“I had thought of that,” Myles replied. “In fact I planned to do so,
before I left Poros. But unfortunately they have recently dismantled
their set, for the purpose of rebuilding it, and I could not very well
ask them to hurry, without revealing my identity, which would never do,
for that would get me so much publicity that my dear cousins would
undoubtedly have me locked up in the asylum on the strength of my absurd
belief that I have been on Venus. If they did that, then how could I
ever get back to that planet again? My cousins would just as leave get
hold of my property through a conservatorship, as by inheriting it. That
lets Lynn out! But my set here is now complete, and is the equal of the
G. E. installation; so I’ll talk to my princess tonight, if the static
will only let up.”
He seemed very happy.
* * * * *
After the evening meal was over, he lit a lantern and started back to
his laboratory. As we accompanied him to the door, he pointed to the
evening sky.
“Late tonight, long after midnight,” said he, “there will appear above
that horizon the star which holds all that is dear to me in this
universe. My wife, my child, my people, and my home. Good night. Do not
sit up for me. I may be very late.”
It was a sultry night. Not a breath was stirring. Storm clouds hung dark
in the west with heat-lightning playing intermittently across their
face. An occasional October asteroid flitted fireflylike through the
sky. The weather was too oppressive to think of going to bed, so we sat
up and waited for Myles Cabot. It got very late. But still he did not
come.
Finally, along toward morning, the storm broke. I was for going up to
Cow Hill to see how Myles was getting along, but Mrs. Farley restrained
me.
“He has oilskins in the laboratory, if he wishes to come down,” she
said. “In the meantime, leave him alone. He is phoning to his
sweetheart, and ought not to be disturbed. When you were courting me,
you never used to phone to me in public.”
“Nor in a thunderstorm either,” was my reply.
The rain fell in torrents, and the lightning was very vivid, though I
suppose that the storm was a mere trifle compared with those which Cabot
describes as occurring on Poros. Finally the weather began to clear; but
not without a Parthian shot, which fell so close that the lightning and
the thunder-clap seemed simultaneous. When the next flash came, the
momentary light revealed the fact that only one of the two towers
remained standing on Cow Hill.
Myles might be in trouble! Seizing my sou’wester and a lantern, I
hurried out into the night. The rain had now stopped. The sky had begun
to clear. As I neared the wireless station, I could see that the
stricken tower had fallen across one end of the laboratory, caving it
in. This was the end which held most of the apparatus, so I quickened my
pace and flung open the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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