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 destruction from ultimate space;