Mona removed from her ears two tiny devices like collar-buttons. She
noted Fort and the others doing the same. Without this protection
their eardrums would have been burst. And while the girl was doing
this she heard the athlete hailing the dictator:
"Good for you, Powart! It's a fine job, and I'm ever so much obliged
to you."
The dictator stared in amazement. Mona looked from the one to the
other, perplexed. Fort was laughing shakily.
"You may as well make your apologies now, Powart; you're out of it!
I've won, and you've lost! I've done a bigger thing than you have!"
Mona gave an exclamation of impatience. "What do you mean?" she
cried shrilly. "Are you out of your head?"
"Not a bit of it! I mean just what I say! Powart hasn't succeeded;
he's failed. And because he has failed, I've outdone him."
He was gazing impudently at the dictator as he said this; Powart was
leaning over the railing of the bridge, a short distance away, too
indignant to speak. Next instant, however, Fort glanced at his
watch.
"Have to be leaving you now," he called. He turned his machine
around. "You'll learn soon enough, Powart, exactly what I mean. And
you'll know that I'm right. Good-by!"
Within a minute he and Mona were two miles away. Fort kept silent
all the while. He seemed to be intent upon getting the most out of
his machine, and kept looking anxiously at his watch. Finally Mona
could hold in no longer.
"Boy, I've simply got to know what your game is. You've kept me
waiting long enough."
He immediately began to explain. First, he told her frankly and
fully, just what she had said to him over the telephone, when she
was under Billie's "influence." "I was so sure it was genuine I went
right ahead on that lead, Mona."
"You are positive you heard me say that?" from the girl
thoughtfully.
"Absolutely. And somehow I knew it was the truth."
"Powart had tricked us; not merely the workers, whom he has been
hoodwinking all along, but you and me and all the rest! So I looked
into the matter and discovered that the poor devils on Holl have
been treated all wrong. All wrong, Mona! I never realized it before,
until I investigated; but they've been enduring rank injustice for
generations, and we've encouraged them to be satisfied with it."
"I know it," she interrupted softly. "I've known it for years, boy.
What could we do to help them?"
"Exactly!" cried Fort, looking ahead and down, toward the chasm of
the contact, then at his watch once more. "Exactly what I found out,
Mona! There was no use telling them the truth; they wouldn't believe
it! They were too well satisfied.
"And so, when I heard of Powart's scheme to bombard Alma, I saw a
way to free the poor idiots on Holl! A way to release them from
their bondage--OUR bonds, Mona--and defeat Powart's trickery, and
win you--all at one move!"
The girl was plainly thrilled. Yet she kept her voice comparatively
cool as she asked:
"So far, so good. But I don't see that you've done anything at all
except to kidnap me."
He made an impatient gesture. "Look at the ground!" he ordered
curtly; and Mona wonderingly obeyed.
They were nearly to the contact. This time, however, they were not
flying down into the cleft, but over it. The curious, canonlike
chasm where the two worlds touched was perhaps ten miles below them.
"Look closely!" shouted Fort excitedly. He was glancing at his watch
again, and changing the angle of his wings. "By heavens, we are just
in time!" The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course.
"Look closely, I tell you! It's something you've never seen before,
and will never see again!"
And Mona, staring down at the point where Hafen and Holl came
together--the curious region of balanced gravitations, like nothing
else anywhere in the universe--saw, as she passed over, something
that made her senses whirl.
Hafen and Holl were no longer one!
The two globes were now a quarter of a mile apart, and the distance
was steadily growing. Even as Mona watched the gap increased until
almost a mile separated the two great worlds.
"Do you see?" cried Fort, fairly squirming in his seat. "Do you see
what I've done, Mona?"
"I've taken Ernol and his friends--the bunch I rescued from the
prison--and put them to work. Put them to work digging a tunnel!
We've been flying above that tunnel just now. It runs--from the
contact to the cannon--the bottom of the cannon, Mona!
"When Powart's shot was fired, the recoil--the kick--broke the
contact! Understand? Do you see it?"
Mona stared in dull wonder. When she found voice it was strangely
flat and commonplace.
"Yes, but--I don't see how the recoil could separate two worlds as
large as Hafen and Holl!"
Fort chuckled breathlessly. "Your forget something. You're thinking
only of the gravitation; you're forgetting the centrifugal force."
Hafen and Holl, by their daily rotation--around the contact as a
center--were always tending to separate. That recoil was just enough
to turn the balance; they'll never touch again.
"And what's more," he rushed on, "Powart's shot is sure to miss! The
recoil threw the cannon out of line. Hafen had already mooved before
the projectile left the gun. Powart--has failed!"
Suddenly the surgeon wheeled upon the athlete. "Boy, we're headed in
the wrong way! We'll land in Holl, not in Hafen!"
"Who wants to live in Hafen now?" he shouted, clinging desperately
to his controls. The craft was tossing in the newly created
air-currents. "Don't you see?
"I've cut Hafen from Holl forever! The workers aren't to be slaves
any longer; they're to have their world to themselves, to use
entirely for their own benefit; not for the owners!
"And the owners--back there--they're going to have their own world,
too, just as they've always insisted! But from now on it's to be
their farm, too, and their factory; they've got to get along without
Holl from now on.
"Mona--the commission wouldn't allow evolution, and the workers
wouldn't listen to revolution! So I've given them--devolution!"
"What?" she cried.
"I've given them devolution. I've given the race of man--a fresh
start."
But Mona was scarcely listening.
"Turn back!" she screamed. "I want to go back to my home! I don't
want to live in Holl. Turn back, I tell you!"
Fort's face went white. He looked up at her appealingly. "You don't
mean that, Mona! Say you don't!"
"I do! I want to go back!" She glanced down at the ever-widening
gap. "Hurry! Turn back, or I'll do it myself!"
Fort gazed straight into her eyes for an instant; then, his face
whiter than ever, he brought the craft to an abrupt halt in mid air.
He looked at his watch for the last time, and said, in a strangely
hollow voice:
"Just as you wish, Mona. There's plenty of time to get back before
the air gets too thin in the gap.
"The point is, though, that if you go, you go alone!" They looked at
one another unwaveringly. "So far as I'm concerned, I shall spend
the rest of my life on Holl! No Hafen for mine! From now on I live
with the workers. Come--what do you say, Mona?"