City of the Beast

Epilogue

AND that, substantially, was the testament of Professor Michael Kane, physicist and swordsmanscientist on Earth, warrior on Mars.

Believe it, as I believed it, if you will. Do not believe it if you can.

After hearing Kane's story I asked his permission to do two things.

He wanted to know what they were.

"Let me publish this remarkable story of yours,"

I said, "so that the whole world might judge your sanity and truthfulness."

He shrugged. "I suspect few will make the correct judgment."

"At least those few will be right."

"Very well-and the other request?"

"That you let me finance a privately built matter transmitter. Can it be done?"

"Yes. I am, after all, the inventor of the machine.

It would require a great deal of money, however."

I asked how much. He told me. It would make a large hold in my income-really rather more than I could afford, but I did not tell him that. I was ready to back my faith in his story with a great deal of money.

Now the transmitter is almost finished. Kane says he thinks he can tune it to the correct frequency.

We have worked like dogs for weeks to complete it, and I hope he is right.

This machine is in some ways more sophisticated than the first one, in that it is really a type of 'transceiver' being permanently tuned on this special wave.

Kane's idea is that if he can return to Marshowever many centuries in the past it lies-he will be able to build another machine there and thus travel back and forth at will. That side of it seems, perhaps, a little too ambitious, but I have developed a great respect for his scientific mind.

Will it work?

I do not yet know. As this manuscript goes to press, we still have a week or so in which to test the machine.

Perhaps, soon, I will have more to write about the Warriors of Mars?

I hope so.