The signal was given and we shot aloft. The transformation from the
fury of a storm to the light and tranquillity of the underworld had been
great and astounding; but this second transformation was none the less
impressive.
We emerged into a wonderful night set with stars that were perfectly
familiar to me. The Dipper and Polaris were in the north and occupying
relatively the same positions that they do when viewed from Earth--so
little effect has the immensities of distance upon their posts in the
vault.
But our own globe! It hung huge and tremulous in the blue of the
evening sky, so plain that we could almost note the continents that
gemmed its surface.
Meigs gave a whimpering cry and he and Markham and Popham rushed
together, fell upon each other's neck, and wept aloud.
"Oh, I wish I was back, I wish I was back!" moaned the broker.
"I'm lonesome enough to die!" sobbed Markham.
"Exiled, exiled, exiled!" was all the coal baron could murmur in husky
tones.
I will not say that I was proof against the sentiments that had unmanned
the one-time magnates, but I will declare that both Quinn and myself had
our feelings under better control. In silence I assisted the professor
to plant the telescope and we each gazed longingly at the greenish star
magnified to many times its diameter.
"There's the United States!" cried Popham.
"Can you see New York?" whispered Meigs hoarsely. "Look for New York,
man!"
Of course, a view of New York was out of the question, but the frantic
ex-plutocrats imagined they could see it, and even look down into Wall
Street for aught I know. Again were their emotions too much for them,
and they gave way as they had done before.
"Mr. Munn," said the professor, "this is harrowing."
"It is pretty hard on those gentlemen," I returned, "to be brought face
to face with something they thought they owned and yet not be able to
possess it."
"That remark is unlike you," answered the professor, and turned to the
king. "A thought occurred to me while we were coming up on the lift,"
he went on, "and I should like you to explain."
"If it is in my power." answered the king, his eye to the telescope.
"When we dropped into the kingdom of Baigol there was a storm on the
surface of this planet. That storm must have hidden the sun, and yet
the reflectors below were sending day throughout the realm."
"The reflection came from other and smaller reflectors arranged to take
care of just such an emergency," explained the king. "Storms are only
local, you know, and when one gathers over the giant reflector the
smaller ones at the other points are brought into use. But let's not
talk of this planet, but of that other one up here."
And along that line the king's conversation ran for a full hour.
At last, when we were ready to descend, so far from being dismayed by
the enormity of the task before him, the royal zealot was fortified in
his resolution to carry it out.
His majesty was in great good humor, and when we had left the lift and
marched back to the square he very graciously tendered us the freedom of
the town.
He could not understand why the professor and I should have any desire
to escape from his country, and inasmuch as he had made us his honored
guests, to return us to the circle of zet would be to besmirch his
hospitality.
The zet had been regathered into the high chief's zetbai and it was not
again released. It was not necessary for Popham to return to the royal
mines until the following night, so he remained with us, along with
Markham, and we all bunked down in the centre of the plaza.
"Is there no way, Professor Quinn," quavered Popham, "whereby we can
escape from the inhuman monsters who people this planet? The treatment
I have suffered is monstrous! I feel as though I shall die if I have to
go back to those royal coal mines again. Being a large man, they expect
me to do the work of a dozen Mercurials. There are blisters on my hands
and my feet are so sore I can hardly walk."
This wail from the brusque and tyrannical Popham was in itself a highly
edifying comment on his sad experiences.
"Your position was grace itself compared with mine," mourned Markham.
"These people seemed determined to starve me to death. I am expected to
travel from house to house, begging food, and they hardly give me enough
at one house to take me to the next."
"You are on the surface," returned Popham, "and you are not delving
continually in the hot, unhealthy regions where I must do my work. I
have to toil like a galley slave for a cent a day, and a cent's worth of
this vegetable food, which seems to be all they have here, does not
furnish me with enough strength for my labor."
"You have your clothes, at least," whimpered Meigs. "Quinn ought to
help us; he _must_ help us."
"I shall do what I can, gentlemen," said the professor wearily. "I have
not succeeded in showing you the error of your ways, but I must let that
pass. A greater calamity menaces our planet than any you could possibly
let loose upon our devoted country."
"Meigs was saying something about that," spoke up Popham. "What is it
this mad king thinks of doing?"
"Why, with fifty warriors, armed with zetbais, he intends making an
attack upon Terra. He hopes to conquer our mother orb."
Popham gave a faint cry of derision.
"Why; if that rascal ever landed on our planet," said he, "he and his
warriors would be captured out of hand and turned over to some museum
for exhibition purposes. If _I_ happened to be around at the time of
their capture," he finished angrily, "I would send every last one of
them into mines that are mines. I'd make them toil with their four
hands until they wore them off at the wrists. Gad, but that would be a
revenge worth having!"
"This is not a time to think of revenge, Mr. Popham," spoke up the
professor, more in sorrow than rebuke. "We have our planet to consider,
and, next to the planet, ourselves."
"Our planet is big enough to take care of itself," averred Markham.
"Leave that out of the question, professor, and confine your attention
to some way in which we can better our condition."
"The danger that threatens Earth is greater than you appear to imagine,"
went on Quinn. "For whatever happened to our home-star because of King
Gaddbai and his astounding plans of conquest, I should be responsible.
The thought weighs upon me and will give me no rest. The king must be
foiled."
"How does he intend to reach the Earth?" asked Markham.
"By means of our car."
"Is that in usable condition?" came joyously from Popham.
"So far as I can discover, it lies intact at the bottom of the crater on
whose rim we landed. There is no reason why the car cannot be employed
for a return to Terra; but," and here the professor's words became
emphatic, "it shall not be so employed by King Gaddbai and his army of
conquest. I shall prevent that at all hazards."
"How?" came hoarsely from the three ex-millionaires.
"By destroying the car, as a last resort and when other means fail," was
the calm rejoinder.
"You would not dare!" breathed Popham.
"You would not have the heart to take from us our sole means of escape!"
added Markham.
"Madman!" ground out Meigs. "If I really thought that you would destroy
our only means of salvation, I'd----"
"You wouldn't do a thing, Meigs," I chimed in. "Whatever the professor
thinks best to do is going to be done, and no two ways about it."
"I don't want to destroy the car," continued the professor, unmoved by
this storm he had aroused, "if other means can be made to serve. And I
may say that we shall exhaust every effort to make other means serve. I
feel that it is my duty to return you gentlemen to the place from whence
you were taken. I have not accomplished what I had hoped to do, but it
is better to be disappointed in that rather than to let King Gaddbai get
away in the car with his fifty warriors."
"Certainly it is your duty to send us back," said Meigs, "and you should
consider that duty before anything and everything else."
"Exactly!" seconded Popham, "and we must take Gilhooly with us. If one
goes, all must go."
"Leave the matter to me, gentlemen," counseled the professor quietly.
"I shall do everything possible."
The coal baron and the food-trust magnate continued to dwell upon their
harrowing experiences with various degrees of intensity until a command
for silence came from a word-box somewhere around us. Our raucous tones
were keeping the people awake all over the city, the talking machine
averred, and unless we became instantly quiet the authorities would take
the matter in hand.
This threat had the desired result. We gave over our conversation and
settled ourselves for the night.
I do not know how long I slept, but it must have been some hours. I was
aroused to find it still dark and to behold the professor with a lighted
match in one hand and his other hand over my lips.
The burning match threw a fitful glare around the open space and even
reached to the roof tops beyond. Both the palace and the imperial
exchequer were brought shadowily forth out of the gloom.
"Now is the time, Mr. Munn!" whispered the professor.
"The time?" I returned sotto voce. "Time for what?"
Without a word he pointed to the square building under the wing of the
palace. I understood. It was now or never if I intended to make my raid
and secure the Bolla.