How it warmed my heart to hear him say that; and to see the glance that Elza cast me!
"--Our friend. I am an old man--you are young. Yet you are wise, too. We need you tonight."
He raised his hand when I would have told him how glad I was to be with them.
"You know something of my work," he said, as a statement, rather than a question. "I should say, mine and Georg"s and Elza"s, for they have both helped me materially."
I knew that Dr. Brende had for years been one of the Earth"s most eminent research physicians. It was he who discovered the light vibrations which had banished forever the dread germs of several of the major diseases. He did not practice; his work was research only.
He went on: "Jac, I have found what for years I have been striving to find--a vibration of light, though it is invisible--which so far as I can determine, kills every bacillus harmful to man. There is nothing new in the idea--I have been working at it all my life. Sunlight! Altered and modified in several particulars, yet sunlight nevertheless. How strange that for countless centuries, man never realized the blessed boon of sunlight--the greatest enemy of all disease!
"Each year, as you know, I have conquered some of what we call the major diseases. A few of them--cancer[5], for instance--persisted in eluding me. Its bacilli--you can easily recognize the tiny purplish, horned rods which cause what we popularly call cancer--just would not die. No form of light or other vibration I could devise, seemed to hurt them--unless I used a vibration harmful, even fatal, to the blood-contents itself: I killed the cancer--in the words of you news-gatherers--but I also killed the patient."
[Footnote 5: A medical word, translated here as _cancer_, though possibly not that.]
His eyes smiled at the jest, but his face remained intensely serious.
"Then, Jac, I solved that problem--just a few months ago. And upon the heels of it I solved another, of infinitely more importance." He paused slightly. "I have learned how to kill, or at least arrest, the bacillus of old age. It is a bacillus, you know. We grow old because every day we live beyond the age of thirty--the bacillus of old age is attacking us.
I call them the Brende-bacilli--these tiny, frayed discs that make us grow old. I have seen them--and killed them!"
It dawned on me slowly, the import of what he was saying.
"You mean----"
"He means," said Georg, "that at present we cannot only banish disease--all disease--but we can keep your body from aging. Not permanently, doubtless--but with the span of life lengthened threefold at least. Only by violence now need you die prematurely."
This then was the secret the existence of which Tarrano had learned. He had....
But Dr. Brende was quietly voicing my thoughts.
"It seems obvious, Jac, that this Tarrano at least suspects that I have made some such discovery as this. That he would withhold it from mankind, for the benefit of his own race, seems also obvious. That he is about to make an attempt to get it from me, I am convinced."
I remembered the wording of the message of warning from the Central State. _"Your Dr. Brende, in Eurasia."_ I mentioned it.
"Our main laboratory is there," Georg said. "In Northern Siberia--isolated from people so far as possible, and in a climate advantageous for the work."
Elza spoke for the first time in many minutes.
"We have guards there, Jac--eight of our a.s.sistants.... Father, I called Robins a while ago. He said everything was all right. But don"t you think we should call him again?"
The doctor had drifted into deep thought. "What? Oh, yes, Elza. I was thinking we should go there. My notes--descriptions of how to build a larger apparatus--larger than the small model I have installed there--my notes are all there, and I want them. And I don"t think, at such a time, I should trust Robins to bring them."
"What shall I send to Headquarters?" Georg asked. "They wanted an answer, you remember."
"I"m going there to the Potomac--tell them that. Tell them we will come there for safety. But first I must get my notes, and the model."
As Georg went to the door, something in his att.i.tude made us all start to our feet and follow him. No alarm from the insulator had come, yet for myself I had not forgotten that Venus girl outside.
Georg was at the door, tense as though to spring forward as soon as he opened it. I was close behind him.
"What----"
"Wait, Jac! Quiet! I just want to see--in case she _is_ doing something."
He jerked open the door suddenly and bounded through, with me after him.
The corridor was empty. But there was a whirring coming from the instrument room.
We leaped across the padded corridor. In the instrument room, Ahla the maid sat at the table with a head-piece clasped to her ears. She was talking softly but swiftly into the transmitter. In the mirror beside her I caught a glimpse of the place to which she was talking. A sort of cave--flickering lights--a crowd of dark figures of Venus men, seemingly armed.
She must have heard us coming. A sweep of her white arm dashed the mirror to the floor, smashing it. Then she cast off the head-piece, and leaping to her feet, faced us, blazing and defiant.
CHAPTER IV
_To the North Pole_
"You stand back! You do not touch me!"
The Venus girl fairly hissed the words. Her eyes were dilated; her white hair hung in a tumbling, wavy ma.s.s over her shoulders. She stood tense--a frail, girlish figure in a short, grey-cloth mantle, with long grey stockings beneath.
We were startled. Georg stopped momentarily; then he jumped at her. It was a false move, for before we could reach her, with a piercing cry, she was tearing at the instruments on the table; her fingers, with burns unheeded, ripping the delicate wires, smashing the small mirrors, flinging everything to the floor.
A few seconds only, but it was enough. She was panting when Georg caught her by the wrists, and we others gathered around them.
"Ahla!" Elza cried in horror.
I can appreciate the shock to Elza, who had trusted, even loved this girl.
Dr. Brende stood in confused astonishment, staring at the wreck of the instrument table. From a naked wire a little black coil of smoke was coming up. I fumbled about and switched the current out of everything.
We were cut off from all communication with the world. It gave me a queer feeling--made the small island we were on seem so remote.
Georg was shaking the girl, demanding with whom she had been talking and why. But she fell into sullen silence, and nothing we could do would make her break it. It infuriated me, that stubbornness; it was all I could do to keep from harming her in my efforts to make her talk.
Georg, at last, pulled me away; he led the girl to a couch and sternly bade her sit there without moving. She seemed willing enough to do that; she still had not spoken, but her eyes were watching us closely.
Dr. Brende was examining the smashed instruments. "Ruined. We cannot use them. Those messages--we must send them. I must talk to Robins----"
We went into the corridor, out of earshot of the girl, but where we could watch her. That we were in immediate danger was obvious, and we all realized it. Ahla had told some of her people that we were here on the island; doubtless was planning to have them come here at once and seize us.
How far away from us were they? I had seen in the mirror the interior of a cave-like room. Where was it? Might it not be near at hand--over on the mainland? Might not these enemies arrive on the island at any moment?
Georg suggested that we send our messages from the aeros. We had my own car--and a larger car of the Brendes. More than ever now, Dr. Brende was worried over the safety of his Siberian laboratory; but from the aero we could talk to Robins.