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The king altered his throne-name, “Amen-hetep,” to “Akhen-Aten,” “The glory of the Sun’s Disk”; his young daughters received names compounded with “Aten,” whilst the courtiers found it advisable to strike out “Amen,” if this chanced to form part of their own names, and to substitute for it “Ra,” as having more or less the same significance as “Aten.” “The doctrine,” as the new dogmas were called in inscriptions at Tell el Amarna, was regarded as so entirely a matter of home politics in Egypt, that the officials of Syria and Palestine—all foreigners—do not seem to have received any formal information regarding it.
There was no movement of the glittering thing at the forepart of the plane. But the ship reached the end of the slide and lifted, and then was in mid-air, fifty feet above the vehicular way, a hundred feet above the ground. Tommy spoke urgently. Aten nodded. The ship had started to climb. He leveled it out and darted straight forward. He swung madly to dodge a soaring tower.
The bearded old man in blue began the questioning. As Keeper of Foodstuffs according to Aten he was a sort of presiding officer. Tommy answered the questions crisply. He had known what they would be, and he had developed a vocabulary to answer them. He told them of Earth, of Professor Denham, of his and the professor's experiments.
They're static lights cold lights, by the way and they register powerfully when a static-discharge propeller comes within range of them. If Rahn tries a night attack, Aten and I take off and shoot them down again. That's that. But we've got to design gas masks for these people, and I think I can persuade the Council to send over and take all Rahn's aircraft away to-morrow.
They raided a dwelling-tower on the way and seized women. They've gone off on the metal roads through the jungle!" He tried to ease his collar. Aten, still watching the green beam, croaked another sentence. "Those devils have got Evelyn!" cried Tommy hoarsely. "My God! Aten's wife, and his...." He jerked a hand toward the Councilor. "Fifty women gone through the jungle with them, toward Rahn!
One flash struck the wingtip of their plane, and flame burst out, but Aten flung the ship into a mad whirl in which the blaze was blown out. Another freight ship helpless and another. Then the air fleet of Rahn turned and fled. The ornithopters winged away in heavy, creaking terror. The others dived for speed and flattened out hardly above the tree-fern jungle.
A pause of stunned stupefaction, and the spectators in the hall rushed for other doors. "Stick to Aten," snapped Tommy. "Something's broken, and it has to be our way. Let's see what it is." He clung alike to Evelyn and to Aten as the air-pilot fought to clear a way. The doors were jammed.
She indicated a fragment of a colored relief labeled: 'Portion of a painted stone tablet with a portrait figure of Amen-hotep IV," and we stopped to look at the frail, effeminate figure of the great king, with his large cranium, his queer, pointed chin, and the Aten rays stretching out their weird hands as if caressing him.
"Weel, my leddy, gien I took in han' to set it furth to ye, I wad hae to tell ye a' that Mr Graham has been learnin' me sin ever I can min. He says 'at the whole economy o' natur is fashiont unco like that o' the kingdom o' haven: its jist a gradation o' services, an' the highest en' o' ony animal is to contreebute to the life o' ane higher than itsel'; sae that it's the gran' preevilege o' the fish we tak, to be aten by human bein's, an' uphaud what's abune them."
Those devils have got Evelyn!" He whirled upon Aten, seizing his shoulder, shaking the man as he roared questions. "No chance of catching them." Far away, in the jungle, the infinitely vivid actinic flame blazed for several seconds. "They've sprayed thermit on the road. It's melted and ruined. It'd take hours to haul the ground vehicles past the gap. They're got arms and lights.
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