er, we were upon the world, and these others were within it.
There came a comet. Oh, our astronomers plotted its course; they told
us we were safe. But at the last some unknown influence diverted it;
its gaseous projection swept our world with flame. Only an instant;
but when it had passed there was left only death...."

* * * * *

He was lost in recollection for a time; the girl beside him reached
over to touch his hand.

"Those within--the red ones--escaped," he went on. "They poured forth
when they found that catastrophe had overwhelmed us. And we, the
handful that were left, were forced to take shelter here. We have
lived here since, waiting for the day when the Master of Destinies
shall give us freedom and a world in which to live."

"You speak," suggested the scientist, "as if this had happened to you.
Surely you refer to your ancestors; you are the descendants of those
who were saved."

"We are the people," said the other. "We lived then; we live now; we
shall live for a future of endless years.

"Have you not searched for the means to control the life
principle--you people of Earth?" he asked. "We have it here. You
see"--and he waved a hand toward the standing throng--"we are young to
your eyes and the others who greeted you were the same."

McGuire and the scientist exchanged glances of corroboration.

"But your age," asked Sykes, "measured in years?"

"We hardly measure life in years."

Professor Sykes nodded slowly; his mind found difficulty in accepting
so astounding a fact. "But our language?" he queried. "How is it that
you can speak our tongue?"

The tall man smiled and leaned forward to place a hand on a knee of
each of the men beside him. "Why not," he asked, "when there doubtless
is relationship between us.

"You called the continent Atlantis. Perhaps its very existence is but
a fable now: it has been many centuries since we have had instruments
to record thought force from Earth, and we have lost touch. But, my
friends, even then we of Venus had conquered space, and it was we who
visited Atlantis to find a race more nearly like ourselves than were
the barbarians who held the other parts of Earth.

"I was there, but I returned. There were some who stayed and they were
lost with the others in the terrible cataclysm that sank a whole
continent beneath the waters. But some, we have believed, escaped."

"Why have you not been back?" the flyer asked. "You coul