this alliance, a union between Att and myself. But I spurned him.

“His hordes then attacked Vairkingi, but we repulsed them and drove them to the southward. At present we are on a punitive expedition into their territory. Our warriors are under the command of Jud the Excuse-Maker; and my father (Theoph the Grim) and I have accompanied the headquarters, so as to witness the downfall of Att the Terrible.

“It was undoubtedly one of the Roies who wounded you, but the approach of our men drove them off before they had time to do you further harm. It was I myself who found you lying beside the brook, and I would fain possess you as my own, you who are unlike any man whom I have ever seen. Whence come you?”

“I am from the planet Minos, O Arkilu the Beautiful,” replied Cabot.

But the princess incredulously shook her head, saying, “I know not whereof you speak, nor know I the meaning of the word ‘planet.’ There are no other worlds than this continent which we inhabit, surrounded by boiling seas on all sides; though rumor says that strange beasts from somewhere have landed and are building a city to the eastward of the mountains.”

“Rumor has it right,” Myles laconically interjected, “for I had just escaped from those beasts when I was wounded by the arrow of the Roies.”

Arkilu opened her eyes in wonder.

“Tell me about them,” she breathed.

So the earth-man sat up, swathed in the gaudy tapestries of the Vairkings, and related to the furry princess the story of his adventures on the planet Poros. It was difficult to put it all into words within her comprehension, for neither she nor her people could know anything of radio, of the solar system, of airplanes, or of rifles. Accordingly his account ran about as follows:

“Know, O Princess, that there is another land called ‘Minos’, or in our own language ‘the earth’, far above those silver clouds, one million times the distance from here to your capital city, Vairkingi. Also there is, beyond the boiling seas, another land much like this, where dwell hairless men called ‘Cupians’, and also the black beasts to whom you have referred. These beasts are called ‘Formians’.

“Cupians and Formians cannot talk with their mouths as you and I. Nor do they have ears to hear with. Instead, they communicate by a kind of soundless magic, called ‘radio’. But they 

 Prev. P 31/186 next