Part 15

What deterred him? Not fear of death, for he had faced death so often on the silver planet that he and the dark angel were well acquainted. Perhaps it was caution, due to uncertainty as to the outcome. If he could but be sure that Yuri would not get the better of the sentinel, that the sentinel would not yield to the temptations which Yuri would undoubtedly offer, that Yuri would not be able to work his way back into power even from the cell of a mangool, that the courts would condemn Yuri to the Valley and then enforce the sentence—if Myles could have been sure of all this, he would have willingly given his life for his adopted country.

Yet would he? For his fatalism assured him that he could risk his own life, and yet come out on top, as he had done before.

Finally there occurred Cabot’s last opportunity. They were in a little ravine, almost at the front. The sentinel who halted him refused to let him pass on to no-man’s land without permission of the officer in charge of that sector; so the sentinel called another soldier to guard the kerkool and went to summon the officer, who proved to be a young bar-pootah, a stranger to Cabot.

“Excellency,” said he, “it must be important business which leads you to risk your life out there, for yonder lie the forces of Formis. The moment that you emerge from this ravine you will be under fire. May I ask what takes our regent into such danger?”

The revolver muzzle of the man crouching hidden beside Cabot, ground into his ribs as a reminder.

“No, you may not,” Myles replied.

Then he had an idea.

“Give me two sticks,” he said.

So the sentinel cut two branches and affixed them to the front of the kerkool in the form of an X. Crossed sticks—these were the Porovian equivalent of a flag of truce! Then the young bar-pootah let them through.

“You improve,” Prince Yuri remarked, as they threaded the ravine and emerged onto the plain beyond.

* * * * *

It was a gruesome scene. Dead bodies of both Cupians and Formians lay strewn about, covered with swarms of little hopping brinks, while among the corpses ambled large orange-colored beetles about three feet in length. Some of these beetles were busily engaged in digging holes, while here and there others of them in large numbers were pulling a body toward a hole which they had dug. These were the burying beetles of Poros.

Cabot carefully steered the kerkool in and out among all these obstructions. His last chance to turn his captor over to the authorities had come and gone. Soon Yuri would be able to take the seat beside him and ride in triumph among his friends.

And then the car began to wobble a bit.

“Hold her steady!” ordered the prince peremptorily. “No fooling! No pretended gyroscope trouble!”

“Don’t you realize,” Myles replied mildly, “that this is a pretty poor place for me to _pretend_ to have gyro troubles? If I were going to fake, I would have done so back there in the ravine.”

“That’s true,” Yuri admitted. “Well, stop her and we’ll get out and walk.”

Cabot accordingly brought the kerkool to a standstill. Yuri cautiously backed to the rear of the car and dismounted, keeping his prisoner covered with the revolver.

“Come along now,” he called. “Get out and unhitch the cross, so that we can carry it as a protection.”

For reply the earthman suddenly threw the control into full speed reverse. Down went the astonished prince, his revolver flying from his hand as the kerkool backed onto him. Cabot saw the weapon as it sailed by him; and instantly he stopped the car and reached for his own revolver. But it was not at his side. Quite evidently he had left it at Wautoosa when he had gathered up his accouterments after his sightseeing tour there.

So he jumped from the car and ran over to where the prince’s weapon lay. With it in his hand, he turned and faced his late captor, who was just picking himself up out of the dust and staggering to his feet.

“Halt,” the earthman commanded, “or I fire!”

Yuri halted. Then, to Cabot’s surprise, he grinned.

“What was it that you quoted from Poblath a while ago?” he said, with seeming irrelevance. “Oh, I know. ‘The saddest thing about a fool, is that he doesn’t realize he is one.’ That revolver which you now hold, and which terrorized you into bearing me in safety through your lines, is empty, wholly empty! Better throw it away, you poor fool.”

And he gave a mocking laugh. Myles flushed with shame and humiliation. Bluffed again by the arch-trickster of Poros! So he started to throw the weapon to one side. Then suddenly he realized what a fool he would be to accept any statement from this liar. Perhaps the prince was bluffing _now_, rather than before. Perhaps the revolver was loaded, after all.

So Myles fired square in that sneering face. But the sneer continued. No explosion followed the pull on the trigger. Merely a little click.

Cabot pulled the trigger five more times, so as to be certain; then flung the revolver square at the still sneering face.

Whereupon Prince Yuri ducked and charged him, and down went the two in a strangle-hold embrace. Ordinarily they would have been a very even match, but the Cupian had recently been drenched in a rainstorm and had just been knocked down and run over by a kerkool; so the earthman easily triumphed. The proud pretender to the throne of Cupia was soon flat on his back, with Cabot’s hands about his throat.

But he uttered no appeal. He gamely succumbed. Fiery hate glowed in his eyes, as his adversary slowly cut off his wind; but that was all.

Finally his body became limp and his eyes glazed. This was no kind of a way to kill a man! So Myles withdrew his strangle grasp and listened at his victim’s right breast. The heart was still beating.

Cabot arose, seized Prince Yuri’s body and started dragging it to the Cupian lines. The prince should be revived and given a fair trial for treason.

But the two never reached the northern edge of no-man’s-land, for a Formian bullet brought Myles Cabot to the ground.

A terrible crashing noise in his ears, and then all was over!

* * * * *

After a seemingly interminable time the earthman became vaguely conscious again. It was twilight. Shadowy forms were dragging him along the ground.

Then he rolled over and over down a steep decline, and shovelfuls of dirt began to land on him from above. One of the shadowy forms descended and pressed upon his abdomen with a blunt instrument of some sort.

Was he dead? Was this hell? Or where was it?

A sharp pain in his abdomen brought him to his senses. He sprang to his feet, throwing off his tormentor, who thereupon let forth a vile smell. Then Cabot realized his situation.

He was standing in a shallow pit in the midst of the battlefield, surrounded by beetles, one of which had just sought to impale him with its ovipositor. These beasts now scattered and left him alone. A live man was no concern of theirs.

Myles felt of his head. His left earphone was smashed and there was a welt on his left temple. He had been merely stunned, rather than killed, or even seriously wounded.

By the aid of the rapidly fading pink glow in the western sky, the weary man picked his way across the battlefield to the little ravine through which he had entered it. There the Cupian bar-pootah took him in charge and dispatched him by kerkool to the nearest army hospital. In a few days he was himself again.

Then Myles Cabot took the field in person, with Poblath as his aide. Bthuh’s illness had merely been a bluff, and both men were thoroughly disgusted. They had remained behind the lines too long. Now they intended to press the war to a successful conclusion.

Nothing further was seen or heard of the renegade prince, although the ground was dug up all around the wrecked kerkool, in the hope of finding his body.

So, through many weary sangths, the Formians were driven to the southern tip of the continent and totally exterminated. Even their numerous pets—some fifteen hundred varieties—were killed off, too. For, with all the sport loving proclivities of the Cupians, they do not waste very much time and affection on pets.

The only ants spared were the royal husbands. They, poor stupid drones, were not to blame for the tyranny and treachery of their race. So they were shut up in cages in the gr-ool—i.e. zoo—of Kuana, for the edification of the children of Cupia.

The serial numbers of all slain Formians were recorded, even those buried by the beetles being exhumed for this purpose.

The battle for the extreme southern tip of the continent was the fiercest of the entire war; and when finally the last ramparts of the enemy were stormed, there arose from this fortress a considerable fleet of planes. It had not been known that the Formians still had any of these left; but nevertheless the Cupian fliers and their bee allies were ready for them, and instantly rose into the air to meet them. And at the head of the Cupian fleet rode Myles Cabot on the back of Portheris, king of the bees.

But to his surprise and horror, the enemy flew southeast, instead of north, bent on escape rather than on battle. And there was no possible escape in that direction, for the way was barred by the steam clouds which overhung the boiling seas. Probably, therefore, this squadron was due soon to execute some feint. But no, they kept straight on; and before the forces of the earthman could catch up with them, they disappeared within the clouds. Cabot’s fleet wheeled and returned, driven back by the intense heat.

Thus perished—presumably—the last of the ant men, for when the Cupian army stormed the fortress from which these had flown, it was devoid of defenders.

No trace of Doggo or of Prince Yuri was ever found. As to Doggo, perhaps he had been slain and his serial number had been incorrectly reported by those who had found his body. Or perhaps he had been among those who had braved the steam in a heroic attempt to cheat Cabot of his final victory, by a flight to unknown lands beyond the boiling seas.

It was just as well, for Cabot’s hands were not drenched with the blood of a friend. His conscience was clear, and yet he was relieved of the embarrassing alternative of having to choose between putting to death one who had saved his life, or permitting to live a member of the proscribed race.

As for Yuri, undoubtedly he, too, had been among these fliers; for never could one of his spirit brook to remain, even in hiding, in a land completely dominated by his enemy and rival, Myles Cabot.

Thus passed from the continent the race of black insects which had long exercised dominion over it. Poros was safe at last.

The stadium was repaired, and an appropriate celebration was held therein. The lands and other property of the Formians were distributed among the war widows and the leading heroes of the Cupian soldiery.

Under the regency of Myles Cabot, Cupia prospered. Luno Castle was rebuilt. Myles and his fellow scientists perfected many devices for the welfare of the people.

Among these devices was a new source of power, namely, a compound engine devised by Cabot himself. Mercury was boiled and its vapor used as steam. The exhaust vapor was condensed, in a water-tube boiler, at such a high temperature that the water turned to steam, which was used to drive a second set of pistons. Thus very little energy was lost. These novel steam engines were located at the coal mines in the northern mountains, thus obviating the transportation of fuel. Huge generators converted the energy into electricity which was conveyed to the southward over wireless power lines, made up of the Toron ray. Thus Kuana and the other large cities were supplied with power.

But in the course of his experiments, Cabot found many gaps which he could not fill by his meager recollection of earth devices. And so he finally persuaded the Princess Lilla to permit him to return to the earth for a brief visit. A perfecting of his instrument for the wireless transmission of matter, and several trips between Luno and Kuana, showed that this was entirely feasible.

And so one day he turned the reins of government over to Prince Toron, kissed his wife and baby good-by and stepped between the co-ordinate axes of the huge radio set at Luno Castle, with Toron and Oya Buh at the levers. The next thing that he knew, he was lying on the floor of the laboratory of the General Electric Company in Lynn, Massachusetts, as already recounted.

How he was there attacked by the night operator, how he reached Boston, and how the newspapers thought that he was an escaped inmate of an insane asylum, has been told in the first chapter of this story.

He put up for the night in a cheap Boston lodging house, and early the next morning took the elevated out to Dudley Street, where he had kept a small bank account during college days, under an assumed name, as a provision for possible escapades, which somehow he had never found time to commit. In after years he had maintained this account, largely as a matter of sentiment, and had even, with strange foresight, transferred quite a block of his securities to their safe deposit vault.

It all certainly came in handy that morning. In spite of his absence of five years and his workman clothes, the bank clerk instantly recognized him as the “Mr. M. S. Camp,” who had kept an account there, and so cashed a check for him and obligingly arranged for the sale of some of his securities.

Then he returned to town, bought a complete outfit, took a hotel room, and bathed, shaved and changed. Once more he was Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian.

His next need was to buy newspapers and magazines, to learn what had happened in the world since he left it. And it was in the course of making these purchases that he ran across an installment of “The Radio Man,” edited by me, and thus was led to make the trip down to my farm.

XXIII

TOO MUCH STATIC

Thus ends the second story of Myles Cabot, the radio man.

The first was written by his own hand, and was shot from Venus to the earth, swathed in the fur of the fire-worm, and concealed in the heart of a streamline projectile. The second he told to me in person from time to time during his stay on my Massachusetts farm on his return from Venus.

The tale was a long time in telling, for Myles, in his assumed name of course, at once matriculated at Harvard to study electricity under Kennelly and Hammond. Although he spent nearly every week-end at my farm, he devoted most of his spare time even here to reading assorted books on nearly every form of practical science, and to the installation of a radio set for the purpose of communicating with his friends and family on Venus, and so as to be prepared to transmit himself back eventually. Hence the two huge steel towers on Cow Hill, which have recently excited the wonder and curiosity of my fellow-townsmen.

Of course, there were many questions which we asked him, when his story was completed. My little daughter Jacqueline was particularly resourceful in this connection.

Almost the moment he finished, she inquired: “And what became of your beautiful pet woofus? Did he die?”

Cabot smiled. Like most Bostonians, he was always very adept with children.

“You never could guess,” he replied, “so I will tell you. After the flight of the ants from the stadium, my woofus was found, still alive, in one of the passageways beneath the seats, where he had evidently dragged his poor mangled body and hidden himself. His life was spared by some one who recognized him as the beast who had rescued me on the day of the games. Word was brought me, and I at once went to him with Emsul. At my command, the woofus submitted to treatment, and soon recovered. He became a great pet of Lilla and little Kew. Always he lies on guard by the crib while the baby sleeps. And the baby’s favorite game when awake is to play horsey astride of his back.”

“How cunning!” Jacqueline murmured. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a pet woofus to take care of Stuart?” Stuart being my own youngest.

But Mrs. Farley was a bit incredulous.

“Mr. Cabot,” she asked, “how could Baby Kew know anything about playing horse, seeing as there are no horses on Poros?”

Myles laughed good-naturedly.

“I said ‘horse’,” he explained, “merely to give an earthly allusion. What the little king thinks he is riding on is a whistling bee.”

This suggested another question.

“What of Portheris and his swarm?” I inquired. “Has it never occurred to you that these Hymernians, as you call them, are a race of intelligent beings almost on a par with the Cupians and the Formians, and that, therefore, there are still _two_ races of intelligent beings on the Planet Poros? How about your assertion, made in the council hall of the palace at Kuana, that ‘there is no room on any given planet for more than one race of intelligent beings’?”

Cabot tried to laugh it off, but I could see that the suggestion worried him.

“The Hymernians are not exactly human,” he objected.

“Neither were the ants,” I countered.

After which he remained for some time in abstracted silence, evidently turning over the possibilities in his mind.

Finally he came out with: “Portheris I can trust. And his followers will be all right, so long as my people keep them supplied with plenty of green cows to eat. Toron, the regent, and Kamel, our leader in the Assembly, realize the need of that.”

* * * * *

At this point little Jacqueline had a suggestion:

“Suppose Prince Yuri didn’t die in his flight across the boiling seas. Suppose he comes back and organizes the bees against your people. What then?”

“That is the least of my worries,” Myles answered, smiling. “No one could live in that heat. No, I am confident that Yuri is dead, or I never would have dared to make this trip back to earth.”

But, I fear, all the same, that we sowed the seeds of some serious worries in the mind of our guest.

Myles Cabot’s story was finished, except for his answers to various questions which we asked him from time to time. For instance, how it was possible for my friend to have worn a set of such short wave length on his person, without body capacity playing hob with his adjustment. I had not been able to give them a satisfactory answer. So now I put that question up to Cabot.

“Very simple,” said he, laughing, “for, as my apparatus was fixed firmly upon me, my body capacity was invariable, and so could be reckoned with like any other constant. But some radio fan is likely to refuse to accept that statement, and to come back with the suggestion that when I moved my hand to adjust the controls, I would bring into play a wonderfully efficient variable capacity, consisting of my hand and my abdomen as two connected plates.”

“Well, wouldn’t he be right?” I asked. “Doesn’t that completely floor you? It sounds reasonable enough, with what little I know of radio.”

Cabot laughed again, and replied: “If that could floor me, it would mean that I never could have talked to Cupians, to ant men, and to whistling bees on Poros. But it is true that I did experience considerable difficulty from that quarter. Nevertheless I eliminated all the trouble by enclosing, in a copper sheath, my belt, and the batteries, bulbs and tuning means which it carried; and by running my lead wires through a copper tube. This had the bad feature of slightly increasing the capacity of my apparatus, but it eliminated entirely all outside interference. Only when I put my hands near my antennae was my receptivity disturbed.”

As they would say on Poros, that was an antennaeful!

Of course, Mrs. Farley, womanlike, had to ask him if his radio set, which he always wore on Poros, was not awfully uncomfortable.

“Not at all!” he replied. “I see that you wear glasses. Do they not bother you?”

“No,” she said. “At first they did, but now I really never notice I have them on.”

“And I’ll venture to state,” he asserted, “that they are as natural to you as a part of your own body; that you never bother about them, except to adjust them or to clean them occasionally; and that, even then, you do it unconsciously and instinctively?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Well, that is just the way my artificial speech organs are to me.”

Shortly after, or perhaps it was during, his narration of his adventures, it occurred to me to ask him about the device which had shot him from Poros back to earth.

“How were you able to transmit yourself through space?” I inquired.

“That is a secret known only to Prince Toron, Oya Buh and myself. I doubt if the world is ready for it. And yet, it is very simple. Invention merely consists in realizing a need, and then in devising means to fulfill that need.”

“Humph! Absurdly simple, isn’t it?” I interjected sarcastically, for I was peeved at his superior tone.

“It really is,” he replied, a bit hurt, “and furthermore, the biggest part of invention consists in merely realizing the need. Once this is done, the means of filling the need can usually be found, staring one in the face, just waiting to be used.”

“And what simple means stared you in the face when you realized the need of projecting yourself back to earth?” asked Mrs. Farley, doubtless hoping to steer him gently around to a description of his device.

This was exactly the result of her question. The answer was full of intense scientific interest. For the next ten or twelve minutes, Myles Cabot regaled us with a detailed technical explanation of his apparatus, finally ending up with: “I hope you understand this somewhat sketchy and involved exposition.”

We didn’t, but we said we did. In those days I knew little of radio. But in the months which followed the reappearance of Myles Cabot, I learned many things of which the world as yet little dreams, but which I have not his permission to disclose.

The details of his apparatus for transmitting objects through space were not, however, again imparted, and so I am unable to describe it here.

Between the various members of the family, we asked him many questions about the present status of the principal characters of his story.

Poblath, the philosopher, had become mangool of Kuana again, and was thinking of publishing his proverbs in book form. His dark and beautiful wife, Bthuh, was still lady-in-waiting to the Princess Lilla. Emsul, the veterinary, and Mitchfix, the trophil engine expert, were given associate professorships in their respective subjects at the Royal University of Kuana. Colonel Wotsn was made chief of the palace guards, in recognition of his assuming command of the palace the day it was seized, and of his subsequent rescue of Myles Cabot. Buh Tedn recovered from his wounds and resumed his duties at the University. Hah Babbuh was admitted to the nobility as a Sarkar, and was made field marshal, the rank which he had virtually occupied all during the war. Kamel, now a Sarkar, too, and no longer a pacifist and radical, became the leader of the court party in the Assembly. And, as already stated, the loyal Prince Toron assumed the regency during Myles Cabot’s visit to the earth.

One more point. I asked Myles why he had not brought his wonderful portable radio set down with him, to show to us.

“You forget,” was his reply, “that, for some unexplained reason, my apparatus will not transmit metals through space. Do you not remember all the steel buttons, gartersnaps and other metallic objects which were left behind in my Beacon Street laboratory that day when I disappeared from the earth?”

True! Now, that he mentioned it, I did remember. It would never be possible to bring any such Porovian souvenirs down to our own planet.

And that will be about all of Poros for the present. Let us now turn our attention to Myles Cabot on earth.