h. You have gotten out
of control in the last year or so. But that shall be remedied. In the
meantime, a simple little surgical operation would make your smile a
permanent one, reaching from ear to ear. But there, my orders are to
deliver you and your equipment, all we have of it, intact. The
Heaven-Born has had a whim."

"And who," I asked, "is this Heaven-Born?"

"San-Lan," he replied, "misbegotten spawn of the late High Priestess
Nlui-Mok, and now Most Glorious Air Lord of All the Hans." He rolled out
these titles with a bow of exaggerated respect toward the west, and in a
tone of mockery. Those of his men who were near enough to hear,
snickered and giggled.

I was to learn that this amazing attitude of his was typical rather than
exceptional. Strange as it may seem, no Han rendered any respect to
another, nor expected it in return; that is, not genuine respect. Their
discipline was rigid and cold-bloodedly heartless. The most elaborate
courtesies were demanded and accorded among equals and from inferiors to
superiors, but such was the intelligence and moral degradation of this
remarkable race, that every one of them recognized these courtesies for
what they were; they must of necessity have been hollow mockeries. They
took pleasure in forcing one another to go through with them, each
trying to outdo the other in cynical, sardonic thrusts, clothed in the
most meticulously ceremonious courtesy. As a matter of fact, my captor,
by this crude reference to the origin of his ruler, was merely proving
himself a crude fellow, guilty of a vulgarity rather than of a
treasonable or disrespectful remark. An officer of higher rank and
better breeding, would have managed a clever innuendo, less direct, but
equally plain.

I was about to ask him what part of the country we were in and where I
was to be taken, when one of his men came running to him with a little
portable electronophone, which he placed before him, with much bowing
and scraping.

He conversed through this for a while, and then condescended to give me
the information that a ship would soon be above us, and that I was to be
transferred to it. In telling me this, he managed to convey, with crude
attempts at mock-courtesy, that he and his men would feel relieved to be
rid of me as a menace to health and sanitation, and would take exquisite
joy in inflicting me upon the crew of the ship.

CHAPTER VIII

Hypnotic Torture

Some twenty minutes later the sh