Part 2 (2/2)

I had not seen George Prince come aboard. And then I thought I saw him down on the landing stage, just arrived from a private tube car. A small, slight figure. The customs men were around him. I could only see his head and shoulders. Pale, girlishly handsome face; long, black hair to the base of his neck. He was bare-headed, with the hood of his traveling cloak pushed back.

I stared, and I saw that Dr. Frank was also gazing down. But neither of us spoke.

Then I said upon impulse, ”Suppose we go down to the deck, Doctor?”

He acquiesced. We descended to the lower room of the turret and clambered down the spider ladder to the upper deck level. The head of the arriving incline was near us. Preceded by two carriers who were littered with hand luggage, George Prince was coming up the incline.

He was closer now. I recognized him from the type we had seen in Halsey's office.

And then, with a shock, I saw it was not so. This was a girl coming aboard. An arc light over the incline showed her clearly when she was half way up. A girl with her hood pushed back; her face framed in thick black hair. I saw now it was not a man's cut of hair; but long braids coiled up under the dangling hood.

Dr. Frank must have remarked my amazed expression. ”Little beauty, isn't she?”

”Who is she?”

We were standing back against the wall of the superstructure. A pa.s.senger was near us--the Martian whom Dr. Frank had called Miko. He was loitering here, quite evidently watching this girl come aboard.

But as I glanced at him, he looked away and casually sauntered off.

The girl came up and reached the deck. ”I am in A22,” she told the carrier. ”My brother came aboard a couple of hours ago.”

Dr. Frank answered my whisper. ”That's Anita Prince.”

She was pa.s.sing quite close to us on the deck, following the carrier, when she stumbled and very nearly fell. I was nearest to her. I leaped forward and caught her as she nearly went down.

With my arm about her, I raised her up and set her upon her feet again. She had twisted her ankle. She balanced herself upon it. The pain of it eased up in a moment.

”I'm all right--thank you!”

In the dimness of the blue lit deck I met her eyes. I was holding her with my encircling arm. She was small and soft against me. Her face, framed in the thick, black hair, smiled up at me. Small, oval face--beautiful--yet firm of chin, and stamped with the mark of its own individuality. No empty-headed beauty, this.

”I'm all right, thank you very much--”

I became conscious that I had not released her. I felt her hands pus.h.i.+ng at me. And then it seemed that for an instant she yielded and was clinging. And I met her startled upflung gaze. Eyes like a purple night with the sheen of misty starlight in them.

I heard myself murmuring, ”I beg your pardon. Yes, of course!” I released her.

She thanked me again and followed the carriers along the deck. She was limping slightly.

An instant she had clung to me. A brief flash of something, from her eyes to mine--from mine back to hers. The poets write that love can be born of such a glance. The first meeting, across all the barriers of which love springs unsought, unbidden--defiant, sometimes. And the troubadours of old would sing: ”A fleeting glance; a touch; two wildly beating hearts--and love was born.”

I think, with Anita and me, it must have been like that.

I stood, gazing after her, unconscious of Dr. Frank, who was watching me with his quizzical smile. And presently, no more than a quarter beyond the zero hour, the _Planetara_ got away. With the dome windows battened tightly, we lifted from the landing stage and soared over the glowing city. The phosph.o.r.escence of the electronic tubes was like a comet's tail behind us as we slid upward.

III

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