CHAPTER II

_Warning_

It must have been nearly nine o'clock when a personal message came for

me. Not through the ordinary open airways, but in the National Length,

and coded. It came to my desk by official messenger, decoded, printed

and sealed.

_Jac Hallen, Inter-Allied News_. Come to me, North-east Island at

once, if they can spare you. Important. Answer.

Dr. Brende.

Our Division Manager scanned the message curiously and told me I could

go. I got off my answer. I did not dare call Dr. Brende openly, since he

had used the code, but sent it the same way. I would be up at once.

With a word of good-bye to Greys, I shoved aside my work, caught up a

heavy jacket and cap and left the office. The levels outside our

building were still jammed with an excited throng. I pushed my way

through it, up to the entrance to the Staten Bridge. The waters of the

harbor beneath me had a broad band of moonlight upon them, dim in the

glare of the city lights. I glanced upward with satisfaction. A good

night for air-traveling.

My small personal air-car was on the stage near the bridge entrance. The

attendant was there, staring at me as I dashed up in such haste. He

handed me my key from the rack.

"Going far, Jac? What a night! They'll be ordering them off if many more

go up.... Going north?"

"No," I said shortly.

I was away, rising with my helicopters until the city was a yellow haze

beneath me. I _was_ going north--to Dr. Brende's little private island

off the coast of Maine. The lower lanes were pretty well crowded. I

tried one of the north-bound at 8,000 feet; but the going was awkward.

Then I went to 16,000.

But Grille, the attendant back at the bridge, evidently had his finder

on me, out of plain curiosity. He called me.

"They'll chase you out of there," came his voice. "Nothing doing up

there tonight. That's reserved. Didn't you know it?"

I grinned at him. In the glow of my pitlight I hoped he could see my

face and the grin.

"They'll never catch me," I said. "I'm traveling fast tonight."

"Chase you out," he persisted. "The patrol's keeping them low. General

Orders, an hour ago. Didn't you know it?"

"No."

"Well, you ought to. You ought to know everything in your business.

Besides, the lights are up."

They were indeed; I could see them in all the towers underneath me. I

was flying north-east; and at the moment, with a following wind, I was

doing something over three-fifty.

"But they'll shut off your power," Grille warned. "You'll come down soon

enough then."

Which was also true enough. The evening local-express for Boston and

beyond was overhauling me. And when the green beam of a traffic tower

came up and picked me out, I decided I had better obey. Dutifully I

descended until the beam, satisfied, swung away from me.

At 8,000 feet, I went on. There was too much traffic for decent speed

and the directors in every pilot bag and tower I passed seemed watching

me closely. At the latitude of Boston, I swung out to sea, off the main

arteries of travel. The early night mail for Eurasia,[4] with Great

London its first stop, went by me far overhead. I could make out its

green and purple lights, and the spreading silver beam that preceded it.

[Footnote 4: Now Europe and Asia.]

Alone in my pit, with the dull whir of my propellers alone breaking the

silence of the night, I pondered the startling events of the past few

hours. Above me the stars and planets gleamed in the deep purple of an

almost cloudless sky. Venus had long since dropped below the horizon.

But Mars was up there--approaching the zenith. I wondered what the

Martian helio might be saying. I could have asked Greys back at the

office. But Greys, I knew, would be too busy to bother with me.

What could Dr. Brende want of me? I was glad he had sent for me--there

was nowhere I would rather have gone this particular evening. And it

would give me a chance to see Elza again.

I could tell by the light-numerals below, that I was now over Maine. I

did not need to consult my charts; I had been up this way many times,

for, the Brendes--the doctor, his daughter Elza, and her twin brother

Georg--I counted my best friends.

I was over the sea, with the coast of Maine to my left. The traffic,

since I left the line of Boston, had been far less. The patrols flashed

by me at intervals, but they did not molest me.

I descended presently, and located the small two-mile island which Dr.

Brende owned and upon which he lived.

It was 10:20 when I came down to find them waiting for me on the runway.

The doctor held out both his hands. "Good enough, Jac. I got your

code--we've been waiting for you."

"It's crowded," I said. "Heavy up to Boston. And they wouldn't let me go

high."

He nodded. And then Elza put her cool little hand in mine.

"We're glad to see you, Jac. Very glad."

They took me to the house. Dr. Brende was a small, dark man of

sixty-odd, smooth-shaven, a thin face, with a mop of iron-grey hair

above it, and keen dark eyes beneath bushy white brows. He was usually

kindly and gentle of manner--at times a little abstracted; at other

times he could be more forceful and direct than anyone with whom I had

ever had contact.

At the house we were joined by the doctor's son, Georg. My best friend,

I should say; certainly, for my part, I treasured his friendship very

highly. He and Elza were twins--twenty-three years old at this time. I

am two years older; and I had been a room-mate with Georg at the Common

University of the Potomac.

Our friendship had, if anything, grown closer since my promotion into

the business world. Yet we were as unlike as two individuals could

possibly be. I am dark-haired, slim, and of comparatively slight

muscular strength. Restless--full of nervous energy--and, they tell me,

somewhat short of temper. Georg was a blond, powerful young giant. A

head taller than I--blue-eyed, from his mother, now dead--square-jawed,

and a complexion pink and white. He was slow to anger. He seldom spoke

impulsively; and usually with a slow, quiet drawl. Always he seemed

looking at life and people with a half-humorous smile--looking at the

human pageant with its foibles, follies and frailties--tolerantly. Yet

there was nothing conceited about him. Quite the reverse. He was

generally wholly deprecating in manner, as though he himself were of

least importance. Until aroused. In our days of learning, I saw Georg

once--just once--thoroughly angered.

"... Came up promptly, didn't you?" Georg was saying. He was leading me

to the house doorway, but I stopped him.

"Let's go to the grove," I suggested. We turned down from the small

viaduct, passed the house, and went into the heavy grove of trees

nearby.

"He's hungry," Elza declared. "Jac, did you eat at the office tonight?"

"Yes," I said.

"Did you really?"

"Some," I admitted. In truth the run up here had brought me a thoroughly

hearty appetite, which I just realized.

"I was pretty busy, you know," I added. "Such a night--but don't you

bother."

But she had already scurried away toward the house. Dear little Elza! I

wished then, for the hundredth time, that I was a man of wealth--or at

least, not as poor as a tower timekeeper. True, I made fair money--but

the urge to spend it recklessly dominated me. I decided in that moment,

to reform for good; and lay by enough to justify asking a woman to be my

wife.

We reclined on a mossy bank in the grove of trees, so thick a grove that

it hid the house from our sight.

The doctor extinguished the glowing lights with which the tree-branches

were dotted. We were in the semi-darkness of a beautiful, moonlit night.

"Don't go to sleep, Jac!"

I became aware that Georg and his father were smiling at me.

I sat up, snapping my wits into alertness. "No. Of course not. I guess

I'm tired. You've no idea what the office was like tonight. Roaring."

"I can imagine," Georg said. "You were at Park Sixty when the President

fell, weren't you?"

"Yes. But I wasn't supposed to be. I wasn't assigned to that. How did

you guess?"

"Elza saw you. She had our finder on you--I couldn't push her away from

it." His slow smile was quizzical.

"On me? In all that crowd. She must have searched about very carefully

to----"

I stopped; I could feel my cheeks burning, and was glad of the dimness

there under the trees.

"She did," said Georg.

"I sent for you, Jac," Dr. Brende interjected abstractedly,

"because----"

But Georg checked him. "Not now, father. Someone--anyone--might pick you

up. Your words--or read your lips--there's light enough here to register

on a finder."

The doctor nodded. "He's afraid--you see, Jac, it's these Venus----"

"Father--please. It's a long chance--but why take any? We can insulate

in the house."

The chance that someone who shouldn't be, was tuned to us as we sat

there in that lonely grove! With the doctor's widespread reputation--his

more than national prominence--it did not seem to me to be such a long

chance either, on this, of all nights.

"As you say, no use in putting private things into the public air," I

remarked; and I felt then as though a thousand hostile eyes and ears

were watching and listening. "We can talk of what everybody knows,"

Georg commented. "The Martian Ruler of the Little People was

assassinated an hour ago. You heard that coming up?"

"No," I said; but I had imagined as much. "Did they say--"

"They said nothing," Dr. Brende put in. "The flash of a dozen helioed

words--no more."

"It went dark, like Venus?"

"No. Just discontinued. I judge they're excited up there--the Bureau

disorganized perhaps--I don't know. That was the last we got at the

house, just before you came down. There may be something in there

now--you Inter-Allied people are pretty reliable."

The ruler of the Venus Central State, the leading monarch of Mars, and

our three chief executives of Earth--murdered almost simultaneously! It

was incredible--any one of the murders would have been incredible--yet

it was true.

There had been times--in the Inter-Allied Office, particularly--when I

had been insulated from aerial eavesdropping. But never had I felt the

need of it more than now. A constraint fell over me; I seemed afraid to

say anything. I think we all three felt very much like that; and it was

a relief when Elza arrived with my dainty little meal.

"Any word from Mars, Elza?" her father asked.

She sat down beside me, helping me to the food.

"I did not look," she answered.

She did not look, because she was busy preparing my meal! Dear little

Elza! And because of my accursed extravagance--my poverty--no word of

love had ever passed between us!

I thought I had never seen Elza so beautiful as this moment. A slim

little thing, perfectly formed and matured, and inches shorter than I.

Thick brown hair braided, and hanging below her waist. A face--pretty as

her mother's must have been--yet intellectual as her father's.

I had taken Elza to the great music festivals of the city, and counted

her the best dressed girl in all the vast throng. Tonight she was

dressed simply. A grey-blue, tubular sort of skirt, clinging close to

the lines of her figure and split at the side for walking; a

tight-fitting bodice, light in color (a man knows little of the

technicalities of such things); throat bare, with a flaring rolled

collar behind--a throat like a rose-petal with the moonlight on it; arms

bare, save for the upper, triangular sleeves.

It must suffice; I can only say she was adorable. Almost in silence I

ate my meal, with her beside me.

Georg went into the house once, to consult the news-tape. It was crowded

with Earth events--excitement, confusion everywhere--inconsequential

reports, they seemed, by comparison with what had gone before. But of

helios from Mars, or Venus, there were none reported. Of Venus, the tape

said nothing save that each of our westward stations was vainly calling

in turn, as the planet dropped toward its horizon.

I finished my meal--too leisurely for Georg and the doctor; and then we

all went into the house, to the insulated room where at last we could

talk openly.

As we entered the main corridor, we heard the low voice of the

Inter-Allied news-announcer, coming from the disc in a room nearby.

_"And Venus----"_

The words caught our attention. We hurried in, and stood by the

Inter-Allied equipment. Georg picked up the pile of tape whereon the

announcer's words were being printed. He ran back over it.

"Another helio from Venus!" he exclaimed. "Ten minutes ago."

And then I saw his lips go tight together. He made no move to hide the

tape from Elza, but she was beside him and already reading it. Her

fingers switched off the announcer's droning voice.

_"Pacific Coastal Station,"_ Elza read. In the sudden silence of the

room her voice was low, clear, and steady, though her hands were

trembling. _"P.C.S. 10.42 Venus helio. 'Defeat! Beware Tarrano! Notify

your Dr. Brende in Eurasia, danger.'"_

We men stared at each other. But Elza went on reading.

_"P.C.S. 10.44 Venus helio. 'Lost! No more! Smashing apparatus!' The

Venus sending station went dark at 10.44.30. Hawaiian station will call

later, but have little hope of re-establishing connection. Tokyohama

10.46 Official, via Potomac National Headquarters. Excitement here

continues. Levels crowded----"_

Elza dropped the tape. "That's all of importance. Venus Central Station

warning _you_, father."

A buzz across the room called the doctor to his personal receiver. It

was a message in code from Potomac National Headquarters. We watched the

queer-looking characters printing on the tape. Very softly, in a voice

hardly above a whisper, Georg decoded it.

_"Dr. Brende, see P.C.S. 10.42, warning you, probably of Venus

immigrants now here. Do you need guard? Or will you come to Washington

at once for personal safety?"_

"Father!" cried Elza.

Georg burst out. "Enough of this. We cannot--dare not talk in here.

Father, come----"

We went out into the corridor again, across which was the small room

insulated from all aerial vibrations. In the corridor a figure was

standing--the one other member of the Brende household--the

maid-servant, a girl about Elza's age. I knew her well, of course, but

this evening I had forgotten her existence. She was standing in the

corridor. Did I imagine it, or had she been gazing up at the mechanism

ten feet above the floor--the mechanism controlling the insulated room?

"You wish me, Miss Elza? I thought I heard you call."

"No, Ahla, not 'til later."

With a gesture of respect, the girl withdrew, passing from our sight

down the incline which led to the lower part of the house.

It was a very small incident, but in view of what was transpiring, it

gave me a shock nevertheless.

For Elza's maid was a Venus girl!