While he labored with the dials an image seemed slowly to be forming in
the disc, taking the place of the one which had just disappeared. For a
time, two voices were heard, one unmistakably that of the girl, growing
fainter and fainter, the other, the coarse tones of a man, constantly
increasing in intensity.
As the new image cleared, it proved to be that of a man of remarkable
dimensions—with a body that was almost globular, to which were attached
incongruously slender arms and legs. Although he could not have been
more than five feet tall, his round head was nearly twice as large as
that of the average earth man of six feet. His nose was flat, and his
eyes slanted toward his temples above exceptionally prominent cheek
bones. As he spoke in sing-song monosyllables, he disclosed rat-like
teeth, set far apart, and wobbled a long, thin moustache, the two ends
of which drooped from the corners of his mouth to his breast.
On his head was a tall pointed helmet of gleaming yellow metal, built up
in tiers like a pagoda and ending in a sharp spike. His body was encased
in scale-like armor of the same yellow metal, and his breast was crossed
by two purple sashes, fastened at their intersection by a golden
medallion on which was emblazoned a scarlet dragon. From one of these
depended a sword with a small, round guard, and a hilt nearly a foot in
length, and from the other, a weapon which slightly resembled an
automatic pistol. Behind him stood a semicircle of smaller beings of
similar rotund shape, whose helmets were shorter and of copper-colored
metal, as were their suits of armor. They wore brown sashes and copper
medallions emblazoned with green dragons, and in addition to weapons
similar to those of the larger man, carried tall poles surmounted by
sharp discs that slightly resembled buzz-saws with exceptionally long
teeth.
The appearance of the girl had created a stir in the room, but when
these grotesque creatures became plainly visible on the disc, animated
whispers turned to an uproar, and Ted was forced to call for silence.
Scarcely had the confusion abated, ere an aged Chinese doctor arose and
came up beside Ted.
“What is it, Dr. Wu?” asked the young scientist, his hands busy with the
dials. “Can you understand him?”
“A word, here and there, seems intelligible—something like the language
of my revered ancestors.”
At sight of Dr. Wu, the speaker in the disc paused and nodded. It was as
if he had recognized someone racially akin to him. The doctor bowed and
smiled in return, and said something in a monosyllabic tongue. Its
phonetic similarity to that which had come from the globular being was
striking, as was the fact that there was a slight facial resemblance
between Dr. Wu and the lunar speaker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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