“Toplinsky?”
The leader thought over this for some time, and then consulted his companions. Turning to the soldiers he issued a sharp command. The soldiers responded by seizing Epworth, pushing him close to the leader of the council, and dropping a metal cap over his head. This cap they connected by wires with one the leader placed on his own head.
“This little cap,” the councilman explained, “is a thought transferring device. It will keep you from lying, and enable me to read all your thoughts. Now tell me about this Toplinsky.”
“Have you not heard of him? I should think by this time his connection with your queen would be known everywhere in your land. Your queen has made him her king, and together they expect to conquer the Selinites.”
“I had heard that the queen had taken a consort but——”
“A great giant, and a scientist of mighty ability. He is the man who started your world to turning around.”
“Started our world to turn—a man?”
Very calmly Epworth told Toplinsky’s story, permitting his mind to revert back to the camp in the Arctic Circle, and the manner in which Toplinsky had shot water at the moon in a great projectile, and followed it in fifteen minutes with another projectile of liquid air to prevent the immediate evaporation of the water and in order to build up an atmosphere on the moon. The council leader saw it all flashing through the American’s brain, and in turn Epworth saw fear, dread, hate, envy, creep into the bulbous brain in front of him—a fear that this giant scientist from the earth would gain supreme control over the Taunans, and eliminate the council of the Sons of the Great Selina.
“You have reason to fear him,” Epworth remarked quickly. “I do not like Toplinsky, I am constantly at war with him, but I hand it to him as being the biggest thing in the way of science I ever read about. In his scheme to make the moon inhabitable he shot the rarest vegetable and fruit seed from the earth, he planned a rotation of your little planet that would give it a Garden of Eden climate, he timed his projectiles absolutely accurately to prevent the evaporation of the water he sent up, and he sent nitrates and fertilizer to assure the growth of his vegetation. When he was selected by Queen Carza as her consort he boasted to me that he would soon be the absolute monarch of this world.”
The councilman removed his head gear, and motioned to the soldiers to remove the cap over Epworth’s head. Before this was done however Epworth saw the thought flash through the pigmy’s brain that he must do something to rid himself of Toplinsky’s power.