"Sorry," said Mack. "Thanks for being so patient. We ran afoul of an Imperial spy named van Hooten or we'd have been here some time yesterday evening."
"Van Hooten?" Marshal Henry's black brows lifted measurably. "Imperialist? I've met the young Northerner but never gave him the credit for being more than an overdressed jellyfish."
"Elly—Miss Marriner—spotted him," said Mack. "He had a purple bee tattooed behind his left ear."
"Thank you again for information which may be vitally important," said the tall soldier, making a little bow to Elspeth.
"It was—it was just luck both times," said the poetess, feeling her face grow embarrassingly hot. As usual, when embarrassed and unable to flee, she took refuge in the world of reverie, and began to study Marshal Henry, the marvelous planes of his face, the vast strength of the man beneath his simple gray field tunic, the ebon brilliance of his skin, the perfect roundness of his head.
SHE let herself consider an ode to an African, an African risen high in the service of a white world which forever kept nudging him away from the supreme positions and honors his talents and devotion deserved. It would have to be very deep, very subtle, if it weren't to be maple syrup. But perhaps she—
"Miss Marriner!" Marshal Henry's voice was slightly raised, and Elspeth came to with a guilty start. He went on serenely as if she had not let her mind wander. "Before you meet Reed Weston I want to tell you some things about him —sketch in his background. Otherwise you might not understand him. I understand you are new to Columbia and its problems and figures."
"Sorry," said Elspeth. "Yes, we're very green."
"And potentially very valuable," said Marshal Henry. He had lit a long very thin cigar and was sitting on a corner of the desk. His was a personality both intensely likeable and immensely impressive. Character and compassion seemed to come from him, yet the poetess sensed an innate core of toughness that left no doubt that here was a born soldier, a born commander of men.
"You see, Reed Weston is the son of a swag-grabber," he said. "The swag-grabbers were avaricious men who invaded the northeastern states after the Civil War—they call it the Second Revolution—during the period of erratic conditions that followed the Elmira surrender.
"They bought land, votes, people— everything they could lay their hands on legally. When they couldn't do it legally they altered the laws to suit themselves. The swag-grabbers are one of the reasons the Northeast still feels resentment against the rest of the nation. Frankly, none of us blame them today for feeling so.
"It so happened that Weston's father got hold of a brilliant young New York inventor named Edison—Thomas Edison—and forced him to sell his patents for a song. They proved immensely valuable—our lights, our basic rocket patents, our metal alloys are still dependent in large degree upon those patents.
"Edison shot himself shortly after his patents were stolen and Harlan Weston —Reed Weston's father—became fabulously rich. Reed Weston himself was born into one of the greatest fortunes in Columbia. He is still vastly wealthy in spite of the fact that he is virtually outlawed. His patent royalties still roll in.
"But Reed Weston—" Marshal Henry paused to flick a long slender ash from his cigar into a hole with a metal rim set in the corner of the desk—"has suffered all his life from a sense of guilt caused by the way in which his father obtained his wealth. He has always had a burning desire to make such wrongs impossible."
"I understand," said Elspeth simply. Mack, frowning in concentration, nodded and uttered a grunt of assent.
"Reed Weston," Marshal Henry went on quietly, "is, perhaps because of this sense of guilt, at times an impatient man. He is capable of being badly hurt when those about him fail to live up to his ideals. He was thus hurt when the government refused to accept the reforms he knew were needed. He was hurt again this morning when I got here and told him of the violation of civilized law by the use of the disintegrator."
"A man who wants to make changes has got to be tough," said Mack in his characteristic flat tones.
"Reed is tough—make no mistake about that," said the black marshal. "But he is a man driven by his inner compulsions. He is also a great scientist, probably the greatest in the world today. As a child he determined to give his life to justifying his father's deed by living up to the Edison tradition."
"If he's responsible for that spaceship we saw while flying in just now, he's a wonder," Mack remarked, lighting a cigarette.
"Me too," said Elspeth but it was Marshal Henry who gave her a smoke and lit it for her. Mack, as usual, seemed entirely unabashed. His lack of courtesy, Elspeth decided with resignation, amounted almost to an elemental force.
"Your flying over the Mars was reported to me," said Henry with a flicker of interest. "That was why I sent out a patrol to bring you in. We were worried about what might have happened to you after you left New Orleans and wanted to make sure you got here without further incident. Your recognizing the Mars for what it is makes you more important than ever to us."
"Marshal Henry," said Mack, "may I ask some questions?" The marshal nodded and Mack frowning, went on with, "I don't understand why, if you have rocket power and space-ships, you don't have airplanes?"
"Airplanes?" said Marshal Henry, looking puzzled.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines— the Pipit, our machine, is a convertible plane," Mack explained. "You have disintegrators, rocket weapons, all sort of wonders, but no planes."
MARSHAL HENRY walked the carpet with long-legged strides, casting an occasional thoughtful glance at one or the other of his visitors. Finally he resumed his seat on the desk corner, lit a fresh slim cigar and said, "You must come from far away indeed."
"We do," said Elspeth. "I thought you knew. But that doesn't answer Mack's question." She was frightened at her temerity in speaking so but the black marshal only smiled faintly.
"I don't know. I only know that Reed vouches for you," he said. "As for Mack's question, I think I know the answer. We have never been able to develop a sufficiently light engine to drive such a craft. Perhaps we developed rocket power too early. That is why your—Pipit, is it?—is such a thundering surprise to us here. When I saw her sprout wings and fly—"
He shook his head in remembered amazement. Mack put his cigarette down a metal-lined hole in the arm of his chair and said, "Marshal, we'd like to know two more things—why we are here and when we can meet Reed Weston."
"I can answer your second question," said the marshal with a glance at a traveling clock on the desk. "Reed Weston is due here in exactly three minutes. As to your purpose—" he paused briefly and looked doubtful, even grim— "I believe it is to keep Reed Weston from leaving this planet forever."
"Good Lord!" said Mack, coming out of his chair. "He's going to leave Earth but where is he going? The other planets—"
"Mars is entirely habitable," said the Marshal. "Reed visited the planet last year in a small space-rocket and found conditions at least superficially suitable for habitation by men."
"How did he get back?" Elsepth wanted to know. "I mean, if you—he has no planes, how did he land?"
"He didn't—on Mars," said the marshal quietly. "He and his crew circled it twice and were able to take atmosphere samples and spectographic and other readings of the surface. They landed here by parachute. Reed broke his leg."
"Good heavens!" Mack exploded. "And now he's going back in that monster rocket we saw from the Pipit?"
"He's taking the sixty best brains and bodies of Earth with him," said Marshal Henry quietly. "I feel honored that there is a place for me aboard. But I have refused to go. My place is here, where I am needed more. So is Reed's."
"Poppycock!" said a new voice. A stocky, dynamic little man with an immense bulldog face, flaming red hair and staccato stride, voice and motions moved into the center of the room as a door shut softly behind him. "You'll be needed a lot more on Mars, John."
John Henry—the name rang bells in Elspeth's memory. She knew the old legends of
the great John Henry, the mighty black riverman of her world, of course. And here, in this world, John Henry was a latter-day reality.
A new sense of his magnificence swept over her. The marshal was cast in the mold of heroes—physically, mentally, spiritually. He was refusing a place in the greatest adventure man had yet known in order to face the petty hatreds of men who could never forgive the color of his skin, of men who might well try him for treason.
To Elspeth he towered over Reed Weston, and his size was not merely a matter of bodily height and breadth and thickness of chest. Here, she thought, was a man who was close to God. She superimposed upon his actual image a vision of the legendary John Henry of her own world, saw how the two forms merged into single focus.
She realized that Reed Weston was talking angrily to both John Henry and Mack, flapping his short arms as he spoke.
". . . and now you tell me those corrupt and criminal fools have put disintegrators into the hands of their own precious condottiere with orders to use them at will. I ask you, why should I stay on such a world ? What can you or anyone else offer me better than an opportunity to create a new world on a planet where such idiots do not exist?"
SOMEHOW Elspeth found herself on her feet. Within her was memory of the sad, wise eyes of Mr. Horelle, of all she and Mack had been through on this mission, of Marshal John Henry, of the evil Everard, of the long motorized columns of armed men and their counterparts south of the border, moving toward inevitable collision at arms. It had to come out and it did.
"We can offer you the need of millions who want only a chance to follow the ways of peace and progress," she said, and she knew she was shouting and didn't care. "We offer you the job you seek to run away from, even though in your heart and the hearts of those who would go with you, you know you will never forgive yourselves.
"You can never fly from yourselves, you can never forget the ruin of those whose desertion by you will leave them at the mercy of men like President Wilkinson and the hungry Emperor. We can offer you the chance to find peace with yourselves in a world that needs you too sorely to let you go."
Reed Weston, who had been studying her while she talked as if she were some strange new species, blinked rapidly and shook his head as if to clear it of fuddlement. His voice, when it came, was arrogant in its dryness.
"And just how, Miss Marriner, are you proposing to show me a way to put this mad world at peace?" he said. "Against the disintegrators our weapons are worthless. No one can reach within a thousand yards of them—nothing can remain organically existent within a thousand yards of their intense heat. And nothing can prevent them from getting within a thousand yards of us."
"I have seen their weapon," said Marshal Henry quietly, and a sudden spark of hope lit up Mack's usually doubting eyes.
"We've got the hole in your inventory," he said with conviction that covered his malapropism. "You must have some idea of who sent us and why and where we're from."
"I do," said Reed Weston, and for the first time uncertainty showed itself in both voice and manner. "I was—informed of your journey and your purpose." He stopped, lowered his head, then lifted it to reveal his lumpy breadth of brow. "Otherwise would I be listening to you at all at a moment like this? But I fear you have arrived too late— forty-eight hours too late. The use of the disintegratory, which you, Miss Marriner, yourself saw, should convince you of this."
"But we have your way out," said Mack.
"We have a way out," said Reed Weston. "The most brilliant and experienced brains of Earth have already agreed with me that it is the only way out."
"You won't be alone on Mars long," said Elspeth. "We saw your ship when we flew in here today. We saw quarters for hundreds, perhaps thousands of men around it. We saw hundreds of men working on the ship itself.
"When you and your eminent friends take off for the distances of space forever and leave them behind to face the wrath of a government that has already convicted them of treason—do you think that they will refuse to practise again the craft you have taught them?"
"But—" began Reed Weston, frowning. Elspeth, however, was not then to be denied.
"Do you think," she went on, "that when their world topples and the men and women who gave them hope and leadership have deserted them, they will refuse to work for their new masters— especially when it will be 'work or starve' or 'work or die'?"
She felt a certain detached amazement at the sound of her own voice but there were still words to say, phrases to make, ideas to express. Thrusting aside self-amazement, she continued to speak.
"Do you think, Reed Weston, that you will be regarded as an object of faith or honor by the men and women you have deserted in their hour of greatest need? Can you answer this question?"
"It is a difficult decision—a very difficult one," said Reed Weston. "We have made up our minds that it is better to begin afresh on a new planet with a world where men and women can be free to work and live and think and breathe and love as they should, rather than go down to common ruin on this one."
"And how should men and women work and live and think and breathe and love?" Elspeth asked him. "As they can, as they must, as they do—or by some theory thought out in comfort and security, a theory suitable perhaps to a few selected souls. Do you think your children, if you have enough to win a planet, will all fit so neatly into a set of pigeonholes? Nonsense!
"Furthermore, the world will follow you. Out of those thousand who worked on the Mars, who put it together piece by piece, there must be hundreds—scores at least—who could put such a ship together without your guidance now that they have built one. And even if there are not—men have built it and will be able to build it again. No, you will be followed. There is no escape, even in space. Your tight little world is a myth! Face it."
"Bravo!" said a soft feminine voice from somewhere to one side of the room. "Bravo, Elspeth, that was terrific!"
Startled,Elspeth looked around at the source of the voice. A tiny youthful woman stood just inside the door, carrying a sealed message in one hand. She was modestly, even demurely dressed in dark skirt and crisp white blouse, her dark red hair groomed neatly in an inconspicuous roll at the nape of her neck.
But no demureness of costume could hide the curves of her figure, no unspectacularity of hair-do deny the soft enchantment of her features. If Elspeth needed anything else for recognition, the gleam that lit in Mack's eyes would have been enough.
"Juana!" she said, honestly surprised and actually glad to see someone from her own world. "Where on Earth did you come from?"
IX
MACK, of course, was sunk. Elspeth needed but one quick sidelong glance at him to see that he was vibrating almost visibly to Juana's presence—also that the girl, while overtly ignoring the photographer, was doing considerable vibrating of her own. Elspeth was snapped back into focus by Reed Weston.
"Words!" he exclaimed, regarding her with a sardonic expression. "Perhaps you have a device which makes Earth-flight no problem. But one such device is a far cry from a counter-agent to the creeping dry rot which has closed this world to honor and is attempting to do the same to creative thought. Nor will it stop the disintegration."
Elspeth glanced again at Mack and saw that she could scarcely expect help from him at the moment. She hated just then not only Mack and Juana but Mr. Horelle, who must have been responsible for the lush little brunette's presence in Norman at that moment.
"At least," she said to Reed Weston, "I think you ought to take a look at the Pipit—at our machine—before you discard its possibilities. We have had a long and hard journey."
"I don't mean to be rude," said Weston and for the first time he smiled. It was a quick nervous lip effort but it served to reveal to Elspeth some of the magnetism that had made him a leader in this alien world.
"Unfortunately," he went on, "we are working under a sword of Damocles whose thread is even now almost frayed through. Time is rapidly running out. Already the Columbian Army is moving toward t
he border from Brownsville to Ventura—and already the Imperial forces are gathering to meet it. War may break out at any minute."
He paced the carpet, swung to face her, went on. "When it does, our period of grace will be over. Columbia, whatever else it may be, is a mighty country. It has other armies encircling our few strongholds here in the rebel area. Its agents have been planting their subversive seeds for months among our people —and they can tap a treasury we cannot hope to match. No, we must leave this country, this Earth, at the first possible moment."
"But, Mr. Weston." Juana, surprisingly, was speaking in her soft tones. "I do think, if only as a favor to me, you should at least look at this machine of Mr. Fraser and Miss Marriner."
"You do, Juana?" Weston's expression softened as he looked at his secretary. He shook his head at her, added, "You know, my dear, you are something of a mystery to me. My instincts tell me I should not listen to you. After all, I know little of you. But if you say so, I'll do it."
Elspeth received an unashamed inner lift from the jealous resentment that flamed quickly in the heavy-lidded eyes of Mack Fraser. But Marshal Henry, who had remained in the background during most of the argument, now stepped forward once more.
"I can vouch for the—Pipit," he said with his quiet force. "Remember, I saw it in operation only yesterday morning."
"Only yesterday—it seems ages," said Elspeth irrelevantly. Reed Weston regarded her blankly, then suggested that they look the Pipit over at once. They all filed from the office, Weston leading with short brisk steps, Marshal Henry and Elspeth on his heels, the bemused Mack and Juana bringing up the rear.
The Pipit, looking innocently Earth-bound, sat by itself in the midst of a sparsely populated gravel parking lot. Reed Weston, his hands clasped behind him, marched around it, surveying it as if it were a meteor on his front lawn.
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