"If Tao comes back as he plans, we have not got a chance. That"s why Miela stole this little vehicle and, without it being publicly known in Mercury, came here to warn us. That"s what she was after, to help us, risked her life to warn us people of another world."
Alan stopped abruptly, and, dropping to the floor of the porch beside Miela, laid his arm across her lap, looking up into her face as though she were a G.o.ddess. She stroked his hair tenderly, and I could see her eyes were wet with tears.
There was a moment"s silence. I could not have known what Professor Newland and Beth were thinking, but a moment later I understood.
Then I realized the sorrow that was oppressing them both.
"What can be done?" I asked finally.
Alan jumped to his feet. He began pacing up and down the porch before us; evidently he was laboring under a great nervous excitement.
"There"s nothing to be done," he said--"nothing at all--here on earth. We have not got a chance. It"s up there the thing has got to be fought out--up there on Mercury--to keep them from returning."
Alan paused again. When he resumed his voice was pitched lower, but was very tense.
"I"m going there, Bob--with Miela."
I heard Professor Newland"s sharply indrawn breath, and saw Beth"s dear face suddenly whiten.
"I"m going there to fight it out with them. I may come back; I may not.
But if I am successful, _they_ never will--which is all that matters.
"Miela"s mother gave her up to come down here and help us. It is a little thing to go back there to help us, also. If I can help her people with their own problems, so much the better."
He pulled Miela to her feet beside him and put his arm protectingly about her shoulders.
"And Miela is going back to her world as my wife--her body unmutilated--the first married woman in Mercury with wings as G.o.d gave them to her!"
CHAPTER XI.
TO SAVE THE WORLD.
Two days later Alan and Miela were quietly married in Bay Head. She still wore the long cloak, and no one could have suspected she was other than a beautiful stranger in the little community. When we got back home Alan immediately made her take off the cloak. He wanted us to admire her wings--to note their long, soft red feathers as she extended them, the symbol and the tangible evidence of her freedom from male dominance.
She was as sweet about it all as she could be, blushing, as though to expose the wings, now that she was married, were immodest. And by the way she regarded Alan, by the gentleness and love in her eyes, I could see she would never be above the guidance, the dominance, of one man, at least.
The day before their marriage Alan had taken me up the bayou to see the little silver car in which Miela had come. I was intensely curious to learn the workings of this strange vehicle. As soon as we were inside I demanded that Alan explain it all to me in detail.
He smiled.
"That"s the remarkable part of it, Bob," he answered. "Miela herself didn"t thoroughly understand either the basic principle or the mechanism itself when she started down here."
"Good Lord! And she ventured--"
"Tao was already on the point of leaving when she conceived the idea. He had already made one trip almost to the edge of the earth"s atmosphere, you know, and now was ready to start again."
"That first trip was last November," I said. "Tell me about that. What were those first light-meteors for?"
"As far as I can gather from what Miela says," Alan answered, "Tao wanted to make perfectly sure the light-ray would act in our atmosphere. He came--there were several vehicles they had ready even then--without other apparatus than those meteors, as we called them. Those he dropped to earth with the light-ray stored in them. They did discharge it properly--they seemed effective. The thing was merely a test. Tao was satisfied, and went back to arrange for this second preliminary venture in which he is engaged now."
"I understand," I said. "Go on about Miela."
"Well, she and her mother went before the Scientific Society, she calls it--the men who own and control these vehicles in the Light Country. They called it suicide. No one could be found to come with her. Lua, her mother, wanted to, but Miela would not let her take the risk, saying she was needed more there in her own world.
"As a matter of fact, the thing, while difficult perhaps to understand in principle, in operation works very simply. Miela knew that, and merely asked them to show her how to operate it practically. This they did. She spent two days with them--she learns things rather easily, you know--and then she was ready."
I waited in amazement.
"For practical purposes all she had to understand was the operation of these keys. The pressure of the light-ray in these coils"--he was standing beside a row of wire coils which in the semidarkness I had not noticed before--"is controlled by the key-switches." He indicated the latter as he spoke. "They send a current to the outer metal plates of the car which makes them repel or attract other ma.s.ses of matter, as desired.
"All that Miela had to understand then was how to operate these keys so as to keep the base of the vehicle headed toward the earth. They took her to the outer edge of the atmosphere of Mercury over the Dark Country and showed her the earth. They have used terrestrial telescopes for generations, and since the invention of this vehicle telescopes for celestial observation have been greatly improved.
"All Miela had to do was keep the air in here purified. That is a simple chemical operation. By using this attractive and repellent force she allowed the earth"s gravity and the repelling power of the sun and Mercury to drive her here."
He paused.
"But, doesn"t she--don"t you understand the thing in detail?" I asked finally.
"I think father and I understand it now better than she does," he answered. "We have studied it out here and questioned her as closely as possible. We understand its workings pretty thoroughly. But the exact nature of the light-ray we do not understand, any more than we understand electricity. Nor do we understand this metallic substance which when charged with the current becomes attractive or repellent in varying degrees."
"Yes," I said. "That I can appreciate."
"Father has a theory about the light-ray," he went on, "which seems rather reasonable from what we can gather from Miela. The thing seems more like electricity than anything else, and father thinks now that it is generated by dynamos on Mercury, similar to those we use here for electricity."
"Along that line," I said, "can you explain why this light-ray, which will immediately set anything on fire that is combustible, and which acts through metal, like those artillery sh.e.l.ls, for instance, does not seem to raise the temperature of the ground it strikes to any extent?"
"Because, like electricity, it is dissipated the instant it strikes the ground. The earth is an inexhaustible storehouse and receptacle for such a force. That is why the broken country around the Shoshone River protected Garland and Mantua from its direct rays."
"Tell me about the details of this mechanism," I said, reverting to our original subject. "You say you understand its workings pretty thoroughly now."
"Yes, I do," he admitted, "and so does father. But I cannot go into it now with you. You see," he added hastily, as though he feared to hurt my feelings, "the scientific men of Mercury--some of them--objected to Miela"s coming, on the ground that the inhabitants of the earth, obtaining from her a knowledge that would enable them to voyage through s.p.a.ce, might take advantage of that knowledge to undertake an invasion of Mercury.
"As a matter of fact, that was a remote possibility. I could explain to you all I know about this mechanism without much danger of your ever being able to build such a car. But Miela promised them that she would use all possible precautions, in the event of her having any choice in the matter, to prevent the earth people learning anything about it.
"Father and I have examined everything here closely. But no one else has--and I am sure Miela would prefer no one else did. You understand, Bob?"
I did understand; and of course I had to be satisfied with that.
"It seems to me," I said when, later in the day, we were discussing affairs in Wyoming, "that with things in Mercury as we now know they are, it would help the situation tremendously if Tao and these Twilight People with him were prevented from ever returning."
"That"s my idea exactly," Professor Newland agreed.
I could see by the look on his face he was holding on to this thought as a possibility that might make Alan"s plan unnecessary.
"I"ve thought about it constantly," the professor said, "ever since these facts first came to us through Miela. It would be important. With his expedition here a total failure, I think we might a.s.sume that nothing more would be done up there in attempting to conquer the earth. I"ve tried to make Alan see that we should give the authorities all the information we have. It might help--something might be accomplished--"