Part 10

“But remember that, although you are treated with great honors, you are nevertheless still my slave. Any attempt on your part to locate the magic wagon will be met with severe punishment, and an end will be put to your experiments. I have spoken.”

Myles Cabot met the other’s eye squarely. “You have spoken, Jud,” he said.

Myles was now convinced that Jud knew more about the missing plane than he was willing to admit; so the only thing to do was to lie low, bide his time, keep an ear out for news of the plane, and continue the manufacture of the radio set. Thus the earth-man ruminated as he walked slowly back to his quarters.

And then the linking of radio and airplanes in his mind gave him an idea. He had felt all along that he was doing the correct thing in building a radio set rather than in manufacturing firearms with which to attack the Formians, or in trying to fabricate an airplane for a flight across the boiling seas.

His intuition had been correct; his subconscious mind must have guided him to make the radio _in order to phone Cupia for a plane to come over to Vairkingi and get him_. Why hadn’t he realized this before? It gave him new heart.

With a laugh he reflected that this afterthought was pretty much like those so characteristic of the man whom he had just left. Jud the Excuse-Maker, always bungling, and always with a perfectly good excuse or alibi, thought up afterward to explain why he did something which, when he did it, was absolutely pointless. Myles had always looked down on the Vairking noble because of this failing.

But now what he found himself going through exactly the same mental processes, he began to wonder if perhaps Jud were not guided by a fairly high-grade intuition. Perhaps Jud’s afterthoughts and excuses were but the breaking through of a realization of some real forethoughts on the part of Jud’s subconscious mind. Myles wondered. He was still wondering when he fell asleep that night.

The next morning he plunged into his work with renewed vigor. He now had copper wire, copper plates, wood, mica, solder, platinum, glass, and batteries—everything that he needed for his radio set except a better vacuum for his tubes; but without that he was as far from success as when he started.

Of course he knew what he needed—magnesium. But it was one thing to step into a drug store on the earth, or into a chemical laboratory in Cupia, and take magnesium off the shelves, and quite another matter to pick this elusive element out of thin air in Vairkingi.

Nevertheless, in spite of this lack, Myles kept on working. He wound his inductances, transformers, earphones, and rheostats. He assembled his variable condensers and microphones. He fashioned his sockets and lamp bases. He strung his antennae. He wired up his baseboard and panel.

Small sets were installed in Quivven’s rooms at the palace, at Jud’s house, and at the brickyard. Each of these was equipped with a transformer-coupling for Doggo’s antennae, as well as with mouthpieces for the others, so that now at last oral conversation was possible with his Formian friend. Later he would prepare a portable head-set such as he had worn in Cupia.

Laboratory experiments demonstrated the success of his sets in everything except durability of tubes. Yet in spite of this drawback he was able to communicate across his laboratory, and even with Jud’s house, and under favorable conditions with Quivven at the palace by using a cold-tube hookup. But this was not powerful enough to send as far as the brickyard, let alone Cupia.

At this juncture there appeared one morning at his gate a Vairking soldier in leather tunic and helmet, requesting entrance with important secret news. Myles grudgingly left his work-bench and gave audience. The fellow had a strangely familiar appearance and smiled in a quizzical manner; yet Myles could not place him.

“Who are you?” Myles asked.

“Do you not know me?” the other asked in reply.

“No.”

The soldier doffed his leather cap. “Do you know me now?”

“No.”

“A life for a life?”

“Now I know you!” Cabot exclaimed. “You are Otto the Bold, son of Grod the Silent, who is King of the Roies. To paraphrase one of the proverbs of my own country, ‘A face that is familiar in Sur is oft a stranger in Vairkingi.’ I did not recognize you away from the surroundings in which we met. What good fortune brings you here?”

“Not _good_ fortune, but _bad_,” the Roy replied. “It is true that Grod, my father, is our king, but it is also true that Att the Terrible likewise claims the kingship. Att loves Arkilu, and is even at this moment on the march against Vairkingi with the largest army of Roies ever gathered.”

Myles smiled. “We are grateful for the information,” he said. “With this forewarning we are secure against attack.”

“If you will pardon me,” Otto continued, “I think that you are _not_ secure. For one of your own Vairkings, Tipi by name, marches with Att. Att has promised Tipi the glorious golden Quivven in return for Tipi’s support. And Tipi has many partisans within this city.”

Myles continued to smile. “We can deal with traitors,” he asserted smugly. “There are many lamp-posts in our city.”

But Otto kept on: “Sur has fallen.”

“What!” the earth-man shouted, at last shocked out of his complacency. “The rock-bound impregnable fortress of Sur fallen? Impossible!”

“Not impossible to those who travel through the skies and drop black stones which fly to pieces with a loud noise,” Otto calmly replied. “The beasts of the south have made alliance with Att the Terrible, and Tipi the Steadfast, and are marching with them. Good Builder! They are upon us even now. Quick, the beasts enter this very room. Come, draw, defend yourself!”

Wheeling quickly, Cabot confronted Doggo standing in the doorway. Much relieved, he explained to Otto who this newcomer was; then, seizing a pad and a lead stylus of his own manufacture, he hurriedly sketched the situation to his Formian friend.

In reply Doggo wrote: “At last I have magnesium ore. Some soldiers brought it in, attracted by its pretty red color. There is no time to be lost. To the laboratory. You must complete our set and summon aid from Cupia. Meanwhile I will get Jud on the air, and call him here for a conference. We have no time to wait upon him, or even Theoph, in this emergency.”

Myles read the message aloud to Otto.

“It is well,” the latter commented. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must be running along. My disguise as a Vairking soldier will get me safely out of your city, and I must join my father, who is planning to counter-attack, if a fit opportunity presents itself. Till we meet again.”

“Till we meet again, in this life or beyond the waves,” the earth-man replied. “And may the Builder bless you for your help this day.” Then he rushed to the laboratory.

Doggo was already tuning the set. “Jud is not at home,” he wrote. “Shall I waste a tube on the brickyard?”

“No,” Myles signified with a shake of his head; then seizing the pad and stylus again, he wrote: “I will try and get Jud. You meanwhile attempt to extract magnesium from this piece of carnallite.”

The ant-man knew exactly how to proceed. Grinding the ore, he mixed it with salt and melted the mass in an iron pot, which he connected electrically with the carbon terminal of a line of electric batteries. In the boiling pot he placed a copper plate connected with the zinc elements of his cells.

By the time the earth-man returned from calling Jud on the radio, a coating of pure magnesium had begun to form on the copper anode.

An hour or so later he scraped off his first yield of the precious metal, the final necessity of his projected radio set.

At this stage Jud appeared. “Pardon the delay,” he started to explain. “You see, I—”

But Myles cut him short with: “Never mind explanations now. It is enough that you are here. Sur has fallen. The beasts of the south and Att the Terrible are on the warpath. They seek to rob you of your Arkilu. With their aerial wagons they will drop magic rocks upon this city and destroy it. Give Doggo back his plane, and he will try to combat them.”

But Jud shook his head. “You would merely escape,” he replied, “and then we would be worse off than now.”

“Then you admit that you know the whereabouts of Doggo’s plane?” Myles eagerly asked.

“Not at all, not at all,” the Vairking suavely replied. “I was merely stating that, even if I knew where this ‘plane,’ as you call it, is—”

“For Builder’s sake, man!” Cabot cut in. “This is no time to quibble over words! Give us the plane, if you would save Theoph, yourself, and Arkilu.”

“It’s hardly necessary,” Jud asserted, unruffled. “Don’t get so excited! If Att wants Arkilu, he certainly won’t drop things on the palace. And we can defend the palace against all the Roies in Vairkingi.”

“But not against magic slingshots,” replied the earth-man.

“Perhaps not,” the noble said with a crafty smile; “but we shall see. Now I go to prepare the defense. You are at liberty to come with us, if you will, or putter around your tubes if you had rather. Good-by.”

“Shift for yourselves then!” Myles shouted after him, and frantically resumed his work. His attempt to get the plane by stratagem had failed. Perhaps Jud did not know anything about the plane after all. It would be typical of him.

Myles had plenty of sets of grids, plates, and filaments all prepared. Also plenty of long tubes of pyrex glass. All that remained necessary was to coat the platinum elements with magnesium, fuse them into the tube, exhaust the air by the water method as before, seal the tube, and his radio set would be complete.

“Where is Quivven?” he wrote to Doggo. “She ought to be here helping with this.”

“On her way from the palace,” the ant-man replied. “I radio-phoned her there.”

Presently she entered, and jauntily inquired what all the excitement was about. Myles explained as briefly as possible.

Her only answer was to shrug her golden shoulders and remark, “Tipi is a little fool. He can have me if he can get me.”

Then she took her seat at the workbench.

After a while she inquired, “Why the rush with the radio set, when Vairkingi is in peril?”

Myles replied, “Our only hope now is to get Cupia on the air, and persuade my followers there to send across the boiling seas enough aerial wagons to defeat the beasts of the south, or ‘Formians,’ as we call them.”

“And will you talk with your Lilla?” she asked innocently.

“Yes, if the Builder wills,” he eagerly and reverently replied.

To his surprise, Quivven jumped to her feet with flashing eyes, and, seizing a small iron anvil from the workbench, she held it over the precious pile of platinum elements.

“And if I drop this anvil, you will _not_ talk to her. Is not that so?”

Myles, horrified, sat rooted to his seat, unable to move.

XVII THE BATTLE FOR VAIRKINGI

But the flaming Quivven did not drop the anvil on the precious tube elements. Instead she flung it from her to the floor and sank limply into her seat, her golden head on her arms on the workbench.

“I couldn’t do it,” she moaned between sobs, “for I too know what it is to love. Talk to her, Myles, and I will help you.”

He gasped with relief. “You wouldn’t spoil all our days and days of labor, I am sure,” he said. “What was the matter? I don’t understand you.”

“_You_ wouldn’t,” was her reply, as she shook herself together and resumed work.

After a while one of the soldiers attached to the laboratory brought in word that the Roies and Formians were attacking the walls, and that “planes” were sailing around in the sky overhead. Cabot gave word to mass his men to defend the laboratory at all costs and went on working.

One by one the tubes were completed and tested.

From time to time Quivven would step into the yard, glance at the sky, and then report back to Myles. The Formian planes were scouting low, but were not dropping bombs. Jud had apparently been right in one thing—that the beasts would not risk injuring the expected prizes of war, namely Arkilu and Quivven.

From time to time runners brought word of the fighting at the outer wall of the city. It would have been an easy matter for the ant-men to bomb the gates, and thus let in their Roy allies, but evidently they were playing safe even there. At last, however, word came that traitors—presumably friends of Tipi—had opened one of the gates, and that the enemy was now within the city.

Still Myles worked steadily on.

Suddenly Quivven returned from one of her scouting trips in the yard with the cry, “One of the air wagons has seen me, and is coming down!”

At that the Radio Man permitted himself to leave his bench for a few moments and go to the door. True, the plane was hovering down, eagerly awaited by a score or so of Cabot’s Vairking soldiers armed with swords, spears and bows. As the Formians came within bowshot they were met with a shower of arrows, most of which, however, glanced harmlessly off the metallic bottom of the fuselage.

The ant-men at once retaliated with a shower of bullets. Two Vairkings dropped to the ground, and the others frantically rushed to cover within the buildings, forcing back Myles and his two companions, as the fugitives crowded through the door.

“Where is _your_ magic slingshot?” one of them taunted him as they swept by.

The earth-man shook himself and passed the back of one hand across his tired brow, then hurried to his living room. Seizing his rifle, he cautiously approached one of the slit windows which overlooked the yard, and peeked out. The plane was on the ground. Four ants were disembarking.

Here at last was a chance to secure transportation!

Myles opened fire.

The Formians were taken completely by surprise. Oh, how it did Cabot’s heart good to see those ancient enemies drop and squirm as he pumped lead into them! They made no attempt to return his fire, but scuttled toward their beached plane.

Only one of them reached it; but one was enough to deprive the earth-man of his booty. Up shot the craft, followed by a parting bullet from Myles. Then he proceeded to the yard once more. His furry soldiers, brave now that all danger was over, were already there before him, putting an end to the three wounded ant-men, with swords and spears.

A strong and pungent odor filled the air. Myles sniffed. It was alcohol in large quantities. The plane could not last long, for he had punctured its fuel tank.

Each of the dead enemies had been fully armed, so that, although Myles failed in his plan to secure the airship, the encounter had at least netted him three rifles and three bandoleers of cartridges. These he bestowed on Doggo, Quivven, and the captain of his guards, saying, “You three, with four or five others, had better go at once to Jud’s compound before the fighting reaches here; for, now that the Formians have located Quivven, they are sure to attack again, sooner or later.”

But the golden-furred princess remonstrated with him: “Let us stay together, fight together, and, if need be, die together.”

“For the Builder’s sake, run along,” he replied testily. “We are wasting valuable time. I will join you if the fighting gets too thick hereabouts.”

“But how can you?”

“By the back way which you taught me.”

“But you need the help of Doggo and myself.”

“No longer, for the set is complete. All that remains to be done is to tune in and either get Cupia on the air or not. Now, as you are my true friends, please run along!”

So, with a shrug and a pout; she left him. And with her went Doggo, and the captain, and five of the guard. Much relieved, the Radio Man returned to his workbench. Although the move truly was wise for the safety of Quivven, the real motive which actuated Myles was a desire to have her absent, when and if he should talk to his Lilla.

He leaned his rifle against the bench, hung the bandoleer handily near by, and set to work. A few more connections and his hookup was complete. He surveyed the assembled set with a great deal of satisfaction; for, although it really was a means to an end, yet it was a considerable end in itself after all, as any radio fan can appreciate.

Once more Myles Standish Cabot, electrical engineer, had demonstrated his premiership on two worlds. He had made a complete radio set out of basic natural elements, without the assistance of a single previously fabricated tool, or material! It was an unbelievable feat. Yet it had been completed successfully.

With trembling hands, he adjusted the controls, and listened. Gradually he tuned in a station. It seemed a nearby station.

A voice was saying: “We could not report before, O master, for we have only just repaired the set which this Cabot wrecked. The Minorian lied when he told you that he had affairs well in hand, for even at that moment he was a fugitive.

“He is now with the furry Cupians who live to the north of New Formia. Today our forces are attacking their city. It is only a matter of a few parths before he will be in our hands. I have spoken, and shall now stand by to receive.”

This was the supreme test. Could Myles Cabot hear the reply? Adjusting his set to the extreme limit of its sensitivity, he waited, his hands on the wave-length dials.

Faintly but distinctly came the answer in the well-known voice of Yuri the usurper: “You have done well. Now I will hand the antenna-phones to the Princess Lilla, and I wish you to repeat to her what you have just told me, so that she may hear it with her own antennae and believe.”

A pause and then Cabot heard the ant-man stationed at the shack on the mountains near Yuriana recount the tale of Doggo’s abortive revolution and flight, of Cabot’s wrecking the radio set and disappearing, of the Formian alliance with Att the Terrible, of the fall of Sur, and of the attack on Vairkingi, ending with the words which he had already caught.

As he listened to this narration, the earth-man was rapidly making up his mind what to do, and, as soon as the ant-man signed off, Cabot cut in with: “Lilla, dearest, do not show any sign of surprise, but listen intently, as though the Formian were still speaking. This is your own Myles. I am sending from a station which I have only just completed after many sangths of intensive work.

“It is true that the Formians are now attacking our city but they cannot win. Sur fell because we were taken by surprise, but we were warned in time to defend Vairkingi. Already I, myself, have driven off one plane and killed three Formians.

“As yet I have been unable to secure an airship, or I should have flown back to you. Please get in touch with Toron, or some other of my friends, and persuade them to fly across the boiling seas and bring me back.

“Yuri has made it twice, and ‘what man has done, that can man do.’ Now I am about to finish. When I sign off, please request Yuri for permission to talk to the Formian at Yuriana, to ask him some questions. Then tell me as much as you can of yourself, our baby, and the situation in Cupia, before Yuri shuts you off. I have spoken, dearest.”

And Myles stood by to receive.

With what a thrill did he hear his own Lilla’s voice answer: “Oh, Formian, I have Prince Yuri’s permission to speak to you. You may answer what I ask you, and reply to what I tell you, but he himself will receive, lest I hear something which I ought not. This leads me to believe that affairs are not so bad with Cabot as you report.”

“She is doing fine,” Myles remarked to himself, admiringly. “So far, Yuri will not suspect that she is talking to me.”

Lilla’s voice continued: “You and the other Formians may be interested to know that Prince Yuri is in complete control here. Baby Kew and I are well, and are being respectfully treated by Prince Yuri as his guests in the palace at Kuana. He has promised me that if I will marry him, Kew can have the succession after his death. And this I might have accepted for the baby’s sake, but now that I know that you still live, this cannot be.”

“She has made a slip,” Cabot moaned.

Evidently she realized it herself, for her voice hurried on: “You see, the whistling bees—”

Then Yuri’s voice cut in abruptly with: “Congratulations, Cabot. I don’t see how you did it. Your ex-wife would have gotten across a lot more information to you if she hadn’t inadvertently let me know to whom she was talking by her careless use of the word ‘you’. I don’t know what you said to her, but I shall be on my guard. No more radio for the Princess Lilla, until my henchmen in New Formia report your death, which I hope will be soon. Good-by, you cursed spot of sunshine. Yuri, king of Cupia, signing off for the night.”

So that was that. Myles switched off the set, and sat submerged in thought. Lilla and his baby were safe. He doubted not that she would sooner or later find means to send him a plane. He had given Yuri cause to doubt the glorious story told by the Formian radio operator. The new set had fulfilled its mission.

But how had Yuri succeeded in climbing into power again in Cupia, nine-tenths of the inhabitants of which were loyal to Princess Lilla and the baby king?

Then Myles remembered her closing words: “The whistling bees—” It was as little Jacqueline Farley had prophesied on her father’s New England farm, during Cabot’s brief revisit to the earth. Cabot had stated: “There can be no peace on any continent which is inhabited by more than one race of intelligent beings”; whereat little Jacqueline had pointed out that the whistling bees were intelligent beings.

Doubtless, Yuri had stirred up trouble between the bees and their Cupian allies, and had ridden to the throne on the crest of this trouble. Portheris, king of the bees, had undoubtedly been deposed; for he was too loyal to Myles to stand for this.

The earth-man’s reverie was rudely interrupted at this point by one of his soldiers who rushed into the laboratory shouting: “Sir, there is fighting in your very yard!”

Cabot slipped the bandoleer over his shoulders, adjusted the straps, picked up his rifle, and hurried to the door. In the yard, his guards were struggling in hand-to-hand combat with a superior force of Roies.

He could tell them apart, not only by the contrast between the fine features of his own men and apelike faces of the intruders, but more easily by the contrast between the leather tunics of the Vairkings and the nakedness of the Roies. So, standing calmly in the doorway, Myles began picking off the enemy, one by one, with his rifle. It was too easy; almost like trap-shooting.

But it didn’t last long, for the Roies soon learned what was up, and, breaking away from their opponents, crowded out through the gate, followed by a shower of missiles and maledictions.

Cabot’s Vairkings were for following, but their master peremptorily called them back, and directed them to barricade the laboratory. It was well that he did so, for presently the heads of the enemy began to appear above the top of the fence. Evidently they had built a platform in the street.

Soon arrows and pebbles began to fly at the windows of the house. The Vairkings replied with a volley, but Cabot cautioned them to conserve their ammunition, and watch him pick off with his rifle, one by one, the heads which showed themselves above the paling.

This soon ceased to be interesting. So, giving the rifle and bandoleer to one of the more intelligent of his men, and instructing them to hold the laboratory at all costs, the earth-man set out, sword in hand, by the back way to rejoin Doggo and Quivven.

The alleys which he threaded were deserted. He reached the rear of Jud’s compound without event, and passed in to one of the inclosures through a small and well concealed gate in the face of the wall. Quivven had pointed this route out to him before, but never had he traversed it farther than this point. He looked cautiously around him. Then he rubbed his eyes, and looked again! He could hardly believe his senses!