第24章

"In Papua," I explained, "there is a wide-spread and im-measurably old tradition that 'imprisoned under the hills' is a race of giants who once ruled this region 'when it stretched from sun to sun before the moon god drew the waters over it'--I quote from the legend.Not only in Papua but through-out Malaysia you find this story.And, so the tradition runs, these people--the Chamats--will one day break through the hills and rule the world; 'make over the world' is the literal translation of the constant phrase in the tale.It was Herbert Spencer who pointed out that there is a basis of fact in every myth and legend of man.It is possible that these survivors Iam discussing form Spencer's fact basis for the Malaysian legend.1*1William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist, recently fighting in France with America's air force, called attention to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the Atlantic Monthly.Still more significant was it that he noted a per-sistent rumour that the breaking out of the buried race was close.--W.J.B., Pres.I.A.of S.

"This much is sure--the moon door, which is clearly operated by the action of moon rays upon some unknown element or combination and the crystals through which the moon rays pour down upon the pool their prismatic columns, are humanly made mechanisms.So long as they are humanly made, and so long as it IS this flood of moonlight from which the Dweller draws its power of materialization, the Dweller itself, if not the product of the human mind, is at least de-pendent upon the product of the human mind for its appear-ance."

"Wait a minute, Goodwin," interrupted O'Keefe."Do you mean to say you think that this thing is made of--well --of moonshine?""Moonlight," I replied, "is, of course, reflected sunlight.

But the rays which pass back to earth after their impact on the moon's surface are profoundly changed.The spectro-scope shows that they lose practically all the slower vibra-tions we call red and infra-red, while the extremely rapid vibrations we call the violet and ultra-violet are accelerated and altered.Many scientists hold that there is an unknown element in the moon--perhaps that which makes the gigantic luminous trails that radiate in all directions from the lunar crater Tycho--whose energies are absorbed by and carried on the moon rays.

"At any rate, whether by the loss of the vibrations of the red or by the addition of this mysterious force, the light of the moon becomes something entirely different from mere modified sunlight--just as the addition or subtraction of one other chemical in a compound of several makes the product a substance with entirely different energies and potentiali-ties.

"Now these rays, Larry, are given perhaps still another mysterious activity by the globes through which Throck-martin said they passed in the Chamber of the Moon Pool.