"I do not know exactly, but it is some horrible rite which the Masters practise each month on certain selected human victims, who are never seen alive again," Kim Idim answered, his tone heavy with dread.
"Osiris save the maiden—for we cannot!" Ptah exclaimed in horror. "It would require thousands of men to force an entrance into that guarded fortress. Nor could we enter there by trickery, as we have done here."
"But we've got to get Chiri out of there somehow!" Ethan exclaimed hoarsely. He asked desperately, "Kim Idim, couldn't we stir up these Luunians to revolt against the Masters, and storm the fortress?"
"No, no!" Kim Idim declared. "The Luunians would never revolt against their rulers, for all the people of this city are drugged into hypnotized submission to the Masters."
"Drugged?" cried the Egyptian.
"Yes, I have discovered it since I have been prisoned here," the old scientist told them rapidly. "When the Masters came to earth from another world long ago, they conquered and enslaved humanity by secretly poisoning all water supplies with an hypnotic drug, which subtly changed their brains so that they fell into a state of perpetual awe of and submission to the Masters.
"That was millenniums ago. Since then the Masters, undisputed rulers of the earth, have become decadent and lost almost all their former scientific powers, but they still continue to drug the people of their cities, and those people will never rebel until they cease to be so drugged. Indeed, these Luunians would fight to the death to protect the Masters."
"Then I was right—there is no hope for the girl," Ptah exclaimed. "For if there are no men left on Earth except the drugged slaves of the Masters, where shall we get the army that would be needed to storm that fortress?"
"I can get that army—yes, and a mighty one!" Kim Idim declared excitedly. "I can do it, if I can get back to my house in the forest where is the time-ray projector."
Ethan, even in his agonized apprehension for Chiri, was stupefied by the implication.
"Good God, Kim Idim, you don't mean you'd get an army from"
"From the past, yes!" Kim Idim exclaimed. "With the projector, I can draw thousands of men at a time out of dead ages, as easily as I drew you six. Out of the past I can draw whole great armies, and we can lead them back here to Luun, attack the city and the fortress, rescue Chiri and destroy the Masters' rule for ever."
For a space of moments, Ethan and Ptah stared aghast at the old scientist, petrified by the incredible audacity of the plan he had proposed.
To draw great armies of fighting-men out of the past! To raise the hosts of the past against the drugged, enslaved people of the future!
"By the claws of Bast, it is a great plan!" cried Ptah excitedly. "And it is the only one by which we can hope to save the maiden."
"It might be done," muttered Ethan, his thoughts racing, "But it will take hours to get Kim Idim back to his projector, to draw those armies from the past and get them moving toward this city. And at noon tomorrow, you said, Chiri is to meet some hideous fate."
Ethan's jaw clamped in sudden decision. "Ptah, you and the other boys will ride back with Kim Idim to the projector, and help him put his plan into effect."
