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?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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