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Lessing, presumably in his Laocoon, has attributed this to the effects of sheer panic; but Carver's explanation, which attributes the ochre-like tint to the hypodermic operation of the Mash-Glance, seems far more plausible. For myself I abstain from casting the weight of my support in either scale, because my particular province is speculative philosophy and not comparative dermatology.
Lifting my hand to the wounded place, I discovered that I had been shaved perfectly clean, as with a Heat Razor. The truth rushed upon me: I had come within the range of the Mash-Glance, and had been saved from total dissolution only by intervening masonry protecting my face and body. To leave the Hill was the work of an instant.
To disguise my sex and identity for it was a priori almost impossible that the inhabitants of Wenus had never heard of Pozzuoli would guard me from the jellifying Mash-Glance of the Wenuses. Arrayed in feminine garb I could remain immune to their malignant influences.
"Let me in!" he shouted. "I'm the only man in London besides yourself that hasn't been pulped by the Mash-Glance." He then began to jabber lines from the classics, and examples from the Latin grammar. A sudden thought occurred to me. Perhaps he might translate the observation of the Wenus. Should I use him as an interpreter?
The effect was instantaneous. The deputation, as the glance touched them, fell like skittles viscous, protoplasmic masses, victims of the terrible Mash-Glance of the Wenuses. I attributed my own escape to the prompt action of my wife, who stood before and shielded me, for upon women the Mash-Glance had no effect.
I was relieved by the news, for it suggested that my wife was fully occupied. Already a good bulk of nursemaids and cooks, enraged at the destruction of the Scotland Yard and Knightsbridge heroes by the Wenuses' Mash-Glance, had joined her flag.
It was, said the Pall Mall, high time that such an attack was undertaken, and since women had been proved to be immune to the Mash-Glance, it was clearly their business to undertake it. Meanwhile, said the Pall Mall, nothing could check the folly of the men.
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