The Radio Planet, Ralph Milne Farley [manga ereader txt] 📗
- Author: Ralph Milne Farley
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The quartz and the limestone were already available. Soda would be a byproduct of his sal ammoniac when he got around to making it, but this would not be until he had made sulphuric acid from his copper ore, which was a most complicated process as he remembered it.
Potash could be got simply by dripping water through wood-ashes, evaporating the water, roasting the sediment, dissolving again in water, letting the impurities settle, and then evaporating the clear liquid, and roasting again. He started this process at once.
But he had no idea how to make litharge. Furthermore, he could not blow his glass until he had metal tubes, so he abandoned further steps for the present.
While he was pondering over these problems a messenger arrived, demanding his immediate presence at the quarters of Jud the Excuse-Maker.
Jud was in a state of great excitement when the earth-man arrived.
Said Jud: “Do you remember what you told me about the beasts of the south, who swim through the air, talk soundless speech, and use magic slingshots like yours which you captured from the Roies near Sur?”
“Yes,” Cabot replied. “I hope that by this time I have given sufficient demonstration of my truthfulness so that you now believe the story.”
“Oh, I believed it at the time,” Jud hastily explained, “But now I have proof of it, for we have captured one of these beasts. That is, we think it is one of them. I want you to see and identify it, before we present it to Theoph the Grim.”
“Thereby displaying commendable foresight,” Myles commented. “Where is this Formian?”
“In a cage in the zoo,” the Vairking noble replied. “Come; I will take you there.”
So together the two threaded the streets of Vairkingi to the zoo. This was part of the city which the earth-man had never before visited. Its denizens fascinated him.
There were huge water snakes with humanlike hands. There were spherical beasts with a row of legs around the equator, a row of eyes around the tropic of cancer, and a circular mouth rimmed with teeth at the north pole. There were—
But at this point Jud urged him on into another room, where he promptly forgot all the other creatures in the sight which met his eyes.
In a large wooden cage in the center of the room was an enraged ant-man gnawing at the bars, while a score or so of Vairking warriors stood around and prodded him with spears.
“Stop!” Jud shouted at the soldiery, whereat they all fell back obediently.
This called the attention of the imprisoned beast to the newcomers, so he looked up and stared at them. Cabot stared back.
Then he rushed forward to the cage!
XIVOLD FRIENDS
“Doggo!” he cried. “Doggo! They told me you were dead!”
But of course all this was lost on the radio speech sense of the prisoner. Vairking soldiers interposed their spears between Myles Cabot and what they believed was sure destruction at the jaws of the black beast. Cabot recoiled.
“Jud,” he called out, “order off your henchmen! I am not crazy, nor do I court death. This creature is the only one of the Formians whom I can control. He will prove a valuable ally for us, if I can persuade him to forgive the indignities which your men have already heaped upon him.”
“I do not believe you,” Jud replied, “for how can men communicate with beasts, especially with strange beasts such as this, the like of which man ne’er set eyes on before?”
“Remember that I am a magician,” Myles returned somewhat testily. Then seeing that Jud was still obdurate, he addressed the guards. “You know me for a magician?”
“Yes,” they sullenly admitted.
“And you know the magic on which I am now engaged, and to which all of my recent expeditions relate?”
“Yes,” one replied. “You seek to call down the lightnings of heaven, and harness them to transport your words across the boiling seas.”
“Rightly spoken!” the Radio Man asserted. “Therefore, if you do not stand aside, I shall call those lightnings down for another purpose, namely, to blast you. Stand aside!”
One of the guards spoke to another, “Why should we risk our lives to save his? Let the magician save himself!”
So they stood aside. Myles stepped up to the cage, and he and Doggo each patted the other’s cheek through the bars.
Jud the Excuse-Maker sheepishly explained, “I knew that you were speaking the truth, but I wished to learn what method you would use to handle the soldiers. You did nobly.”
“Bunk!” the earth-man ejaculated, well knowing that the Vairking would not understand him.
“What means that word?” Jud inquired, much interested.
“That,” Myles replied, grinning, “is a complimentary term often applied on my own planet, the earth, to the remarks of our great leaders.”
Jud, highly complimented, let it go at that. Myles now ordered paper and a charcoal pencil, and began a conversation with his ant friend.
“They told me you were dead,” he wrote. “Or I never would have left the city of Yuriana or deserted your cause.”
“My cause died with my daughter, the queen,” Doggo replied. “I alone survive. I escaped by plane, and have been flitting around the country ever since, until my alcohol gave out. Then these furry Cupians captured me. They got me with a net so that I could not fight back.
“Also, I was distant from my airship at the time, or it would have gone hard with them for the ship is well stocked with bombs, and rifle cartridges, and one rifle. Now tell me of yourself. How do you stand with these furry Cupians?”
“They are not Cupians.” Myles wrote. “They are Vairkings, a race much like myself, who send messages with their mouths and with their ears, instead of using their antennae for both, as the Cupians and you Formians do. Do you remember the old legend of Cupia, that creatures like me dwell beyond the boiling seas? Well, it appears to have been true, though how any one could have known or even suspected it, is a mystery to me.”
“You have not yet told me how you stand,” the ant-man reminded him.
“They recognize me as a great magician,” Myles answered, “and I have promised to build them a radio set, and to lead them to victory over the Formians.”
“Just as you did for the Cupians,” Doggo mused. “But you will have a harder task here, for these furry creatures appear to know no metals, nor any of the arts save woodcarving.”
They patted each other’s cheeks again. Then, before any one could interfere, Myles Cabot unbolted the door of the cage, and out walked Doggo, a free ant once more.
The soldiery, and Jud with them, promptly scattered to the four walls of the room.
“Come over here, Jud,” Myles invited, “and meet my friend—that is, unless you are afraid.”
“Oh, no, I do not fear him,” Jud the Excuse-Maker replied, “but I do not consider it consistent with the dignity of my position to be seen fraternizing with a wild beast.”
It was typical. Myles laughed. Then he led the huge ant home with him to his quarters.
Quivven was amazed, but not at all frightened, at the great black creature; and when an introduction had been effected on paper, she and Doggo developed quite a strong liking for each other.
As soon as the Formian had been fed and assigned to a room in the ménage—some improvement over the menagerie, by the way—his host and hostess took him on a tour of inspection of their laboratory.
With the true scientific spirit so characteristic of the cultured but warlike race which once dominated Cupia, Doggo plunged at once into the spirit of the almost super-Porovian task which Myles had undertaken; and it soon became evident that the new comer would prove to be an invaluable accession. His scientific training would dovetail exactly with that of the earth-man, and would supplement it at every point.
Almost at the very start he suggested a solution of the problems which had been puzzling Myles.
Cabot’s recollection of the process of sulphuric acid manufacture had been that it required a complicated roasting furnace, two filtering towers, and a tunnel about two hundred feet long made of lead, and into which nitric acid fumes had to be injected. His recollection of nitric acid manufacture was that it required sulphuric acid among other ingredients. So how was he to make either acid without first having the other? And furthermore, where was he to procure enough lead to build a two-hundred-foot tunnel?
Doggo solved these problems very nicely—by avoiding them.
“What do you need sulphuric add for?” he wrote.
“Merely to use in making hydrochloric acid,” wrote the earth-man in reply.
“And that?”
“To use in making sal ammoniac for my batteries.”
“Do you need nitric acid for anything except the manufacture of sulphuric?”
“No.”
“Then,” Doggo suggested, “let us make our sal ammoniac directly from its elements. We shall build a series of about twenty vertical cast-iron retorts, as soon as you have smelted your iron. These we shall fill with damp salt, pressed into blocks and dried. We shall heat these retorts with charcoal fires, and through them we shall pass then, air, and the sulphur fumes of your ore-roasting.
“After about fifteen days we shall daily cut out the first retort, dump out the soda which has formed in it, refill it, and place it at the farther end of the series. The liquid, which condenses at the end of the series, will be diluted hydrochloric acid. By passing the fumes of roast animal-refuse through it we shall convert it into sal ammoniac solution.”
Accordingly, the quicker they started their foundry operations, the better.
By this time chalcopyrite, quartz, and charcoal were present at Vairkingi in large quantities. The ore was first roasted, and then was piled into the smelter with the quartz and charcoal; the air-bellows were started, fire was inserted through the slaghole, and soon a raging pillar of flame served notice on all Vairkingi that the devil-furnace of the great magician was in full blast. By this time it was night, but no one thought of stopping.
Of course, there were complications. The furry soldiers deserted the pumps at the first roar of green-tinged flame, but Doggo instantly stepped into the breach and operated all of the bellows with his various legs. Finally the warriors, on seeing that Myles and Quivven had survived the ordeal of fire, sheepishly returned to their posts, and were soon loudly boasting of their own bravery and of how their fellows would envy them on the morrow when they should relate their experiences.
Along toward morning Cabot drew his first heat of molten matter into a brick ladle and poured it into the converter. It was an impressive sight. The shadowy wooden-walled inclosure, lit by the waving greenish flare of a pillar of fire, which metamorphosed the white skin of the earth-man into that of a jaundiced Oriental, tinged Quivven with green-gold, and glinted off the shiny carapace of Doggo as off the facets of a bloodstone. In the darkness of the background, toiled the workers at their pumps.
Then there came a change. The fires died down, the pumping ceased, oil lamps were lit, and the ghostly glare gave place to a faint but healthy light, although over all hung the ominous silence of expectancy.
The ladle was brought up, a hand-hole-cover removed, and out flowed a crimson liquid, tinting all the eager surrounding faces with a sinister ruddiness.
Again the red glare, as the ladle was poured into the barrel-shaped converter. Then the pumps were started again, and the blast from the converter replaced that of the furnace with its ghostly light. Two hours later the converter was tipped, and pure molten copper was poured out into the ladle. Once more the sinister ruddiness.
Quickly the molds were filled, the red light was gone, the spell was broken, conversation was resumed. The first metallurgy of Vairkingi was an accomplished fact.
Day came, and with it loud pounding on the gate. Cabot answered it, carelessly and abstractedly sliding back the bolt before inquiring who was outside. The gate swung open with a bang, almost knocking Myles into a flower bed, and in rushed a Vairking youth with drawn sword and panting heavily.
“You beast!” he cried, lunging at the earth-man as he spoke.
But in his haste and anger he lunged too hard and too far; so that Cabot, although unarmed, was able to step under his guard and grasp him by the wrist before he recovered. Quick as lightning the boy’s sword arm was bent up behind his back, and he was “in chancery”, to use the wrestling term.
Slowly, grimly, Cabot forced the imprisoned hand upward between the shoulder-blades of his opponent, until with a groan the latter relinquished the sword, and it fell clattering to the ground.
Smiling, Cabot stooped down and picked it up, and forced the young intruder against the wall.
“Now,” said the earth-man, “explain yourself.”
The boy faced Myles like a cornered panther.
“It’s Quivven,” he snarled. “You have stolen my Quivven.”
“Nonsense!” Myles exclaimed. “What do you mean?”
“I am Tipi the Steadfast,” the youth replied. “Long have I
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