Part 8

Time and again his foot would touch something soft, which he would picture as some strange and weird Porovian animal, a gnooper for instance. Quickly he would withdraw the foot. Then waiting in suspense for the creature either to go away or to spring upon him, at last he would cautiously push his foot forward, touch the object again, kick it slightly, and find that it was only a clump of Porovian grass or a rotted piece of lichen log.

Poor Quivven! How terrified _she_ must be at such encounters!

After a while he got a bit used to these occurrences, and accordingly each succeeding one of them delayed him less than the preceding.

“You know,” he said to himself, “this will keep on until finally one of these obstacles will actually turn out to be a gnooper, and it will eat me alive before I can get out of the way.”

Just then his groping foot touched another of these soft objects.

“Get out of my way,” Cabot shouted, and gave it a kick. But this time it was not attached to the soil. It yielded and wriggled a bit. Then it gave a peculiar groaning sound.

Myles leaped backward and waited. But nothing happened; so he tried to circle the creature. Again the groan. His scientific curiosity got the better of his caution. He approached once more and investigated more closely, reaching down with his hand. The animal was covered with wet and muddy fur.

It was Quivven!

Tenderly he raised the crumpled form in his arms, and groped on down the treacherous trail.

Myles wondered how long he could bear up with this dead weight in his arms. But just as he was beginning to stagger, the road gave a turn and flattened out, and there before him were lights, the flares and bonfires of a city! They had reached the plain.

“Quivven!” he cried joyfully. “This is home! There ahead lies Vairkingi!”

But she made no reply. Her body was cold and still.

Quickly he laid her on the ground and placed one ear to her chest. Thank the Great Builder! Her heart still beat. So he chafed her hands and feet, and worked her arms violently back and forth until she began to groan protestingly.

“Quivven!” he cried. “Wake up! We are home!”

“Are you here, Myles?” she murmured faintly,

“Yes.”

“And you won’t make me walk any more?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll wake up for you,” she murmured cheerfully, and promptly fell fast asleep.

Again lifting her tenderly in his arms, he resumed the journey.

On reaching the city he circled the wall until he came to one of the gates, where he stood the girl on the ground and shook her gently into consciousness.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“At the gates of Vairkingi,” Myles answered.

She ran her hands rapidly over her mud-caked fur.

“Oh, but I can’t go in like this,” she wailed, “I’m covered with mud from head to foot! Think how I must look! No, I refuse to go in.”

“If you stay here,” he urged mildly, “then when morning comes every one will see you, the Princess Quivven, bedraggled with mud, hanging around outside the city gates. Better far to go in now, and take a chance of being seen by only one sentinel.”

“Oh, you beast, you beast!” she sobbed, beating him futilely with her tiny paws.

For reply he seized her in his arms, swung her across one hip, and shouted: “Open wide the gates of Vairkingi for Cabot the Minorian, magician to Jud the Excuse-Maker, and to his Excellency Theoph the Grim!”

The gates swung open, and the sentinel stared at them with surprise and some amusement. Myles whipped out his sword, and the smile froze on the soldier’s face.

“Thus do I teach men not to laugh at Myles Cabot,” the earth-man growled. “Remember that you have seen nothing.”

And he handed the soldier the choice blade of Grod the Silent. The soldier smiled again.

“I have seen nothing but a Roy, whom I robbed of his sword and drove off into the darkness. It is a fine sword, and I will remember that I have seen nothing. May the Great Builder bless Myles Cabot the Minorian.”

Cabot glanced at his burden, Quivven, the beautiful. No wonder she did not want to be seen. It always humiliates a lady not to look her best in public. But by the same token, no one could possibly recognize her. He might perfectly well have saved the sword.

So he passed on through the city streets. Finally he had to put the girl down, and ask her to help him find the way, which she did grudgingly. At the gate of Jud’s compound, Myles again swung her across his hip, before he demanded entrance. No swords this time, for diplomacy would take the place of payment.

“Myles Cabot demanding entrance,” he cried.

The local guard inspected them carefully by the light of his torch.

“It is Cabot all right,” he replied, “and you look as though you had seen some hard fighting. But who is this with you?”

“A girl of the Roies,” answered Myles. “That is what the fighting was about.”

“Not for mine!” the soldier asserted, grimacing. “Though there is no accounting for tastes. They are filthy little beasts, and spitfires as well, so I’m told. My advice to you, sir, is to throw it down a well.”

Quivven wriggled protestingly.

“Perhaps I will,” Myles laughed.

At their own gate at last, he placed her once more on her feet, whereat she shook herself free, raced into the house, slammed the door of her room.

Cabot himself went right to bed, without waiting to wash or anything, and dropped instantly to sleep the moment he touched his pile of bedding; yet, so intent was he on wasting no time in getting Cupia on the air that he was up early the next morning.

He found his laboratory force sadly demoralized, owing to the absence of Quivven and himself, but he quickly brought order out of chaos, and set the men to work on their first real construction job, to which all the other work had been mere preliminary steps.

Quivven kept to her rooms, but one of the other maids roguishly informed him: “The Golden One says she hates you.”

Now that his fire-bricks were ready, Myles Cabot laid out on paper the plans for his smelting plant, all the units of which were to be lined with fire-brick.

First he designed a furnace for roasting his ore. This furnace was to be in two sections, one above the other, the lower holding the charcoal fire, and the upper holding the ore. Later he planned to use the sulphur fumes of this roaster to make sulphuric acid, which in turn he would use to make sal ammoniac for his batteries. But at present he had not yet figured out this process in detail.

The smelting furnace, for smelting the roasted ore into copper-matter, was to consist of a chimney about two feet in diameter, sloping sharply outward for about two feet, and thence sloping gradually inward again for a height of about ten feet. Near the bottom were to be a number of small holes leading from an air passage.

This air passage and the vent for the hot flames from the top of the smelter were to run in parallel pipes made of hollow brick tile, to two chambers containing a checkerwork design of fire-brick. The two pipes were to be interchangeable; so that, when the exhaust had heated one of the checkerwork grids to a red heat, the pipes could be switched, and the incoming air would be warmed by passing through the heated grid. From gnooper hide and wood he could easily construct bellows to pump in the air for the blast.

Molten copper-matte and slag would be separately run off through two separate openings at different levels near the bottom of the blast furnace.

To further refine the matte, he designed a Bessemer converter, that is to say, a barrel-shaped box of layers of fire clay, the inner layer being very rich in quartz sand. This barrel, when filled with molten matte, would be laid on its side; and a hot blast introduced through holes near this side would convert the matte into pure copper in about two hours.

The first converter which he made was rather small, as he expected that it would not last very well without metal reinforcements, and of course he would have no metal for reenforcing purposes until after he had run off at least one heat.

For the extraction of iron, he made crucibles of fireclay, which he set in deep holes in the ground.

On the second morning after the unpleasant homecoming, Quivven appeared. All her rage had burned out, and she was meek and subdued.

With downcast eyes she reported to Myles: “I am ready to go to work now.”

With a welcoming smile he patted her golden-furred shoulder, whereat her old anger started to flare again, but this one remaining ember merely flickered and died out, and she submitted with a shrug of resignation.

So the Radio Man explained to her his plans for the furnaces; then, leaving her in charge of the work, he set out once more to the river of the silver sands, this time accompanied by a heavy guard of Vairking soldiers, and flying a blue flag, as agreed on with Prince Otto of the Roies.

As he was departing, Quivven flung her arms around him and begged him not to go to certain destruction, but he gently disengaged himself, smiling indulgently at this show of childish affection.

“My dear little girl,” he admonished, “most of our troubles last time came from your following me. This time I warn you that I shall be very displeased if you fail to stick closely to home and complete my two magic furnaces for me. Promise me that you will.”

So, with tears of dread in her blue eyes, she promised; and the expedition set forth. They were gone about five days. The trip proved uneventful from any except a scientific viewpoint. They returned, bearing several pounds of silvery grains, placermined from the river sands; also some large lumps of galena crystal, and nearly a ton of zinc-blende. They found that, under the skillful direction of little Quivven, the furnaces were nearly completed.

Quivven the Golden Flame was overjoyed at Cabot’s safe return, while even he had to confess considerable relief. He complimented her warmly on the progress of the furnaces, and noted her pleasure at his expressions of approval.

A few details which had perplexed her were quickly straightened out, and the work was rushed to completion.

He next tested the silver grains which he had brought from the river. His method was a very simple one, invented by himself. It consisted in filling a clay cup with water and weighing it, then weighing a quantity of the metal, and then putting this metal in the water and weighing the whole. A simple mathematical calculation from these three weights gave him the specific gravity of the metal. This process was repeated a number of times to avoid error, and gave as an average the figure 21.5, which he remembered to be the specific gravity of pure platinum.

As a further test he hammered some of the supposed platinum into a thin sheet, and attempted, without success, to melt it. Then he laid a sliver of one of his lead bullets on it, and tried again, with the result that the lead melted and burned a hole through the metal sheet. This test convinced him that he truly had found platinum.

Cabot next turned his attention to glass making. For ordinary glass he would need quartz, soda, potash, and limestone.

The reason for his employing both soda and potash instead of merely one or the other, was that together they would have a lower fusing point, and thus be easier for him to handle with his crude equipment. For glass for his tubes he would use litharge in place of the limestone.

The quartz and the limestone were already available. Soda would be a byproduct of his sal ammoniac when he got around to making it, but this would not be until he had made sulphuric acid from his copper ore, which was a most complicated process as he remembered it.

Potash could be got simply by dripping water through wood-ashes, evaporating the water, roasting the sediment, dissolving again in water, letting the impurities settle, and then evaporating the clear liquid, and roasting again. He started this process at once.

But he had no idea how to make litharge. Furthermore, he could not blow his glass until he had metal tubes, so he abandoned further steps for the present.

While he was pondering over these problems a messenger arrived, demanding his immediate presence at the quarters of Jud the Excuse-Maker.

Jud was in a state of great excitement when the earth-man arrived.

Said Jud: “Do you remember what you told me about the beasts of the south, who swim through the air, talk soundless speech, and use magic slingshots like yours which you captured from the Roies near Sur?”

“Yes,” Cabot replied. “I hope that by this time I have given sufficient demonstration of my truthfulness so that you now believe the story.”

“Oh, I believed it at the time,” Jud hastily explained, “But now I have proof of it, for we have captured one of these beasts. That is, we _think_ it is one of them. I want you to see and identify it, before we present it to Theoph the Grim.”

“Thereby displaying commendable foresight,” Myles commented. “Where is this Formian?”

“In a cage in the zoo,” the Vairking noble replied. “Come; I will take you there.”

So together the two threaded the streets of Vairkingi to the zoo. This was part of the city which the earth-man had never before visited. Its denizens fascinated him.

There were huge water snakes with humanlike hands. There were spherical beasts with a row of legs around the equator, a row of eyes around the tropic of cancer, and a circular mouth rimmed with teeth at the north pole. There were—

But at this point Jud urged him on into another room, where he promptly forgot all the other creatures in the sight which met his eyes.

In a large wooden cage in the center of the room was an enraged ant-man gnawing at the bars, while a score or so of Vairking warriors stood around and prodded him with spears.

“Stop!” Jud shouted at the soldiery, whereat they all fell back obediently.

This called the attention of the imprisoned beast to the newcomers, so he looked up and stared at them. Cabot stared back.

Then he rushed forward to the cage!

XIV OLD FRIENDS

“Doggo!” he cried. “Doggo! They told me you were dead!”

But of course all this was lost on the radio speech sense of the prisoner. Vairking soldiers interposed their spears between Myles Cabot and what they believed was sure destruction at the jaws of the black beast. Cabot recoiled.

“Jud,” he called out, “order off your henchmen! I am not crazy, nor do I court death. This creature is the only one of the Formians whom I can control. He will prove a valuable ally for us, if I can persuade him to forgive the indignities which your men have already heaped upon him.”

“I do not believe you,” Jud replied, “for how can men communicate with beasts, especially with strange beasts such as this, the like of which man ne’er set eyes on before?”

“Remember that I am a magician,” Myles returned somewhat testily. Then seeing that Jud was still obdurate, he addressed the guards. “You know me for a magician?”

“Yes,” they sullenly admitted.

“And you know the magic on which I am now engaged, and to which all of my recent expeditions relate?”

“Yes,” one replied. “You seek to call down the lightnings of heaven, and harness them to transport your words across the boiling seas.”

“Rightly spoken!” the Radio Man asserted. “Therefore, if you do not stand aside, I shall call those lightnings down for another purpose, namely, to blast you. Stand aside!”

One of the guards spoke to another, “Why should we risk our lives to save his? Let the magician save himself!”

So they stood aside. Myles stepped up to the cage, and he and Doggo each patted the other’s cheek through the bars.

Jud the Excuse-Maker sheepishly explained, “I knew that you were speaking the truth, but I wished to learn what method you would use to handle the soldiers. You did nobly.”

“Bunk!” the earth-man ejaculated, well knowing that the Vairking would not understand him.

“What means that word?” Jud inquired, much interested.

“That,” Myles replied, grinning, “is a complimentary term often applied on my own planet, the earth, to the remarks of our great leaders.”

Jud, highly complimented, let it go at that. Myles now ordered paper and a charcoal pencil, and began a conversation with his ant friend.

“They told me you were dead,” he wrote. “Or I never would have left the city of Yuriana or deserted your cause.”

“My cause died with my daughter, the queen,” Doggo replied. “I alone survive. I escaped by plane, and have been flitting around the country ever since, until my alcohol gave out. Then these furry Cupians captured me. They got me with a net so that I could not fight back.

“Also, I was distant from my airship at the time, or it would have gone hard with them for the ship is well stocked with bombs, and rifle cartridges, and one rifle. Now tell me of yourself. How do you stand with these furry Cupians?”

“They are not Cupians.” Myles wrote. “They are Vairkings, a race much like myself, who send messages with their mouths and with their ears, instead of using their antennae for both, as the Cupians and you Formians do. Do you remember the old legend of Cupia, that creatures like me dwell beyond the boiling seas? Well, it appears to have been true, though how any one could have known or even suspected it, is a mystery to me.”

“You have not yet told me how you stand,” the ant-man reminded him.

“They recognize me as a great magician,” Myles answered, “and I have promised to build them a radio set, and to lead them to victory over the Formians.”

“Just as you did for the Cupians,” Doggo mused. “But you will have a harder task here, for these furry creatures appear to know no metals, nor any of the arts save woodcarving.”

They patted each other’s cheeks again. Then, before any one could interfere, Myles Cabot unbolted the door of the cage, and out walked Doggo, a free ant once more.

The soldiery, and Jud with them, promptly scattered to the four walls of the room.

“Come over here, Jud,” Myles invited, “and meet my friend—that is, unless you are afraid.”

“Oh, no, I do not fear him,” Jud the Excuse-Maker replied, “but I do not consider it consistent with the dignity of my position to be seen fraternizing with a wild beast.”

It was typical. Myles laughed. Then he led the huge ant home with him to his quarters.

Quivven was amazed, but not at all frightened, at the great black creature; and when an introduction had been effected on paper, she and Doggo developed quite a strong liking for each other.

As soon as the Formian had been fed and assigned to a room in the ménage—some improvement over the menagerie, by the way—his host and hostess took him on a tour of inspection of their laboratory.

With the true scientific spirit so characteristic of the cultured but warlike race which once dominated Cupia, Doggo plunged at once into the spirit of the almost super-Porovian task which Myles had undertaken; and it soon became evident that the new comer would prove to be an invaluable accession. His scientific training would dovetail exactly with that of the earth-man, and would supplement it at every point.

Almost at the very start he suggested a solution of the problems which had been puzzling Myles.

Cabot’s recollection of the process of sulphuric acid manufacture had been that it required a complicated roasting furnace, two filtering towers, and a tunnel about two hundred feet long made of lead, and into which nitric acid fumes had to be injected. His recollection of nitric acid manufacture was that it required sulphuric acid among other ingredients. So how was he to make either acid without first having the other? And furthermore, where was he to procure enough lead to build a two-hundred-foot tunnel?

Doggo solved these problems very nicely—by avoiding them.

“What do you need sulphuric add for?” he wrote.

“Merely to use in making hydrochloric acid,” wrote the earth-man in reply.

“And that?”

“To use in making sal ammoniac for my batteries.”

“Do you need nitric acid for anything except the manufacture of sulphuric?”

“No.”

“Then,” Doggo suggested, “let us make our sal ammoniac directly from its elements. We shall build a series of about twenty vertical cast-iron retorts, as soon as you have smelted your iron. These we shall fill with damp salt, pressed into blocks and dried. We shall heat these retorts with charcoal fires, and through them we shall pass then, air, and the sulphur fumes of your ore-roasting.

“After about fifteen days we shall daily cut out the first retort, dump out the soda which has formed in it, refill it, and place it at the farther end of the series. The liquid, which condenses at the end of the series, will be diluted hydrochloric acid. By passing the fumes of roast animal-refuse through it we shall convert it into sal ammoniac solution.”

Accordingly, the quicker they started their foundry operations, the better.

By this time chalcopyrite, quartz, and charcoal were present at Vairkingi in large quantities. The ore was first roasted, and then was piled into the smelter with the quartz and charcoal; the air-bellows were started, fire was inserted through the slaghole, and soon a raging pillar of flame served notice on all Vairkingi that the devil-furnace of the great magician was in full blast. By this time it was night, but no one thought of stopping.

Of course, there were complications. The furry soldiers deserted the pumps at the first roar of green-tinged flame, but Doggo instantly stepped into the breach and operated all of the bellows with his various legs. Finally the warriors, on seeing that Myles and Quivven had survived the ordeal of fire, sheepishly returned to their posts, and were soon loudly boasting of their own bravery and of how their fellows would envy them on the morrow when they should relate their experiences.

Along toward morning Cabot drew his first heat of molten matter into a brick ladle and poured it into the converter. It was an impressive sight. The shadowy wooden-walled inclosure, lit by the waving greenish flare of a pillar of fire, which metamorphosed the white skin of the earth-man into that of a jaundiced Oriental, tinged Quivven with green-gold, and glinted off the shiny carapace of Doggo as off the facets of a bloodstone. In the darkness of the background, toiled the workers at their pumps.

Then there came a change. The fires died down, the pumping ceased, oil lamps were lit, and the ghostly glare gave place to a faint but healthy light, although over all hung the ominous silence of expectancy.

The ladle was brought up, a hand-hole-cover removed, and out flowed a crimson liquid, tinting all the eager surrounding faces with a sinister ruddiness.

Again the red glare, as the ladle was poured into the barrel-shaped converter. Then the pumps were started again, and the blast from the converter replaced that of the furnace with its ghostly light. Two hours later the converter was tipped, and pure molten copper was poured out into the ladle. Once more the sinister ruddiness.

Quickly the molds were filled, the red light was gone, the spell was broken, conversation was resumed. The first metallurgy of Vairkingi was an accomplished fact.

Day came, and with it loud pounding on the gate. Cabot answered it, carelessly and abstractedly sliding back the bolt before inquiring who was outside. The gate swung open with a bang, almost knocking Myles into a flower bed, and in rushed a Vairking youth with drawn sword and panting heavily.

“You beast!” he cried, lunging at the earth-man as he spoke.

But in his haste and anger he lunged too hard and too far; so that Cabot, although unarmed, was able to step under his guard and grasp him by the wrist before he recovered. Quick as lightning the boy’s sword arm was bent up behind his back, and he was “in chancery”, to use the wrestling term.

Slowly, grimly, Cabot forced the imprisoned hand upward between the shoulder-blades of his opponent, until with a groan the latter relinquished the sword, and it fell clattering to the ground.