A Diversity of Creatures | Page 3

skimmed low across the dark,
throwing calls county by county. Now and again we picked up the faint
glimmer of a house-light, or heard the rasp and rend of a cultivator
being played across the fields, but Northern Illinois as a whole was one
inky, apparently uninhabited, waste of high, forced woods. Only our
illuminated map, with its little pointer switching from county to county
as we wheeled and twisted, gave us any idea of our position. Our calls,
urgent, pleading, coaxing or commanding, through the General
Communicator brought no answer.' Illinois strictly maintained her own
privacy in the timber which she grew for that purpose.
'Oh, this is absurd!' said De Forest. 'We're like an owl trying to work a
wheat-field. Is this Bureau Creek? Let's land, Arnott, and get hold of
some one.'
We brushed over a belt of forced woodland--fifteen-year-old maple
sixty feet high--grounded on a private meadow-dock, none too big,
where we moored to our own grapnels, and hurried out through the
warm dark night towards a light in a verandah. As we neared the
garden gate I could have sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand,
for we could scarcely drag our feet against the prickling currents that
clogged them. After five paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as
hopelessly stuck on dry smooth turf as so many cows in a bog.
'Pest!' cried Pirolo angrily. 'We are ground-circuited. And it is my own
system of ground-circuits too! I know the pull.'
'Good evening,' said a girl's voice from the verandah. 'Oh, I'm sorry!
We've locked up. Wait a minute.'
We heard the click of a switch, and almost fell forward as the currents
round our knees were withdrawn.
The girl laughed, and laid aside her knitting. An old-fashioned

Controller stood at her elbow, which she reversed from time to time,
and we could hear the snort and clank of the obedient cultivator half a
mile away, behind the guardian woods.
'Come in and sit down,' she said. 'I'm only playing a plough. Dad's gone
to Chicago to--Ah! Then it was your call I heard just now!'
She had caught sight of Arnott's Board uniform, leaped to the switch,
and turned it full on.
We were checked, gasping, waist-deep in current this time, three yards
from the verandah.
'We only want to know what's the matter with Illinois,' said De Forest
placidly.
'Then hadn't you better go to Chicago and find out?' she answered.
'There's nothing wrong here. We own ourselves.'
'How can we go anywhere if you won't loose us?' De Forest went on,
while Arnott scowled. Admirals of Fleets are still quite human when
their dignity is touched.
'Stop a minute--you don't know how funny you look!' She put her
hands on her hips and laughed mercilessly.
'Don't worry about that,' said Arnott, and whistled. A voice answered
from the Victor Pirolo in the meadow.
'Only a single-fuse ground-circuit!' Arnott called. 'Sort it out gently,
please.'
We heard the ping of a breaking lamp; a fuse blew out somewhere in
the verandah roof, frightening a nestful of birds. The ground-circuit
was open. We stooped and rubbed our tingling ankles.
'How rude--how very rude of you!' the maiden cried.
''Sorry, but we haven't time to look funny,' said Arnott. 'We've got to go

to Chicago; and if I were you, young lady, I'd go into the cellars for the
next two hours, and take mother with me.'
Off he strode, with us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the
humour of the thing struck and doubled him up with laughter at the foot
of the gang-way ladder.
'The Board hasn't shown what you might call a fat spark on this
occasion,' said De Forest, wiping his eyes. 'I hope I didn't look as big a
fool as you did, Arnott! Hullo! What on earth is that? Dad coming
home from Chicago?'
There was a rattle and a rush, and a five-plough cultivator, blades in air
like so many teeth, trundled itself at us round the edge of the timber,
fuming and sparking furiously.
'Jump!' said Arnott, as we bundled ourselves through the none-too-wide
door. 'Never mind about shutting it. Up!'
The Victor Pirolo lifted like a bubble, and the vicious machine shot just
underneath us, clawing high as it passed.
'There's a nice little spit-kitten for you!' said Arnott, dusting his knees.
'We ask her a civil question. First she circuits us and then she plays a
cultivator at us!'
'And then we fly,' said Dragomiroff. 'If I were forty years more young,
I would go back and kiss her. Ho! Ho!'
'I,' said Pirolo, 'would smack her! My pet ship has been chased by a
dirty plough; a--how do you say?--agricultural implement.'
'Oh, that is Illinois all over,' said De Forest. 'They don't content
themselves