Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

THE MACHINE MAN OF ARDATHIA See, 35 when he fashioned tools; that the tools increased the length of his arms, the grip of his hands, the strength of his muscles. They observed that with the aid of the ee man could circle the earth, speak to the planets, gaze in- timately at the stars. We will increase our span of life on earth, said the - Bi-Chanics, by throwing the protection of the machine, the things that the. machine produces, around and into our bodies. This they did, to the best of their ability, and increased their longevity to an average of ae two hundred years. ‘Then came the Tri-Namics. More advanced than the Bi-Chanics, they _ reasoned that old age was caused, not by the passage of time, but i the action of environment on the matter of which men were composed. It is this reasoning which causes the men of your time to experiment with chicken hearts. The Tri-Namics sought to perfect devices for safe-guarding the flesh against the wear and tear of its environment. They made envelopes—cylinders —in which they attempted to bring embryos to birth and to. rear children, but they met with only partial success.’ “You speak of the Bi-Chanics and of the Tri-Namics,” I said, “as if they — - were two distinct races of people. Yet you imply that the latter evolved from the former. If the Bi-Chanics civilization fell, did any period of time elapse between that fall and the rise of the T'ri-Namics? And how did the latter inherit from their predecessors?” : “It is because of your language, which I find very crude and inadequate, that I have not already made that clear,” answered the Ardathian. “The Tri- Namics were really a more progressive part of the Bi-Chanics. When I said the civilization of the latter fell, I did not mean what that mmplies in your language. You must realize that fifteen thousand years in your future, the race of man was, scientifically speaking, making rapid strides. It was not always possible for backward or conservative minds to adjust themselves to new dis- coveries. Minority groups, composed mostly of the young, forged ahead, made new deductions from old facts, proposed radical’ changes, ensértained new ideas, and finally culminated in what I have alluded to as the Tri-Namics. In- oe in the course of time, the Bi-Chanics died off, and conservative meth- ods with them. That is what I meant when I said their civilization fell. In the same fashion did we follow the Tri-Namics, When the latter succeeded in rais- ing children inside the cylinder, they destroyed themselves. Soon all children ~ were born in this manner. In time the fate of the Tri-Namics became that of the Bi-Chamics, leaving behind them the Machine Men of Ardathia, who dif- fered radically from them in bodily structure—so many human nucleii inside of machines—yet none the less their direct descendants.” For the first time, I began to get an inkling of what the Ardathian meant when it alluded to itself as a Machine Man. The appalling story of man’s final evolution into a controlling center that directed a mechanical body, awoke something akin to fear in my heart. If it were true, what of the soul, spirit, Geode <3 Conmiclbooks.Cconhn