rm
before an assembled company of Muteite philosophers who were gathered in
one of the under-surface halls of architectural beauty for consultation.

As I entered the vast hall in my natural manner I attracted unusual
attention. It was amusing to see how all eyes were fastened upon me as I
calmly walked toward the front of the audience. Here I had one of the
hardest tasks of all my journey, to converse in a soundless language. I
lacked faith at first to make the attempt, but this delay was but for a
moment, for I first fixed my mind upon what I wished to communicate, and
instantly a dozen or more Muteites signified that they were in sensitive
touch with my thought.

I will give a small portion of the mental telepathic conversation
between myself and my auditors, although I must relate it as if words
were actually spoken, or it would be totally unintelligible to the
people of my own likeness.

"Let no one be alarmed," I hurriedly addressed them, as a thousand
giant forms were trembling at my appearance. "My mission is one of
peace. I have come to help rather than harm," I continued.

"From what section of our world have you come?" came a hundred thought
flashes in wild confusion.

"I am not from your world, but from another," I answered with closed
mouth as best I could.

Then I learned an important feature of this mind language. A hundred or
more interrogations came flying at me in thick confusion. At once the
chairman or leader of the meeting gave restrictive orders which actually
prohibited my audience from further communication with me, although I
might address them. The chairman bid me commune with him and he
thereafter acted as the spokesman of the whole assembly. It was no more
difficult for these philosophers to keep their minds closed to me than
it is for us to keep our mouths closed in an excitable meeting or
debate.

The chairman, looking with increasing curiosity at my strangely shaped
face and head, interrogated me thus:

"Are you an angel of light, or one of darkness?"

"I am neither."

"What then can you be?"

"I am a created being from a far-off region of space. I was born on a
world which revolves around a star untold millions of miles distant."

"If you are not a spirit, how could you have traveled such incredible
distances?"

"That is yet a mystery to me," I admitted. "The power of my flight is
much like the mode of your communication, for each is alike mysterious
to me."

By this t