Chapter XVI

FALLING STARS.

My senses very nearly faded, the air in my helmet was fouled, but in a moment I had the mechanism cleared again. Rowena held me; her voice rang in my ear-grids:

"Jack! Jack, dear—what's the matter?"

I gasped, "I'm all right—the oxygen—was clogged."

We were sitting on the floor of the lock. The pressure was coming in; I could feel it against me. Across the lock, at the inner slide, I could see the anxious faces of Dr. Grenfell, Jimmy and the others peering in at us.

The pressure came steadily and we yielded our garment-pressure to balance it. Presently they were equal. I saw Grenfell signal. The inner slide opened. Jimmy led the rush of men, pouncing upon us, lifting off our helmets.

"You're not hurt, Jack?" Jimmy's arms held me. "Thank God: for that! And Rowena—you all right, Rowena? Let me help you up." His face was white and drawn. "We were so helpless, standing inside, watching you out there."

They carried us to the deck and took off our suits. But there was no time for further talk. Outside the deck windows—out there in the starry vault—portentous events were sweeping slowly on.

The wreck of Croat's ship was far beneath us, with the Earth under it. Croat's body was still near at hand. But it was falling. Grenfell had the negative current in the gravity plates of the cube-base. A repulsion there; and Croat's body had come within its influence. The twisted shape of him, gruesome with the sagging helmet and the deflated suit hanging in wrinkled folds, was moving swiftly away from us. The Earth's attraction had caught it.

And the silver ball was mounting. It was quite near us now; the sunlight gleamed on half its sphere with a brilliant white glare; the earthlight painted its opposite side with a mellow silver glow. It was holding a vertical axis upon which it slowly turned so that its tiny windows went in procession before us. Its power-streams were around it like a faint green-blue aura.

Was this ball coming to attack us? The thought struck me. I was still far from normal, confused, with my head roaring and my muscles trembling. Rowena was the same. We stood together on the deck, clinging to each other and to the bull's-eye window-fastenings as we gazed out into the immensity of Space.

Around us the deck was in turmoil. They were rolling one of the guns to the firing porte. Then Dr. Grenfell's voice sounded from the near-by deck speaker-grid. He was calling from the dome-room of the cube.

"It's all right! Baker, swing D-face toward them! It's all right—that's Guy Palisse and, I suppose, Tama!"

Guy and Tama! Rowena held me close. Have I said that only after Guy's message did she yield to the weakness of tears? Not so—for there were tears in her eyes now.

"Jack! He says—it's Guy!"

Again, Grenfell's voice: "I can see them at the windows. It's Guy, and a winged girl, and Earth-girls."

There was a rush of feet on the deck. But Rowena and I were in no condition to join any activity. We could barely stand and cling to each other. I felt that now the reaction was making everything seem so swift—our minds could hardly grasp it. Yet it must have taken half an hour at least.

The silver ball came level and poised. We saw faces at its windows. Rowena recognized her brother. I held her then, or she would have fallen.

Another interval. Jimmy came beside me, volubly triumphant. But I hardly heard him.

Then Dr. Grenfell manipulated the cube until D-face with its open lock-entrance moved slowly toward the hovering ball, which was poised with its porte fronting us. The openings met, with gravity holding the ball as though glued to us.

Another interval.

I murmured, "Rowena, they're here. In a moment or two—your brother, safe!"

"Yes! Jack, everything's blurred—we—what's the matter with us?"

"Just—blurred. I feel it too. The pressure change—being outside there. We're all right...."

A rush of feet. Excited voices. I saw Tama—strange, frail little girl-shape—flowing drapery-garments—sleek-feathered wings.

And the Earth-girls, the kidnaped girls from the White camp. They were frightened, pale, some of them sobbing with the joy of their rescue.

And then I saw Guy. Torn white shirt and trousers; a band of red fabric about his forehead. And with him a slim boyish youth like a little American Indian chieftain.

Guy turned: "Toh, stay with Tama a moment. Is that my sister over there? Why, Rowena! You—you're not the little girl I remember!"

Rowena cast me off, and stood wavering, with opened arms to receive him.

I recall how Guy explained that he and Tama and her brother had hidden upon Croat's ship, as in his message he had hinted they might try to do. They had been discovered, caught, and held while Croat and some of his men descended to the Earth, using the silver ball as a sort of tender.

The silver ball had returned, with the girl captives, but without Croat. The ship had waited, hoping, expecting perhaps that Croat would—signal. Twice, when heavy clouds were over Maine, it had descended.

Then, with the confusion on the Mercutian ship at Croat's etheric flare-signal from our cube, Guy seized his chance to break loose. I had seen the fight on the ship's deck.

Eight of the Earth-girls were saved. I heard Jimmy ask what had become of the others. Guy avoided the question, and no one asked it again.

There was still one last scene out there in the black vault of the heavens. The body of Croat, and the wrecked ship with tiny dots of Mercutians' bodies revolving as satellites around it, were falling toward the Earth. We followed them down.

Again that slow, measured astronomical movement! A tiny instant of time amid the stars; but to us, watching humans, it was literally hours.

The Earth slowly grew larger, spreading out beneath us. Silver, turning yellow-red, then red like a map faintly tinted. And then with other color coming to it: bluish oceans; gray-green continents; white-tipped mountain peaks; banks of obscuring gray haze and solid cloud-areas.

The torn ship and the little dot which was the body of Croat fell steadily. Inexorably....

The Earth grew to a great shining surface spread half across the lower firmament.

The wrecked, falling ship was first to enter the atmosphere. It turned faintly luminous with friction-heat. Above it a tail of burning gases streamed out. It was falling like a plummet within an hour—down into the denser air-strata—blazing into a great fiery ball of burning gas until it was consumed.

Then Croat's body became a luminous point of light, a dot of fire, a little falling star.

It puffed into sudden brilliance at the end, as though the spirit of the man might be making a last ironic gesture; then faded and vanished into nothingness, with only the unseen ashes like scattered star-dust sifting down.

I really have no more to add. The events I have narrated are world-wide property. Every one knows them from every public source. I have tried merely to give what the newscasters have been pleased to call "an actual eyewitness description."

There are some who have struggled for fame, and when they got it, found it anything but pleasant to possess. Take mine now; in the quiet that follows those extraordinary events of last year, it is not-exactly fame, but it certainly is notoriety.

I do not find it pleasant, nor does Rowena, nor any of the rest of us. The world is relieved that Croat's ship is destroyed, Croat himself dead, and the next inferior conjunction of Mercury and the Earth passed safely.

The affair is over. But now people want to know where Rowena and Guy Palisse are; and where is Jack Dean living? And why does not Guy Palisse or Jack Dean go on the lecture platform or into the sound-motion plays—or join a circus, with that winged girl named Tama who came from Mercury? They could make lots of money; why don't they do it?

We answer: that is no one's business. We wish you would let us alone. Rowena and I are living—in as much seclusion as we can find. Tama and Guy are near us. Jimmy Turk is still in the patrol service. Any one is free to try to find out from him where we are.

Guy is beside me as I finish these pages. He likes the tone of these last paragraphs. But Rowena, who came in a moment ago, did not.

"Aren't you a little aggressive?" she said. "After all, every one who reads your narrative hasn't necessarily insulted you. I believe you should change it."

"Not at all," said Guy.

Rowena kissed me and went outside.

"I'll think about it," I called after her. "Maybe I'll change it."

But I haven't.

It is night now. We are in a lonely spot. Forests, and a lake. No, it is not Maine.

Tama is outside, flying up into the starlight. She likes it here on Earth, though flying is much more difficult for her than on Mercury. But she is worried over her comrades of the Light Country. The Hill City government took them back, promised them new laws. But Tama is suspicious of those quickly given promises. She and Guy are returning to Mercury as soon as Dr. Grenfell will take them.

Tama keeps very secluded in the daytime here. But at night she flies out. We never grow tired of watching her. Guy called me to the window a little while ago. She went past with fluttering wings and flowing draperies; waved her white arm at Guy as she wheeled and soared out over the starlit lake.

THE END.