rolls
of parchment.

* * * * *

"The Wise Ones," Gor was saying. "Servants of the Holy Mountain." Yet
even then men knelt at Rawson's coming as had the other more humble
people. They then returned to their tables, and in that crystal
mountain was only the sound of their scratching pens and the faint
sigh of a breeze that blew in through a hidden passage to furnish
ventilation.

Yet there were some at those tables whose pens did not move; they
seemed to be waiting expectantly. One of them spoke. "The time is
near," he said. "Are the Servants prepared?"

And the waiting ones answered: "We are prepared."

Rawson glanced sharply about. "What hocus-pocus is this?" he was
asking himself. Still the silence persisted. He looked at the waiting
men, motionless, their heads bent, their hands ready above the
parchment scrolls. He saw again the white walls, the single broad band
of some glittering metal that made a continuous black stripe around
walls and ceiling and floor.

"What kind of ore is that?" he was asking himself silently. "It's
metallic; it runs right through the mountain. I wonder--"

His idle thoughts were never finished. A ripping crash like the
crackle of lightning in the vaulted room! Then a voice--the mountain
itself was speaking--speaking in words whose familiar accent brought a
sob into his throat.

"Station K-twenty-two-A," said the voice of the mountain, "the
super-power station of the Radio-news Service at Los Angeles,
California."

* * * * *

"It's tuned in!" gasped Rawson. "Tuned in on the big L. A. station! A
gigantic crystal detector! Those heavy laminations of imbedded metal
furnish the inductance." Then his incoherent words ended--the mountain
was speaking.

"Radiopress dispatch: The invasion of the mole-men has not been
checked. Army Air Force fought a terrific engagement about midnight,
last night, and met defeat. Over one hundred fighting planes were
brought down in flames. Even the new battle-plane type, the latest
dreadnoughts of the air, succumbed.

"Heavy loss of life, although civilian population of three towns had
been evacuated before the mole-men destroyed them. Gordon Smith is
reported killed. Smith was associated with Dean Rawson in the Tonah
Basin where the mole-men first appeared. With Colonel Culver of the
California National Guard, Smith was returning from Washington in an
Army dreadnought which crashed back