Bane . . . the masketta man . . . I am the fire . . . I will tell the audient void. . . .
     I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
     And it was then that Bane came out of the pit. Who he was, it did not matter, but he was of the old luchador blood and looked like a big guy. The hired guns knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this plane. Into the aircrafts of CIA came Bane, talking, not friendly, and big, always buying strange masks of venom and metal and combining them into masks yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences—of aerospace and gunsmiths—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Bane, and shuddered. And where Bane went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the crashing of planes. Never before had the crashing of planes been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid aircraft in the small hours, that the shrieks of cia might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying mercenaries as they flew good over green land sitting under planes, and old planes crashing against a sickly sky.
     I remember when Bane came to my plane—the great, the old, the terrible plane of CIA. My men had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his master plan, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Bane dared prophesy, and that in the sputter of his mask there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Bane looked on sights which others saw not.
     It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to grab Dr. Pavel; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into my aircraft. And shadowed on a jeep, I saw hooded forms amidst Dr. Pavel, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen big guys. And I saw the big guy battling against blackness; against the waves of fire from ultimate space; rising, churning; struggling around the dimming, cooling aircraft. Then the masks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst big guys more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about “lotta loyalty” and “getting caught was part of their plan”, Bane drave us all out, down the dizzy air into the damp, hot, deserted plain under the plane. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that that comes later; and others screamed with me for solace. We sware to one another that the cia was exactly the same, and still alive; and when the big guys began to fade we cursed the mercenary over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made.
     I believe we felt something coming down from the bigish moon, for when we began to depend on its fire we drifted into curious involuntary formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of them. Once we looked at the plane and found the end loose and displaced by another plane, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the engines had run. And again we saw a second plane, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third mercenary by the plane, and noticed that the silhouette of the second plane was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow ziplines, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow plane to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked plane entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open air, and presently felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.
     Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in masks that are not masks, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless mercenaries beneath cia and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Bane.