Thus ends the second story of Myles Cabot, the radio man.
The first was written by his own hand, and was shot from Venus to the
earth, swathed in the fur of the fire-worm, and concealed in the heart
of a streamline projectile. The second he told to me in person from time
to time during his stay on my Massachusetts farm on his return from
Venus.
The tale was a long time in telling, for Myles, in his assumed name of
course, at once matriculated at Harvard to study electricity under
Kennelly and Hammond. Although he spent nearly every week-end at my
farm, he devoted most of his spare time even here to reading assorted
books on nearly every form of practical science, and to the installation
of a radio set for the purpose of communicating with his friends and
family on Venus, and so as to be prepared to transmit himself back
eventually. Hence the two huge steel towers on Cow Hill, which have
recently excited the wonder and curiosity of my fellow-townsmen.
Of course, there were many questions which we asked him, when his story
was completed. My little daughter Jacqueline was particularly
resourceful in this connection.
Almost the moment he finished, she inquired: “And what became of your
beautiful pet woofus? Did he die?”
Cabot smiled. Like most Bostonians, he was always very adept with
children.
“You never could guess,” he replied, “so I will tell you. After the
flight of the ants from the stadium, my woofus was found, still alive,
in one of the passageways beneath the seats, where he had evidently
dragged his poor mangled body and hidden himself. His life was spared by
some one who recognized him as the beast who had rescued me on the day
of the games. Word was brought me, and I at once went to him with Emsul.
At my command, the woofus submitted to treatment, and soon recovered. He
became a great pet of Lilla and little Kew. Always he lies on guard by
the crib while the baby sleeps. And the baby’s favorite game when awake
is to play horsey astride of his back.”
“How cunning!” Jacqueline murmured. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a pet
woofus to take care of Stuart?” Stuart being my own youngest.
But Mrs. Farley was a bit incredulous.
“Mr. Cabot,” she asked, “how could Baby Kew know anything about playing
horse, seeing as there are no horses on Poros?”
Myles laughed good-naturedly.
“I said ‘horse’,” he explained, “merely to give an earthly allusion.
What the little king thinks he is riding on is a whistling bee.”
This suggested another question.
“What of Portheris and his swarm?” I inquired. “Has it never occurred to
you that these Hymernians, as you call them, are a race of intelligent
beings almost on a par with the Cupians and the Formians, and that,
therefore, there are still _two_ races of intelligent beings on the
Planet Poros? How about your assertion, made in the council hall of the
palace at Kuana, that ‘there is no room on any given planet for more
than one race of intelligent beings’?”
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?”
“No,” she said. “At first they did, but now I really never notice I have
them on.”
“And I’ll venture to state,” he asserted, “that they are as natural to
you as a part of your own body; that you never bother about them, except
to adjust them or to clean them occasionally; and that, even then, you
do it unconsciously and instinctively?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Well, that is just the way my artificial speech organs are to me.”
Shortly after, or perhaps it was during, his narration of his
adventures, it occurred to me to ask him about the device which had shot
him from Poros back to earth.
“How were you able to transmit yourself through space?” I inquired.
“That is a secret known only to Prince Toron, Oya Buh and myself. I
doubt if the world is ready for it. And yet, it is very simple.
Invention merely consists in realizing a need, and then in devising
means to fulfill that need.”
“Humph! Absurdly simple, isn’t it?” I interjected sarcastically, for I
was peeved at his superior tone.
“It really is,” he replied, a bit hurt, “and furthermore, the biggest
part of invention consists in merely realizing the need. Once this is
done, the means of filling the need can usually be found, staring one in
the face, just waiting to be used.”
“And what simple means stared you in the face when you realized the need
of projecting yourself back to earth?” asked Mrs. Farley, doubtless
hoping to steer him gently around to a description of his device.
This was exactly the result of her question. The answer was full of
intense scientific interest. For the next ten or twelve minutes, Myles
Cabot regaled us with a detailed technical explanation of his apparatus,
finally ending up with: “I hope you understand this somewhat sketchy and
involved exposition.”
We didn’t, but we said we did. In those days I knew little of radio. But
in the months which followed the reappearance of Myles Cabot, I learned
many things of which the world as yet little dreams, but which I have
not his permission to disclose.
The details of his apparatus for transmitting objects through space were
not, however, again imparted, and so I am unable to describe it here.
Between the various members of the family, we asked him many questions
about the present status of the principal characters of his story.
Poblath, the philosopher, had become mangool of Kuana again, and was
thinking of publishing his proverbs in book form. His dark and beautiful
wife, Bthuh, was still lady-in-waiting to the Princess Lilla. Emsul, the
veterinary, and Mitchfix, the trophil engine expert, were given
associate professorships in their respective subjects at the Royal
University of Kuana. Colonel Wotsn was made chief of the palace guards,
in recognition of his assuming command of the palace the day it was
seized, and of his subsequent rescue of Myles Cabot. Buh Tedn recovered
from his wounds and resumed his duties at the University. Hah Babbuh was
admitted to the nobility as a Sarkar, and was made field marshal, the
rank which he had virtually occupied all during the war. Kamel, now a
Sarkar, too, and no longer a pacifist and radical, became the leader of
the court party in the Assembly. And, as already stated, the loyal
Prince Toron assumed the regency during Myles Cabot’s visit to the
earth.
One more point. I asked Myles why he had not brought his wonderful
portable radio set down with him, to show to us.
“You forget,” was his reply, “that, for some unexplained reason, my
apparatus will not transmit metals through space. Do you not remember
all the steel buttons, gartersnaps and other metallic objects which were
left behind in my Beacon Street laboratory that day when I disappeared
from the earth?”
True! Now, that he mentioned it, I did remember. It would never be
possible to bring any such Porovian souvenirs down to our own planet.
And that will be about all of Poros for the present. Let us now turn our
attention to Myles Cabot on earth.
His life with us was very regular. From Monday until Friday of every
week he attended Harvard. His week-ends he devoted to study and, with
some slight assistance from myself and family and farmhands, to erecting
the two huge steel towers on Cow Hill, and to installing his apparatus
in a shack which we built at their base. This apparatus comprised a
long-range long-wave-length sending and receiving set, and a
matter-transmitting set.
Finally both were completed. One Sunday night in October, at the end of
an unusually sultry day for that time of year, Cabot came down to supper
full of suppressed excitement.
“I have nearly gotten Luno Castle on the air,” he announced, “but there
is too much static to-night. Poor dear Lilla, she must be worried about
me, for not a word have I sent her to let her know of my safe arrival.
But I will get her tonight, if the static will only let up for a few
minutes.”
“Why haven’t you used the G. E. set in Lynn?” I asked.
“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.
But Myles Cabot was not there. One glance satisfied me on that score.
Probably he had passed me, without my noticing him, my gaze having been
fixed intently on the hill.
Next I explored the room to ascertain the extent of the damage. The
matter-transmitting apparatus was hopelessly wrecked; the radio set
partially so. The head phones were lying on his desk, and by their side
a pencil and pad. The pad was all scribbled over with letters, as though
Myles had been trying to take down a message.
These letters made no sense at all, until the end of the sheet, where
suddenly they stood forth with unexpected vividness and distinctness
“S.O.S. Lilla.”
Only that, and nothing more.
This led me to hunt for further clues, and I found just what I expected.
For, amid the ruins of the matter-transmitting apparatus, there lay a
pile of metallic objects; a pocket knife, suspender buttons, garter
clasps and such, as on that first day five years and a half ago, when
Myles Cabot had disappeared from his laboratory in Boston.
We never saw or heard from him again.
But we have often wondered, Mrs. Farley, Jacqueline and I, just what was
the dire trouble that led the Princess Lilla to send through space that
frantic call for help, and whether Myles got back to Venus in time to
save her.