The bull head lolled forward and came back into place again abruptly. Brady said, “Maybe there’s a chance. I don’t know. Your guns ... Listen! If you can get to the pyramid and blast the machine out of existence—” “What machine?” Desquer asked. “The machine that will destroy Europe! The same kind of machine that created Earth’s Moon, ages ago! The machine that sank Atlantis!” Tony’s breath caught in his throat. Atlantis? Now he remembered the significance of the sign of the cross-and-circle. It was the symbol of Atlantis, the four rivers on the island continent. Softly he whispered, “The Ancients who ruled over the Four Rivers before their sons fled to Egypt.” Brady said, “Yes. That’s the secret of Egypt, and its civilization. Men have guessed at that before now. Ages ago, when Europe was filled with nomadic tribes, Atlantis was a continent of culture and science. It was unstable—volcanic activity went on endlessly beneath it. And the land began to sink. Thotmes told me how the scientists of Atlantis planned to prevent their doom. “They made a Moon. Out of the bed of the Pacific Ocean they tore part of the Earth and sent it driving out into space. They thought that would release the pressure under Atlantis and save their civilization. “They failed. The forces they controlled were too mighty. Atlantis sank, taking with it a science such as the world has never known and perhaps may never know again. But before the deluge, a few Atlanteans fled eastward, through the Pillars of Hercules, to Egypt.” The bull head nodded. “They were the ancestors of the underground Copts. They found Sub-Sahara centuries before the Pharaohs, and they found Alu. There they built a city such as had existed in the Atlantean valleys. They sent forth some of their number to civilize the Nile peoples, and those Atlanteans became the high priests of the gods. They created the gods! “As they created me—they made gods with heads of bulls and crocodiles and jackals, to terrify the superstitious tribes that needed tangible gods to worship. And then the road to the surface was closed by some ancient cataclysm, so that the Atlanteans were trapped here. Some few of the priests kept their culture. The others degenerated. They became—the Copts. “But the priests still kept the old religion alive, using their surgery and their healing-rays to make new gods, and ruling the Copts through fear. Now they plan to make a second Moon, and to raise Atlantis; they wish to rule the Earth as they did once, long ago.” Brady’s thin hands clenched into fists. “They caught me in the cavern where I was standing guard—used some sort of paralyzing ray on me. They brought me down here and told me what they intend. There’s a machine that’s capable of ripping all Europe from the face of the Earth and sending it out in space, to be another Moon.” Tony said, “But that would wreck the world!”