“The lights in the city—” Tony murmured. He squared his shoulders. “I’ll take a radio down at once.”
Eve rose and gestured Ransdell into her father’s chair. She shook his hand. Dodson shook his hand. Tony shook his hand—Tony whose soul was at that moment in exquisite torment.
Ransdell looked drawn and bleak.
“One other thing,” Tony said, his voice steady. “We may be in a new and to me fantastic danger.” Like a soldier making a report, he detailed the knowledge Kyto had given him and told Ransdell what precautions he had already taken. Even as he spoke the air was filled with a hissing thunder and they waited to continue the conversation until tests of the blast tubes had been finished.
“I’ll get outposts established at once,” Ransdell said. “I scarcely believe that such a thing could be—but we can take no chances.”
“I’d like to talk with Kyto,” Eve said. She left the room even as Tony turned to bid her good-by.
“That radio—” said Ransdell. Tony could not make his senses believe that the man who spoke to him now was the man with whom he had spent the latter part of the previous night in deep exultation. Rivalry over leadership—rivalry over Eve—they seemed inadequate things intellectually for the breaking of a friendship. Tony remembered the pact he and Ransdell had reached in Michigan, long ago. Now—it seemed broken!
“I’ll take it immediately, Dave,” he answered.
The use of his first name startled Ransdell somewhat from his barren mood. He rose and held out his hand.
Tony shook it. “So long,” he said.
“Good luck.”
Tony opened the throttle regulating the supply of minute quantities of fuel to the atomic blast of his plane. The increase of speed as he fled southward took some of the strain from his nerves. His ears roared to the tune of the jets. The ground underneath moved in a steady blur. Beside him on the extra seat was the radio—a set taken from the ark of the air, and still crated.
Tony had lost his hope of being leader. He had lost Eve. Ransdell came first in the hearts of his companions. Tony wondered how other men in the camp would adjust their philosophies to this double catastrophe. Duquesne would shrug: “C’est la vie.” Vanderbilt would have an epigram. Eliot James would tell him to hope and to wait and to be courageous.
Far ahead he saw the cantonment.
He lost altitude, dropped in a tight spiral, straightened out, and landed at an unnecessarily furious speed.
A few minutes later he was surrounded, and the radio was being carried from the plane by experts.
James was at his side. “Lord, you look tired! I’ve got a bunk for you.”
“Thanks.”
Questions were being asked. “Got to sleep,” Tony said, trying to smile. “Tell you later. Every one’s all right—Hendron’s somewhat ill—Ransdell’s commanding up there. See you after I have a nap.” They let him go.
He stretched out under one of the shelters. James, after a private question or two, thoughtfully left him. He could not sleep, however. He did not even want to be alone. Then—some one entered the room where he lay. He turned. It was the girl Marian Jackson.
“You’re not asleep,” she said easily.
“No.”
She sat down on the side of his bed. “Want anything?”
“Guess not.”
“Mind if I sit here?”
“No.”
She brushed back the hair from his forehead and suddenly exclaimed. “You’re all chapped and wind-burned!”
He smiled. “Sure. Flying.”
“Wait.” She was gone.
A moron, Tony reflected. But she was very sweet. Thoughtful! A woman, just brushing back your hair when you were weary, could do strange things in the way of giving comfort. She returned.