Part 14 (1/2)

The official flyer landed them on the broad stage amid deep, soft snow.

It was night--a brief trip from the late afternoon, through dinner and they were there. A night of clear s.h.i.+ning stars--brilliant gems in deep purple. Clear, crisp, rarefied air; a tumbling expanse of white, with the stars stretched over it like a close-hung canopy.

They were ushered into the low, rambling building. The attempt was to be made at once. Mars was mounting the eastern sky; and to the west, Venus was setting. Both visible from direct helios at that moment--Red Mars, from this mountain top, glowing like the tip of an arrant-cylinder up there.

In the brief time since the party had left Was.h.i.+ngton, the worlds had been notified. The eyes and ears of the millions of three planets were waiting to see and hear this Georg Brende and this Princess Maida.

The sending room was small, circular, and crowded with apparatus. And above its dome, opened to the sky, wherein the intensified helios shaded so that no ray of them might blind the operators, were sputtering as though eager to be away with their messages.

With a dozen officials around him, Georg prepared to enter the sending room. He had parted from Maida a few moments before, when she had left him to be shown to her apartment by the women attendants.

As she moved away, on impulse he had stopped her. ”We shall succeed, Maida.”

Her hand touched his arm. A brave smile, a nod, and she had pa.s.sed on, leaving him standing there gazing after her with pounding heart.

Pounding, not with excitement at the task before him in that sending room; pounding with the sudden knowledge that the welfare of this frail little woman meant more to him than the safety of all these worlds.

At last Georg stood in the sending room. The officials sat grouped around him. Maida had not yet arrived from her apartment. There was a small platform, upon which she and Georg were to stand together. He took his place upon it, waiting for her.

Before him was the sending disc; it glowed red as they turned the current into it. Then they illumined the mirrors; a circle of them, each with its image of Georg upon the platform. The white lights above him flashed on, beating down upon him with their hot, dazzling glare. The reflected beams from the mirrors, struck upward into the dome overhead.

The helios up there were humming and sputtering loudly.

Beyond the circle of intense white light in which Georg was standing, the spectators sat in gloom behind the mirrors. Maida had not come. The Skylan Director, impatient ordered a woman to go for her.

Then, suddenly, Georg said to this Director:

”I--these lights--this heat. It makes me feel faint--standing here.”

Georg had stumbled from the platform. Between two of the mirrors, shaded from the glare, the perturbed Director met him. Moisture beaded Georg's forehead.

”I'll--be quite all right in a moment. I'm going over there.” He smiled weakly. A dozen feet away there was an opened outer cas.e.m.e.nt. It looked down twenty feet, perhaps, to the deep snow that covered the station's grounds. The Director started with Georg; but Georg pushed him violently away.

”No! No! You let me alone!” His accents were those of a spoiled child.

The Director hesitated, and Georg, with a hand to his forehead, wavered toward the cas.e.m.e.nt. The Director saw him standing there; saw him sway, then fall or jump forward, and disappear.

They rushed outside. The snow was trampled all about with heavy footprints, but Georg had vanished. From the women's apartment, the attendant came back. The Princess Maida could not be found!

And in those moments of confusion, from outside across the starlit snow, an aero was rising. Silent, black--and no one saw it as it winged away into the night.

CHAPTER XII

_Tara_

I must revert now to those moments in the tower room when Tarrano dissolved the isolation barrage which Wolfgar had thrown around us.

Georg escaped, as I have recounted. Tarrano--there in the tower room--rendered me unconscious. I came to myself on the broad divan and found Elza bending over me.

I sat up, dizzily, with the room reeling.

”Jac! Jac, dear----” She made me lie back, until I could feel the blood returning to my clammy face; and the room steadied, and the clanging of the gongs in my ears died away.