om you,
we are a race of mechanics and have developed machines of many kinds to
a high state of efficiency, including electrical machines of all kinds.
In fact, electricity, generated by our great waterfalls, is our only
power. No scientist upon Osnome has ever had an inkling that
intra-atomic energy exists. Nalboon cannot understand the power, but he
solved the means of liberating it at a glance--and that glance sealed
your death-warrants. With the Skylark, he could conquer Kondal, and to
assure the downfall of my nation he would do anything.

"Also, he or any other Osnomian scientist would go to any lengths
whatever--would challenge the great First Cause itself--to secure even
one of those little bottles of the chemical you call 'salt.' It is far
and away the scarcest and most precious substance in the world. It is so
rare that those bottles you produced at the table held more than the
total amount previously known to exist upon Osnome. We have great
abundance of all the heavy metals, but the lighter metals are rare.
Sodium and chlorin are the rarest of all known elements. Its immense
value is due, not to its rarity, but to the fact that it is an
indispensable component of the controlling instruments of our wireless
power stations and that it is used as a catalyst in the manufacture of
our hardest metals.

"For these reasons, you understand why Nalboon does not intend to let
you escape and why he intends that this kokam (our equivalent of a day)
shall be your last. About the second or third kam (hour) of the sleeping
period he intends to break into the Skylark, learn its control, and
secure the salt you undoubtedly have in the vessel. Then my party and
myself will be thrown to the kolon. You and your party will be killed
and your bodies smelted to recover the salt that is in them. This is the
warning I had to give you. Its urgency explains the use of my untried
mechanical educator; the hope that my party could escape with yours, in
your vessel, explains why you saw me, the Kofedix of Kondal, prostrate
myself before that arch-fiend Nalboon."

"How do you, a captive prince of another nation, know these things?"
asked Crane, doubtfully.

"I read Nalboon's ideas from the brain of that officer whom the Karfedix
Seaton killed. He was a ladex of the guards--an officer of about the
same rank as one of your colonels. He was high in Nalboon's favor, and
he was to have been in charge of the work of breaking into the Skylark