Chapter 22

DUQUESNE'S first act upon gaining the privacy of his own cabin was to open the bag presented to him by the emperor. He expected to find it filled with rare metals, with perhaps some jewels, instead of which the only metal present was in a heavily insulated tube—a full half pound of metallic radium!

The least valuable items of his prize were hundred of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds of very large size and of flawless perfection. Merely ornamental glass to Roban, he had known their Earthly value. To this wealth of known gems Roban had added a rich and varied assortment of the strange jewels peculiar to his own world, the faidon alone being absent from the collection. DuQuesne's calmness almost deserted him as he sorted out and listed the contents of the bag.

The radium alone was worth millions of dollars; and the scientist in him exulted at the uses to which it would be put, even while he was also exulting at the price he would get for it. He counted the familiar jewels, estimating their value as he did so—a staggering total. That left the strange gems, enough to fill the bag half full—shining and glowing and scintillating in mufti-colored splendor. He sorted them out and counted them, but made no effort to appraise them. He knew that he could get any price he pleased to set.

"Now," he breathed to himself, "I can go my own way!"

The return voyage through space was uneventful. Several times, as the days wore on, the Skylark came within gravity range of gigantic suns; but her pilots had learned the most important fundamental safeguard of interstellar navigation. Automatic indicating and recording goniometers were now on watch continuously, set to give alarm at a deviation of two seconds of arc; and their dead reckoning of acceleration and velocity was checked, twice each eight-hour shift, by triangulation and the application of Schuyler's Method.

When half the distance had been covered the bar was reversed, the travelers holding an impromptu ceremony as the Skylark spun through an angle of one hundred eighty degrees.

A few days later Seaton, who was on watch, thought he recognized Orion. It was by no means the constellation he had known, but it seemed to be shifting, ever so slowly, toward the old, familiar configuration. It was Orion!

"C'mere, everybody !" he shouted, and they came.

"That, my friends, is the most gladsome sight these feeble old eyes have rested on for many a long and weary moon. Wassail!"

They "wassailed" with glee, and from that moment on the pilot was never alone at his board. Everyone who could be there was there, looking over his shoulders to watch the firmament while it assumed a more and more familiar aspect.

They identified Sol; and, some time later, they could see Sol's planets.

Crane put on all the magnification he had, and the girls peered excitedly at the familiar outlines of continent and oceans upon the lighted half of the visible disk.

It was not long until these outlines were plainly visible to the unaided vision, the Earth appearing as a softly shining, greenish half-moon, with parts of its surface obscured by fleecy wisps of cloud, with its ice-caps making of its poles two brilliant areas of white. The wanderers stared at their world with hearts in throats as Crane made certain that they would not be going too fast to land.

The girls went to prepare a meal and DuQuesne sat down beside Seaton.

"Have you gentlemen decided what you intend to do with me?"

"No. We haven't discussed it yet, and I can't make up my own mind—except that I'd like to have you in a square ring with four-ounce gloves. You've been of altogether too much real help on this trip for either of us to enjoy seeing you hanged. At the same time, you're altogether too much of a scoundrel for us to let you go free. . . . I, personally, don't like anything we can do, or not do, with you. That's the fix I'm in. What would you suggest?"

"Nothing," DuQuesne replied, calmly. "Since I am in no danger whatever of either hanging or prison, nothing you can say or do along those lines bothers me at all. Hold me or free me, as you please. I will add that, while I have made a fortune on this trip and do not have to associate any longer with Steel unless it is to my interest to do so, I may find it desirable at some future time to obtain a monopoly of X. If so, you and Crane, and possibly a few others, would die. No matter what happens or does not happen, however, this whole thing is over, as far as I'm concerned. Done with. Fini."

"You kill us? You talk like a man with a paper nose. Peel off, buster, any time you like. We can outrun you, outjump you, throw you down, or lick you—hit harder, run faster, dive deeper, and come up dryer—for fun, money, chalk, or marbles . . . ."

A thought struck him and every trace of levity disappeared. Face hard and eyes cold, he stared at DuQuesne, who stared unmovedly back at him.

"But listen, DuQuesne," Seaton said slowly, every word sharp, clear, and glacially cold. "That goes for Crane and me, personally. Nobody else. I could be arrested for what I think of you as a man; and if anything you ever do touches either Dorothy or Margaret in any way I'll kill you like I would a snake—or rather, I'll take you apart like I would any other piece of scientific apparatus. And don't think this is a threat. It's a promise. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly. Good night."

For many hours Earth had been obscured by clouds, so that the pilot had no idea of what part of it was beneath them. To orient himself, Seaton dropped downward into the twilight zone until he could see the surface, finding that they were almost directly over the western end of the Panama Canal. Dropping still lower, to about ten thousand feet, he stopped and waited while Crane took bearings and calculated the course to Washington.

DuQuesne had retired, cold and reticent as usual. After making sure that he had overlooked nothing, he put on the leather suit he had worn when he left Earth. He unlocked a cubby, taking therefrom a Kondalian parachute. Then, making sure every foot of the way that he was not observed, he made his way to the airlock and entered it.

Thus, when the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, he was ready. Smiling sardonically, he opened the outer valve and stepped out into ten thousand feet of air. "The neutral color of his parachute was lost in the twilight a few seconds after he left the vessel.

The course computed, Seaton set the bar and the Skylark tore through the air. When about half the ground had been covered Seaton spoke suddenly.

"Forgot about DuQuesne, Mart. We'd better lock him in, don't you think? Then we'll have to decide whether we want to put him in the jail-house or turn him loose."

"I'll see to it," Crane said.

He returned immediately with the news.

"Hmmm. He must have picked up a Kondalian parachute. You can't quite put one in your pocket, but pretty near. But I can't say I'm sorry he got away. . . . Anyway, we can get him any time we want him, because that compass is still looking right at him."

"I think he earned his liberty," Dorothy declared.

"He deserves to be shot," Margaret said, "but I'm glad he's gone. He gives me the cold, creeping shivers."

At the end of the calculated time they saw the lights of a large city beneath them; and Crane's fingers tightened upon Seaton's arm as he pointed downward. There were the landing-lights of Crane Field—seven searchlights throwing their mighty beams upward into the night.

"Nine weeks, Dick," he said unsteadily, "and Shiro would have kept them burning for nine years if necessary."

The Skylark dropped easily to the ground and the wanderers leaped out, to be greeted by the half-hysterical Japanese. Shiro's ready vocabulary of peculiar but sonorous words failed him completely and he bent himself double in a bow, his face one beaming smile. Crane, with one arm around his wife, seized Shiro's hand and wrung it in silence.

Seaton swept Dorothy off her feet and their arms tightened around each other.

THE END