The Conquest of Gola How the strange people of Gola repelled the barbarians who came to conquer AMERICANS are fond of ridiculing the customs, habits and temperaments of people of other nations. Similarly other nations pick our peculiarities as a source of amusement. We all think that what we do, think or say is natural and inevitable, and that the actions of others are “queer”. Similarly if we were to travel to a strange world, and find different forms of intelligent life, we would be monstrosities to those people, as much as they would be to us. We would find it more difficult than we imagine to even establish the most elementary form of communication, because our mental processes would have practically nothing in common. That is all assuming that our mission is friendly. But if it is hostile, there is no doubt but that our career on that strange world, would be, as our author shows here, short and sweet. Here is a different and unusual story that you cannot help but enjoy and chuckle over. HOLA, my daughters (sighed the Matriarch) it is true indeed, I am the only living one upon Gola who remembers the invasion from Detaxal, I alone of all my generation survive to recall vividly the sights and scenes of that past era. And well it is that you come to me to hear by free communication of mind to mind face to face with each other.
Ah, well I remember the surprise of that hour when through the mists that enshroud our lovely world, there swam the first of the great smooth cylinders of the Detaxalans, fifty tas in length, as glistening and silvery as the soil of our land, propelled by the man-things that on Detaxal are supreme even as we women are supreme on Gola.
In those bygone days, as now, Gola was enwrapped by her cloud mists that keep from us the terrific glare of the great star that glows like a malignant spirit out there in the darkness of the void. Only occasionally when a particularly great storm parts the mist of heaven do we see the wonders of the vast universe, but that does not prevent us, with our marvelous telescopes handed down to us from thousands of generations before us, from learning what lies across the dark seas of the outside.
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