a human passenger.

"He put the idea up to this girl, Lunar, and she did not seem to care
one way or another. Dalis was all wrapped up in his ideas, and gave the
girl the name of Lunar, as being symbolical of his plans for her. He
coached and trained her against the consummation of his plan. We knew
something, theoretically at least, about the conditions on the Moon, and
everything possible was done for her, to make it feasible for her to
exist on the Moon. My error was in ever permitting the experiment to be
made, since if I had negatived the idea. Dalis would have gone no
further!

"But I, too, was curious, and Lunar did not care. Well, the rocket was
constructed, and shot outward into space by a series of explosions. No
word was ever received from Lunar, though it was known that she landed
on the Moon!

* * * * *

"I say no word was ever received, yet what you have intimated proves
that Dalis has either been in mental communication with her, hoping to
induce her to send a force against the Earth, and assist him in
mastering the Earth, overthrowing we Sarkas--or has been biding his
time against something of the thing we have now accomplished."

This seemed to clear up many things for Sarka, though it piled higher
upon his shoulders the weight of his responsibilities. The
other-worldliness of Lunar, called now Luar, explained her mastery of
the Gnomes, and through them the cubes, and her knowledge of the
omnipotent qualities of the white flames of the Moon's core, which might
have been, it came to Sarka in a flash, the source of all life on the
Moon in the beginning!

"But father," went on Sarka, "I don't see any sense in this aerial
bombardment by Mars!"

"I believe," said Sarka the Second sadly, "that before another ten hours
pass we shall know the worst there is to be known: but now, son, instead
of going into attack against the Moon, we go into battle against the
combined forces of Mars and of the Moon!"

* * * * *

Sarka now took command of the forces of the Earth. Swiftly he turned to
the people of the Gens of Dalis who had come back with him.

"You will be divided into eleven equal groups, as nearly as possible.
Father, will you please arrange the division? Each group will be
attached to the staff of one of the Spokesman of the Gens, so that each
Spokesman will have the benefit of your knowledge with reference to
conditions on the Moon. E