THE RIKORIANS or THE SHINING ONES (1932)

SOURCES: "The Cavern of the Shining Ones" by Hal K. Wells (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1932)

DESCRIPTION: “Great shining slugs slumbered there by the hundreds in their boxlike crystal cells, their gelatinous bodies glowing with pale and ever-changing opalescence. The things were roughly pear-shaped, with the large end upward. Deep within this globular portion glowed a large nucleus spot of red. From the tapering lower part of each slug's body there sprouted scores of long slender tendrils like the gelatinous fringe of a jelly-fish. The things measured nearly four feet in height. Each was suspended upright in an individual glass-walled cell, its body supported by a loop of wire that dropped from larger cables running between each row of cells. There was steady and exhaustless power of some kind coursing through those cables. Where they branched at the end of each cell-row there was a small unit of glowing tubes and silver terminals whose tips glowed with faint auras of leaping sparks.” ("The Cavern of the Shining Ones" by Hal K. Wells)

NOTES: The Rikorians are aliens from the planet Rikor, whose orbit comes close to Earth once every 100,000 years. They see humans or yaharigans as a food source. When they feed they glow more strongly. The Rikorians had a war with the early humans of Atlantis, causing the destruction of that island and sending humans into a dark age. The Atlanteans attacked them with a poisonous gas that killed many of them and sent the survivors into hybernatation. A select group returned to Rikor to come back in 100 centuries to revive the sleepers. The Rikorians can equip themselves with machines for tasks of peace or war. They possess disintegrator rays. The humans who are brought to the cavern as food for the sleepers outwit the last remaining member of the Rikorians who has returned to wake the sleepers. The secrets of the cavern will help to restore humanity to the heights they knew in Atlantis.

HISTORY: Wells serves up a pretty typical humans-defeat-aliens plot but the scene with the men trapped in pits and how they escape is better than average. His finale is pretty good too though quite familair to us after so many films that have used the same ideas.