The cover closed overhead. A tiny green light winked on. Within the
boat, lurid in the green glow, the four brutemen moved about with swift
activity; the soft voice of Talon was directing them; his great head was
raised on his hands as he followed their movements.
They bolted the metal over, adjusted other mechanisms which now came
into use at the stern. A lessening of the flow of gas from beneath the
hull; the water filled the chamber there. The rear power tube now
pointed downward, to dip the bow. Other tubes, one on each side below
the water line, pointed upward, with powerfully ejected streams of gas.
The bow of the boat dipped; it sank beneath the surface. Jim had no idea
then of the mechanisms, but he knew the boat was under water. One of the
great heads was busily adjusting a mechanism to purify the air they were
breathing. Another was seated at what seemed a mirror; gazing ahead
through the water, steering the boat with his fingers on a row of
buttons which governed the controls.
Another hour. Jim and Ren whispered occasionally. The boat was speeding
uninterruptedly beneath the surface. At last Jim called,
“Talon?”
“Yes. What is it?” the head of Talon answered him.
“Come here. You can talk better now, can’t you?”
Talon evidently was amused at the imperative tone. “Yes. I can talk
better now.”
He came hitching forward; his great face was broken by a grotesque grin.
“What is it?”
“Who are you?” Jim demanded. “What do you want of us? Where are you
taking us?”
Talon was willing to talk. He sat, his fingers toying with the metal
ornament, his head resting against the side of the boat for support. He
and his fellows were of a race which he called the Intellect. They came
from a distant world in the sky, a dark planet, satellite of one of the
remote suns up there.
Five thousand or more of them, adventurous Intelligences like himself,
had built a great ship and come to this foreign world. They had landed
in mountains, a wild, desolate country. Their ship had been destroyed,
irreparably broken in landing. They could not get back.
There were, he explained, in this distant world two distinct races of
beings, those like himself, for countless ages bred to develop the
intellect so that their bodies shriveled and dwindled from disuse, all
their physical powers nearly gone. And another, quite opposite race,
bred for physical strength and power, the brutemen, of slight mental
capacity but powerful of body.
He gestured. “You see four of them? They do our bidding unquestioned.
They supply the body for us; we are the mind.”
“You ride on their shoulders,” said Jim.
Talon’s eyes gleamed. “We more than ride on them.” He showed Jim where
from beneath his head a ropelike sinew depended. “This we fasten upon a
nerve-center of their backs. Their little brain is dulled, unconscious
then of existence. Our brains take command.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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