say that I relish the idea, but since I know that you are a
good poker player, Dick, I am willing to follow your hunch. How about
you, DuQuesne?"

"Not I," declared that worthy, emphatically. "Nobody wires me up to
anything I can't understand, and that machine is too deep for me."

Margaret elected to follow Crane's example, and, impressed by the need
for haste evident in the slave's bearing, the four walked up to the
machine without further talk. The electrodes were clamped into place
quickly and the slave pressed a lever. Instantly the four visitors felt
that they had a complete understanding of the languages and customs of
both Mardonale, the nation in which they now were, and of Kondal, to
which nation the slaves belonged, the only two civilized nations upon
Osnome. While the look of amazement at this method of receiving
instruction was still upon their faces, the slave--or rather, as they
now knew him, Dunark, the Kofedix or Crown Prince of the great nation of
Kondal--began to disconnect the wires. He cut out the wires leading to
the two girls and to Crane, and was reaching for Seaton's, when there
was a blinding flash, a crackling sound, the heavy smoke of burning
metal and insulation, and both Dunark and Seaton fell to the floor.

Before Crane could reach them, however, they were upon their feet and
the stranger said in his own tongue, now understood by every one but
DuQuesne:

"This machine is a mechanical educator, a thing entirely new, in our
world at least. Although I have been working on it for a long time, it
is still in a very crude form. I did not like to use it in its present
state of development, but it was necessary in order to warn you of what
Nalboon is going to do to you, and to convince you that the best way of
saving your lives would save our lives as well. The machine worked
perfectly until something, I don't know what, went wrong. Instead of
stopping, as it should have done, at teaching your party to speak our
languages, it short-circuited us two completely, so that every
convolution in each of our brains has been imprinted upon the brain of
the other. It was the sudden formation of all the new convolutions that
rendered us unconscious. I can only apologize for the break-down, and
assure you that my intentions were of the best."

"You needn't apologize," returned Seaton. "That was a wonderful
performance, and we're both gainers, anyway, aren't we? It has taken us
all our lives to learn wha