'D.I., D.I., D.I.,' pause.
I glanced up at Jason. His eyes, filled with puzzled questioning, met mine, as though to ask, what does it mean?
The signals ceased and Jason touched his own key, sending his initials, 'J.G., J.G., J.G.' in the same grouping that we had received the D.I. signal. Almost instantly he was interrupted—you could feel the excitement of the sender.
'D.I., D.I., D.I., Pellucidar,' rattled against our eardrums like machine gun fire. Jason and I sat in dumb amazement, staring at one another.
'It is a hoax!' I exclaimed, and Jason, reading my lips, shook his head.
'How can it be a hoax?' he asked. 'There is no other station on earth equipped to send or to receive over the Gridley Wave, so there can be no means of perpetrating such a hoax.'
Our mysterious station was on the air again: 'If you get this, repeat my signal,' and he signed off with 'D.I., D.I., D.I.'
'That would be David Innes,' mused Jason.
'Emperor of Pellucidar,' I added.
Jason sent the message, 'D.I., D.I., D.I.,' followed by, 'what station is this,' and 'who is sending?'
'This is the Imperial Observatory at Greenwich , Pellucidar; Abner Perry sending. Who are you?'
'This is the private experimental laboratory of Jason Gridley, Tarzana , California ; Gridley sending,' replied Jason.
'I want to get into communication with Edgar Rice Burroughs; do you know him?'
'He is sitting here, listening in with me,' replied Jason.
'Thank God, if that is true, but how am I to know that it is true?' demanded Perry.
I hastily scribbled a note to Jason: 'Ask him if he recalls the fire in, his first gunpowder factory and that the building would have been destroyed had they not extinguished the fire by shoveling his gunpowder onto it?'
Jason grinned as he read the note, and sent it.
'It was unkind of David to tell of that,' came back the reply, 'but now I know that Burroughs is indeed there, as only he could have known of that incident. I have a long message for him. Are you ready?'
'Yes,' replied Jason. 'Then stand by.'
And this is the message that Abner Perry sent from the bowels of the earth; from The Empire of Pellucidar.
INTRODUCTION
IT MUST be some fifteen years since David Innes and I broke through the inner surface of the earth's crust and emerged into savage Pellucidar, but when a stationary sun hangs eternally at high noon and there is no restless moon and there are no stars, time is measureless and so it may have been a hundred years ago or one. Who knows? Of course, since David returned to earth and brought back many of the blessings of civilization we have had the means to measure time, but the people did not like it. They found that it put restrictions and limitations upon them that they never had felt before and they came to hate it and ignore it until David, in the goodness of his heart, issued an edict abolishing time in Pellucidar.
It seemed a backward step to me, but I am resigned now, and, perhaps, happier, for when all is said and done, time is a hard master, as you of the outer world, who are slaves of the sun, would be forced to admit were you to give the matter thought.
Here, in Pellucidar, we eat when we are hungry, we sleep when we are tired, we set out upon journeys when we leave and we arrive at our destinations when we get there; nor are we old because the earth has circled the sun seventy times since our birth, for we do not know that this has occurred.
Perhaps I have been here fifteen years, but what matter. When I came I knew nothing of radio—my researches and studies were along other lines—but when David came back from the outer world he brought many scientific works and from these I learned all that I know of radio, which has been enough to permit me to erect two successful stations; one here at Greenwich and one at the capital of The Empire of Pellucidar.
But, try as I would, I never could get anything from the outer world, and after a while I gave up trying, convinced that the earth's crust was impervious to radio.
In fact we used our stations but seldom, for, after all, Pellucidar is only commencing to emerge from the stone age, and in the economy of the stone age there seems to be no crying need for radio.
But sometimes I played with it and upon several occasions I thought that I heard voices and other sounds that were not of Pellucidar. They were too faint to be more than vague suggestions of intriguing possibilities, but yet they did suggest something most alluring, and so I set myself to making changes and adjustments until this wonderful thing that has happened but now was made possible.
And my delight in being able to talk with you is second only to my relief in being able to appeal to you for help. David is in trouble. He is a captive in the north, or what he and I call north, for there are no points of compass known to Pellucidarians.
I have heard from him, however. He has sent me a message and in it he suggests a startling theory that would make aid from the outer crust possible if—but first let me tell you the whole story; the story of the disaster that befell David Innes and what led up to it and then you will be in a better position to judge as to the practicability of sending succor to David from the outer crust.
The whole thing dates from our victories over the Mahars, the once dominant race of Pellucidar. When, with our well-organized armies, equipped with firearms and other weapons unknown to the Mahars or their gorilla-like mercenaries, the Sagoths, we defeated the reptilian monsters and drove their slimy hordes from the confines of The Empire, the human race of the inner world for the first time in its history took its rightful place among the orders of creation.
But our victories laid the foundation for the disaster that has overwhelmed us.
For a while there was no Mahar within the boundaries of any of the kingdoms that constitute The Empire of Pellucidar; but presently we had word of them here and there—small parties living upon the shores of sea or lake far from the haunts of man.
They gave us no trouble—their old power had crumbled beyond recall; their Sagoths were now numbered among the regiments of The Empire; the Mahars had no longer the means to harm us; yet we did not want them among us. They are eaters of human flesh and we had no assurance that lone hunters would be safe from their voracious appetites.
We wanted them to be gone and so David sent a force against them, but with orders to treat with them first and attempt to persuade them to leave The Empire peacefully rather than embroil themselves in another war that might mean total extermination.
Sagoths accompanied the expedition, for they alone of all the creatures of Pellucidar can converse in the sixth sense, fourth-dimension language of the Mahars.
The story that the expedition brought back was rather pitiful and aroused David's sympathies, as stories of persecution and unhappiness always do.
After the Mahars had been driven from The Empire they had sought a haven where they might live in peace. They assured us that they had accepted the inevitable in a spirit of philosophy and entertained no thoughts of renewing their warfare against the human race or in any way attempting to win back their lost ascendancy.
Far away upon the shores of a mighty ocean, where there were no signs of man, they settled in peace, but their peace was not for long.
A great ship came, reminding the Mahars of the first ships they had seen—the ships that David and I had built—the first ships, as far as we knew, that ever had sailed the silent seas of Pellucidar.
Naturally it was a surprise to us to learn that there was a race within the inner world sufficiently far advanced to be able to build ships, but there was another surprise in store for us. The Mahars assured us that these people possessed firearms and that because of their ships and their firearms they were fully as formidable as we and they were much more ferocious; killing for the pure sport of slaughter.
After the first ship had sailed away the Mahars thought they might be allowed to live in peace, but this dream
