[Footnote 3: _City of the Living Flame_, Planet Stories, Fall, 1942.]
Ketrik nodded. He had heard the story many times.
Dar Vaajo went on. "The story of the thought-entity beneath our ice cap had always intrigued me," he said. "So several years ago I sent some workmen to uncover that ancient city. Yes, you have guessed. The Entity hadn't died! It remained there insentient but alive, frozen into suspended animation beneath miles of ice! It was then that I remembered the stories of its power, its insatiable appetite for the mental forces of man ... and thereupon I evolved my scheme. It has been dangerous, Ketrik, but I worked slowly and carefully.
"The first step was to waken it, which was easy. The second step was to keep it under control--not so easy. But I managed this by means of Uranium rays which seems to be the only thing capable of combating the Entity's own peculiar atomic structure. That was the reason for my Uranium embargo; I've had to increase the potential of these controlling rays as the Entity grew in size and power."
"You mean you ... _fed it_? Allowed it to _grow_?" Ketrik was aghast, listening to this cold-blooded recital.
"Of course! How else was I to reach Earth with it, across miles of space? That was my ultimate goal."
"But how? It must have taken a tremendous ... surely the Rajecs were not enough?"
Vaajo smiled blandly from the screen. "I told you I worked slowly. I began by communicating with it, telepathically. Yes! It's a highly intelligent entity, and it wishes to remain alive. It seems it came originally from a world _in another dimension bordering on ours_! It was the creation of a scientist on that world. The Entity became dangerous, threatened to get out of control, and could not be destroyed. The scientists rigged up a contra-dimensional device which hurled it out of that dimension. It landed quite by chance in ours--on Mars, near M'Tonak.
"So we made a sort of pact, the Entity and I. I wished it to grow in size and potential, but not at the sacrifice of my own people. I told it something of my plans. It, in turn, told me how to build a contra-dimensional machine by which to project it back into its own world! I managed this at last, adding a reverse control by which I could always bring it back.