Chapter 14: Old 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.