He saw the great arching ribs, the looming platinum machinery that had no meaning for him because there had never been anything like it on Earth. Machines, and panels, that bore gauges and dials marked in strange symbols. And the alien but unmistakable assembly of jet-tubes, the great turbine-engines that once had driven thunderously—
Nelson spoke, and the sound of his own voice was echoing and strange in that vast dead vault of metal.
"A ship," he whispered. "The Cavern is a giant ship, that crashed here heaven alone knows how long ago. A space ship, that came to Earth and fell and was buried here by the silt of ages."
The deadly danger of the imminent crisis with Sloan was almost forgotten in Nelson's stupefied wonder. He moved slowly forward deeper into the shadowy ship, looking up at the huge broken machines.
Was this the colossal secret of the valley of L'Lan? Those ancients whose subtle science had made the thought-crowns and the mind-transferer — were they from another world, long, long ago? He stepped between two thick platinum pillars, on each of which was mounted a big quartz sphere. And suddenly, as though it came from the depthless gulfs of time, a cool, vast alien mind spoke to his.
The words, the thoughts, rang through his brain with a throbbing power that shook the whole fabric of his mind.
"You who shall come after us, take warning!"
Chapter XVII
THE DAY OF THE BROTHERHOOD
Nelson stopped, stricken by a freezing awe that he had never felt before. It was not the mere fact of the thought-voice speaking in his mind that stupefied him. He was too accustomed to that, by now.
It was the power and the quality of this new mental voice. It had in it the vibrations of a mind of range and magnitude beyond his imagination. It was alien, yet had a tantalizing echo of familiarity.
"Take warning!"
Nsharra's voice broke the spell. She had stepped quickly with Tark to his side as he stood frozen between the platinum pillars.
"It is the voice of the ancients of the Cavern, Eric Nelson! Their voice, speaking from the dim past, from those!" She pointed at the great, glittering quartz spheres atop the two platinum pillars.
"Each time one steps between these pillars, their mind speaks — always the same. My father and all the Guardians before him knew it."
Nelson began dimly to understand. The mental voice he heard was a record — not a sonic record but a telepathic one imprinted somehow in those quartz spheres and reproduced to all who came between them.
How was it done? How could thought be recorded and reproduced? He did not know that, would never know. But that the ancients had been masters of telepathic science, his experience with the thought-crowns and the mind-transferer proved.
And now, after a pregnant pause, that cool passionless voice was speaking on in his mind.
"Take warning not lightly to unchain the forces and powers within this ship, should you learn to master them! Take warning to let no unscrupulous or ignorant ones even know of these powers! Take warning from our own tragic fate!
"We who speak to you were not like you in body. We were not of this world of yours. Upon a world far out in the starry universe we were born and developed in intelligence and grew to great knowledge and power.
"Our world was a world of beauty, our cities were cities of laughter and light. But we aspired too high, we dreamed too greatly of conquering all nature and, finally, we unloosed powers that we could not chain again and that began to destroy our world.
"So we built this starship, and in it the last remnants of our race went out from our dying planet into the stars to find another world. We searched star-system after star-system without finding a world that fitted us — until at last a disastrous accident in space crippled our starship as it neared this System.
"Our crippled ship crashed upon this planet, in this valley. It could never fly again. And we could not build another ship, for we were dying. This world was wrong for us, its atmosphere and chemical composition poisoned us and that poison in our bodies left us not long to live.
"We knew that we were doomed. Yet we could not let all the hard-won intelligence and knowledge of our race thus perish! Therefore we determined that, though our bodies were dying, our minds should continue to live upon this planet.
"They could only do so, if we transferred our minds into the bodies of creatures native to this world. Only the higher creatures could house our minds. So we picked five different species from among them, the ape and the tiger and the horse and the wolf and eagle.
"At least one of those differing species, we hoped, would survive even if the others perished. So we took members of those clans and we so altered their brain-structure as to give them the power of telepathic speech and so altered their genes as to make the change in them hereditary. Then we transferred our minds into their bodies.
"Now that has been done. We wear the new bodies of the five Clans and our old bodies are dead. We go out now from this wrecked ship to begin again the struggle against nature on this planet.
"We know that a dark time is coming! We know that the children of our new bodies will not inherit all our capacity of mind, that our knowledge and wisdom will slip from their memories and be largely forgotten.
"But some day, in ages to come, some at least of the five species will slowly develop to intelligence approximating our own. Then they will understand the relics of our power left in this ship.
"When that time comes, take warning! Take warning not to loose doom upon yourself as we did upon our world! Remember always the tragedy of us, your star-born ancestors of long ago!"
Eric Nelson, stunned and incredulous, felt the strong vibration of thought die away in his mind. He stepped back in awe from between the platinum pillars, with Tark and Nsharra.
"Good Lord!" Nelson husked. "That incredible story — it means that the myth of the Cavern of Creation is true!
Yes, it was true, that fantastic legend to which he had not given even second thought, at which even the Humanites had scoffed!
Out of this cavern — this cavern that was a buried star-ship of long ago—had come the first intelligence on Earth! Intelligence that had embodied itself in the five great clans of which man was but one.
"The Clans and men were really equal, from the first!" he whispered. "In Brotherhood from the first! And then some of the human Clan, leaving this valley and spreading out over Earth—"
The riddle that had mystified anthropologists, the riddle of man's enigmatic origin in Central Asia, was solved at last. Long ago ancient and alien beings whose physical nature he might never know had transferred their minds into the bodies of the five species of Earthly animals. Had done that with machines which still survived, one of which Kree had used so weirdly upon himself!
And of the five Clans originally in this valley, it was the man-Clan that had gone out and subdued the rest of the wild earth and its animals, had made itself tyrannical master of the unthinking brutes outside the valley.
And this valley L'Lan, where the five clans were still equal in intelligence and where the Brotherhood still held true, had been forgotten by the conquering human hosts in the outer world! Nelson felt shaken by the revelation. He looked with widened eyes around the vast gloom, the towering platinum machines.
"To think of the powers, the knowledge, that have been hidden here for ages!"
"It is why this cavern is a forbidden place," said Nsharra. "It is why my father could not let any enter here to hear these records that prove the origin of the Brotherhood is no myth!"