Deep under the cavern city of Ra-Mu, within the diamantine inner
rocks that hold all the upper rock of the upper world in its place,
he built a titanic machine of more power than men had ever put in
one place before. What it was is this: a thing that affected the
tiny magnetic charges that are the binding of all matter's
molecules, that do flow about the surface of atoms as water does
about earth -- but that in this flow do bind them all into one --
as mud is bound by water, but separates when dry and becomes dust.
So it is with all matter to be held by this fluid stuff into a hard
thing that we call rock, or steel, or whatever it may be. This is
the powerful magnetic substance that is driven out when iron is
heated, and that flows back in when the iron is plunged into cold
water. They give temper and hardness by binding the parts of matter
more firmly together in the iron. T-ions is what the scientists of
Ra-Mu called them, and they are things that can be driven and
coerced in many ways. Matter does strange things when these binding
magnets are removed, just as water boils and becomes steam when the
heat repellence drives out the binding of the T-ions.
Just as water can become loose and agile and fly off like gas into
the air, so can rock become loose and agile under certain rays that
drive out this universal binding stuff of matter, and fly off into
the air as smoke, or flow along like water. And Salund Mar had
found in an old book in the belongings of the murdered Elder
technician, Konro Loral, the drawings for a machine to make borings
into rock, by the use of a ray of power that would make the rock
run like water or disappear entirely as a gas, and leave a tunnel
all bored through the rock without labor. And this was a great
improvement over the method used now of boring tunnels with a
dis-ray, for "dis" was an unpleasant stuff to be around, and gave
off lava and fumes and was dangerous to all who handled it in
tunnel boring.
(...)
So the thin, small, fast ships of Kui flashed impudently into the
under-parts of the vast fleet of Enn, all their rays blazing, and
many a winged warrior, and many an ancient bearded and tremendous
Elder of Hevi Enn, who had graduated from a dozen planets to reach
that famed haven of immortality, died at his vision plate before
they fired a shot. And the truth of Saland's audacity was seen; for
the people of Hevi Enn and the League of the Rosy Cross had removed
the causes of war long ago from their life, thus little improvement
had been made in the art of war for centuries, and Salund knew as
much about it as they did, for neither knew much. Or so Salund
thought during the first few minutes of war which were entirely his
way; for one of the mighty warships came blazing down to the globe
below by some lucky chance shot, and several veered from their
course.
But the truth was otherwise than Salund at first thought. For the
might of their strength had given the leader of the fleet from Hevi
Enn the idea that even a madman would know better than to fire upon
them, and expected only some kind of bluff when the tiny ships took
off from the round globe far below. The mercy that was part of
their hearts made them hold their fire for that split second, which
gave the tiny ships with their powerful rays their chance to get in
a blow. And that was the end of the space navy of Ra-Mu, for with
their minds enraged at the sudden attack without parley or other
usual formality, such as prevailed among the cultured men of the
League, the fleet of mighty war cruisers flashed now into intricate
unpredictable maneuvers so that no poor faltering human eye from
the men who manned Salund's ships, against their better judgement
and on pain of death, could follow, and the great rays lashed out
simultaneously and down upon their poor heads came all the
Hell-fire and God-anger of the power of Hevi Enn. And now a
whirlpool of destruction overtook them, and the thousand and more
ships, long slim needles of seeming deadly destruction that they
were, were within minutes but floating, blazing hulks, riddled fore
and aft, and from those blasted wrecks men cried to the Godmen of
Hevi Enn to release them, or to kill them before the fire burned
them alive, but the anger they had aroused left no room for mercy
in the great hearts of the Elder warriors.
It was long after when all the wounds of all the Elder men had been
attended before the mercy ships of the Rosy Cross flitted from
wrecked hulk to burning hull to pick up the survivors and the
wounded. For these were rebels, and the hearts of the Elder men had
little care for men too stupid to realize that their rule was one
of goodness, mercy and wisdom, and not a thing to be rebelled
against by any but fools who know not where their best interest
lies.
(...)
Under the great weight of the far off war-gear trundling slowly
toward him Salund shot the terrible rock melting ray, and the floor
crashed through under their weight and dropped them, shouting with
death into the gulfs he had bored beneath them. The pillar of rock
about which the machine revolved became the pillar of rock
upholding the whole rock-warren city of Ra-Mu, for Salund circled
and circled. seeking with his vast power-ray each last fleeing
enemy tank and troop carrier and tool of war, and boring under it a
vast shaft of nothingness into which it fell. And so it was that
single-handed Salund Mar set at naught all the war gear and cunning
of a nation of men far superior to himself, but it was with the
invention of one of their number he did this deed. For this
rock-melting ray was a thing that Konro Loral had worked on by
himself for years. Even so, few knew of it, so that when Salund Mar
unleashed its vast rock dissolving power upon them, it was a
complete surprise.
Salund sat upon the seat of the vast machine for a long time,
entranced with the awful power of it, as it revolved about its
great rock pillar that held the weight of rock from which it had
burned away all the support. Steadily the terrible rock dissolver
took away all the under-rock of the land of Kui, and a vast gulf
was formed under the whole land. The eyes of Salund were filled
with the madness of power as he watched its terrible work. Of the
armies that had entered the ways leading to the city of Ra-Mu there
was left no man alive, and nothing remained of all those great ways
and living places but one vast open gulf of darkness, for Salund
had allowed the great ray to dissolve it all into the grey drifting
smoke that filled the gulf with choking vapor of rock.
--Richard S. Shaver, "The City of Kui" (Amazing Stories,
December '46)
Guess what happens next. The true story behind the legend of the
lost continent.
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