I Remember Lemuria | Page 7

became a member of the class immediately and discovered that I had entered upon the opening discourse.
The class was dominated by the immense presence of the teacher, a son of the Titans, bearded and horned, expounding in the exact syllogism of the technicon training. As he spoke, I became certain that this dynamo of human force should soon charge such a small battery as myself with everything in the way of knowledge I could assimilate.
There was only one slight disturbing factor. Just as I had sensed a strange, deeply buried and secret fear in the Sybyl, I knew that in the mind of this great son of the Titans there was a gnawing something that a part of his brain dwelt on continually. Fear was a smell that was ever in the nose down here in Tean City. The realization disturbed me so much that I failed to absorb a portion of the teacher's discourse. My absorption must have caught his attention, too, for I saw him staring disapprovingly at me. With a start, I re-concentrated my mind on what he was saying.
". . . a great cold ball hung in space. Once it had been a mighty, living planet, swinging ponderously around a dying sun that it had never seen, being covered with clouds. Then that sun had gone out, and the deadly ter [*12] stiffened the surface life into glittering death.
"The planet's forests, which had lived in dense, dripping fog, had, in their many ages of life, deposited coal beds untold miles in depth--clear down to the stony core of the planet. No fire had ever touched these forests, because the dense fog had never allowed fire to burn.
"Venus, our nearest neighbor in space, is such a planet now, although much smaller. As it is on Venus, so it was on the unknown planet.
"Hanging in space the dead immensity of this ball was largely potential heat, for its tremendously thick shell was mostly pure carbon.
"Such once was the sun, your sun and mine; the sun of which Mu is a daughter.
"Then a blazing meteor, spewed violently from some sun in space, came flaming toward this cold ball. Deep it plunged into the beds of carbon. The fire spread swiftly--an ever-fire of disintegrance, not the passing-fire of combustion--and our sun was born into live-giving flame!
"A carbon fire is a clean fire and contains no dense metals like radium, titanium, uranium, polonium--whose emanations in disintegrance in suns cause old age and death because minute particles given off accumulate and convey the ever-fire into the body, there to kill it in time.
"Then sun heat was clean, and life sprang furiously into being on its daughter, Mu's surface. Nor did this life die--death came only by being eaten. Then life suffered old age not at all, for there was no cause."
The voice of the teacher paused a moment, and now indeed I knew that there was much for me to learn. Here was something that struck deep into me with an instantly vital interest. Most provoking of all was his peculiar emphasis on the word "then." I could not help the question that sprang to my lips.
"Why do you say 'Then life suffered old age not at all, for there was no cause.'? Is there cause now?"
It was as though I had placed a torch beneath the hidden fear in the Titan's eyes, for it flamed forth suddenly for all to see; but it was as quickly quelled. All in the class looked at me with that shocked expression which plainly said I had overstepped my bounds; but in the eyes of Arl I thought I saw the gleam of approval, and I found a dam to hold back my ebbing courage.
The teacher looked at me, and I saw kindliness in his eyes.
"You are new here, Mutan Mion. Therefore it is easy to understand that you have not heard of the projected migration of all Atlans to a new world under a beneficial sun. . .
"Yes, young ro, there is cause." He was answering my question with determination now, but he was not speaking to me alone; he was making his answer a part of his discourse. "I have spoken of the carbon fire as a clean fire. By this I mean that the atoms of carbon, when disintegrated, send forth the beneficial energy ash called exd which can be assimilated by our bodies and used to promote life-growth. However, the source of this ash is not carbon alone, but all other elements excepting the heavy metals such as I mentioned before. It is when these heavy elements begin to disintegrate in the ever-fire that we come to the cause of age.
"The particles of radium and other radioactive metals are the poison that causes the aging of tissue. These particles are thrown