX [The Whoomangs] 149 XXI [Souls?] 160 XXII [Flight] 169 XXIII [Luno and Beyond] 180 XXIV [The Lobsteroid Circuit] 189 XXV [All Kinds of Trouble] 199 XXVI [The Debacle] 206 XXVII [Peace on Poros] 217
I
“It’s too bad that Myles Cabot can’t see this!” I exclaimed, as my eye fell on the following item:
SIGNALS FROM MARS FAIL TO REACH HARVARD
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wednesday. The Harvard College Radio Station has for several weeks been in receipt of fragmentary signals of extraordinarily long wave-length, Professor Hammond announced yesterday. So far as it has been possible to test the direction of the source of these waves, it appears that the direction has a twenty-four hour cycle, thus indicating that the origin of these waves is some point outside the earth.
The university authorities will express no opinion as to whether or not these messages come from Mars.
Myles, alone of all the radio engineers of my acquaintance, was competent to surmount these difficulties, and thus enable the Cambridge savants to receive with clearness the message from another planet.
Twelve months ago he would have been available, for he was then quietly visiting at my farm, after five earth-years spent on the planet Venus, where, by the aid of radio, he had led the Cupians to victory over their oppressors, a human-brained race of gigantic black ants. He had driven the last ant from the face of continental Poros, and had won and wed the Princess Lilla, who had borne him a son to occupy the throne of Cupia.
While at my farm Cabot had rigged up a huge radio set and a matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the big October storm which had wrecked his installation.