Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 152: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

786 my joy was sobered by a realization that marriage between us was impossible. And what about the situation when King Kew should die, and Prince Yuri should succeed to the crown We had that to look - forward to. CHAPTER XV. A NEW GAME. UT with Lilla’s love and trust, I could not despair. As I kissed her good night, with her warm throbbing girlish body held fast in my arms, a single star shone down upon us for an instant, through a rift in the circumambient clouds. Was it my own planet, the earth, I wondered, shining to bless its absent son on his love quest in the skies? During the succeeding days I saw much of Lilla and nothing of Bthuh. And ever I racked my brains for an idea which should point the way out of my difficulties. My only hope was to perform such a distin- guished service for my country that the king would relent, would forgive me, and would promote me to the rank of sarkar. The most distinguished service which a Cupian can render is to invent a new and popular game, so I set about to do some- thing in that line. And at last the idea came, a whiz of an idea! As Hah Bab- buh, head of the Department of Mechanics, had advised me to seek this means of dis- tinction, so it was to him that I first con- fided my plans. The game would be very expensive, which was one point in its favor, strange as this may seem. But the necessary apparatus would require great mechanical skill to pro- duce, and lay in a field of machinery in which I was little versed. Accordingly, Hah made an appropriation for the necessary ex- periments, and advised complete secrecy. At my request, Prince Toron, who had aided me so efficiently in devising my radio set in the laboratories of Mooni, was de- tailed to assist me in this new endeavor. He and a young draftsman and a young chemist set to work with me to build the new game. And what was this new game? It was ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. archery; target shooting with army rifles, to be more exact. Explosives were already known on Poros, being used for blasting and for airplane bombs. With the aid of the young chemist, I adapted these explo- sives to be sufficiently slow burning to drive a rifle bullet without injuring the gun. The draftsman and Toron designed the mechan- ism of the piece. Of course Toron wanted to ring in some electrical features, but I finally persuaded him that this was un- necessary. In a surprisingly short time we had turned out a crude rifle that would actually shoot. The heads of the Mathematics and Astronomy Departments, Ja Babbuh and Buh Tedn, were then let into the secret, for the purpose of computing trajectories and designing the sights and wind leaf, which they did by an adaptation of the principles employed in computing the orbits of celestial bodies. A hundred and forty-seven rifles were then turned out and presented to my ath- letic club, which I had sadly neglected since my admission to membership. Toron’s electrical propensities were assuaged by the design of an electrical recording and signal- ing device at the targets. My club tried out the rifles; and, when at last they began to get bull’s-eyes, they went wild over the new sport. The king heard, and relented sufficiently to send for me and compliment me. “Myles Cabot,” said he, “you are a man of ingenuity, and could have distin- guished yourself greatly in useful lines in the good old days before the accursed For- mians conquered our fair planet. But now my poor people, emasculated by peace, care only for games; and so the path to glory now lies only through devising means for diverting them.” He sighed, and I pitied the poor old king and his unfulfilled and apparently unful- fillable ambition to rid his peoplpe of For- mian domination. Would that he could, in return, pity my unfulfilled ambition to be made a sarkar! But I was still far from a promotion, for the king was much too fond of Bthuh, whom I had wronged. After being thoroughly tried out in my hundred, rifle shooting was next introduced Eomichoo ss) (S@)