So Quivven went home to chat with her father before young Tipi could get there to stir up possible trouble. She returned later in the day to resume her work. While she was gone, Cabot conferred with Doggo. “Why are you building this radio set?” the ant-man wrote. “I did not ask you before in the presence of the lady, for I felt that perhaps you did not wish her to know your plans.” “Doggo, you show remarkable intuition,” Myles wrote in reply. “It is true that I do not wish any of the Vairkings to know. My idea is to communicate with Cupia, learn how Lilla is getting along, and encourage my supporters there to hold out until in some way I can secure a Formian airship and return across the boiling seas.” “Then cease your work,” Doggo wrote, “for my plane, in perfect condition, lies carefully hidden in a wood not a full day’s journey from this city. All that we need is alcohol for the trophil-engines.” XV PLANS FOR ESCAPE “We can make the alcohol in a few days in my laboratory,” Cabot wrote, “but it will not do for us to escape too precipitately, lest our plans be discovered and blocked. The Vairkings like sleight-of-hand, and wish to keep me with them as their court magician. Let us bide our time until they become sufficiently accustomed to you, so that they will not question your accompanying me on an expedition. Then, away to the plane, and off to Cupia!” The ant-man assented. It seemed logical. And yet I wonder if this logic would not have done credit to Jud the Excuse-Maker. I wonder if Cabot was not subconsciously influenced by a scientific desire to complete his radio set in this land of people who used only wood and flint. I wonder. At all events, the work proceeded. He had planned to use the slag from the copper furnace as the “ore” for his iron, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that its high sulphur content would probably ruin any steel which he produced. Fortunately, however, he ran across a deposit of magnetic iron ore near Vairkingi. This he ground and placed in his crucibles with charcoal, and they built charcoal fires in the pits around them. The slag he slammed off with copper—later iron—ladles. The melting had to be repeated many times in order to purify the iron sufficiently, and further in order to secure just the right carbon content for cast-iron, steel, or wrought-iron, according to which he needed for any particular purpose. This securing the proper carbon content was largely a matter of cut-and-try. With iron and steel available, he now made pots, retorts, hammers, anvils, drills, wire-drawing dies, and a decent Bessemer converter. Copper tubes for glass-blowing, and copper wire were drawn. A simple wooden lathe was made for winding thread around the wires. This thread, by the way, was the only Vairkingian product which the earth-man found ready to his hand.