The tall man smiled and leaned forward to place a hand on a knee of each of the men beside him. “Why not,” he asked, “when there doubtless is relationship between us.
“You called the continent Atlantis. Perhaps its very existence is but a fable now: it has been many centuries since we have had instruments to record thought force from Earth, and we have lost touch. But, my friends, even then we of Venus had conquered space, and it was we who visited Atlantis to find a race more nearly like ourselves than were the barbarians who held the other parts of Earth.
“I was there, but I returned. There were some who stayed and they were lost with the others in the terrible cataclysm that sank a whole continent beneath the waters. But some, we have believed, escaped.”
“Why have you not been back?” the flyer asked. “You could have helped us so much.”
“It was then that our own destruction came upon us. The same comet, perhaps, may have caused a change of stresses in your Earth and sunk the lost Atlantis. Ah! That was a beautiful land, but we have never seen it since. We have been—here.
“But you will understand, now,” he added, “that, with our insight into your minds, we have little difficulty in mastering your language.”
This talk of science and incredible history left Lieutenant McGuire cold. His mind could not wander long from its greatest concern.
“But the earth!” he exclaimed. “What about the earth? This attack! Those devils mean real mischief!”
“More than you know; more than you can realize, friend Mack Guire!”
“Why?” demanded the flyer. “Why?”