The Devolutionist and the EmancipatrixFlint, Homer Eon
Science
The Devolutionist and the Emancipatrix
Flint, Homer Eon
Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction
"Have to be leaving you now," he called. He turned his machine
around. "You'll learn soon enough, Powart, exactly what I mean. And
you'll know that I'm right. Good-by!"
Within a minute he and Mona were two miles away. Fort kept silent
all the while. He seemed to be intent upon getting the most out of
his machine, and kept looking anxiously at his watch. Finally Mona
could hold in no longer.
"Boy, I've simply got to know what your game is. You've kept me
waiting long enough."
He immediately began to explain. First, he told her frankly and
fully, just what she had said to him over the telephone, when she
was under Billie's "influence." "I was so sure it was genuine I went
right ahead on that lead, Mona."
"You are positive you heard me say that?" from the girl
thoughtfully.
"Absolutely. And somehow I knew it was the truth."
"Powart had tricked us; not merely the workers, whom he has been
hoodwinking all along, but you and me and all the rest! So I looked
into the matter and discovered that the poor devils on Holl have
been treated all wrong. All wrong, Mona! I never realized it before,
until I investigated; but they've been enduring rank injustice for
generations, and we've encouraged them to be satisfied with it."
"I know it," she interrupted softly. "I've known it for years, boy.
What could we do to help them?"
"Exactly!" cried Fort, looking ahead and down, toward the chasm of
the contact, then at his watch once more. "Exactly what I found out,
Mona! There was no use telling them the truth; they wouldn't believe
it! They were too well satisfied.
"And so, when I heard of Powart's scheme to bombard Alma, I saw a
way to free the poor idiots on Holl! A way to release them from
their bondage--OUR bonds, Mona--and defeat Powart's trickery, and
win you--all at one move!"
The girl was plainly thrilled. Yet she kept her voice comparatively
cool as she asked:
"So far, so good. But I don't see that you've done anything at all
except to kidnap me."
He made an impatient gesture. "Look at the ground!" he ordered
curtly; and Mona wonderingly obeyed.
They were nearly to the contact. This time, however, they were not
flying down into the cleft, but over it. The curious, canonlike
chasm where the two worlds touched was perhaps ten miles below them.
"Look closely!" shouted Fort excitedly. He was glancing at his watch
again, and changing the angle of his wings. "By heavens, we are just
in time!" The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course.
"Look closely, I tell you! It's something you've never seen before,
and will never see again!"
And Mona, staring down at the point where Hafen and Holl came
together--the curious region of balanced gravitations, like nothing
else anywhere in the universe--saw, as she passed over, something
that made her senses whirl.
Hafen and Holl were no longer one!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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