The Emancipatrix | Page 6

season was a late one. Nowhere was there a spot of land which
might be called barren.
Rolla and her three friends stood taking this in, keeping a rather curious
silence meanwhile. At length Cunora gave a deep sigh, which was
almost instantly reproduced by all the rest. Corrus followed his own
sigh with a frank curse.
"By the great god Mownoth!" he swore fiercely. "It be a shame that we
cannot come hence a great deal oftener! Methinks They could allow it!"
"They care not for our longings," spoke Cunora, her eyes flashing as
angrily as his. "They give us enough freedom to make us work the
better --no more! All They care for is thy herd and my crops!"
"And for the labor," reminded the big man, "of such brains as Rolla's
and Dulnop's. It be not right that They should drive us so!"
"Aye," agreed the younger man, with much less enthusiasm. "However,
what can ye do about it, Corrus?"
The big man's face flushed, and he all but snarled. "I tell ye what I can
do! I, and ye as well, if ye but will! I can--"
He stopped, one hand upraised in mighty emphasis, and a sudden and
startling change came over him. Downright fear drove the anger from
his face; his massive body suddenly relaxed, and all his power and
vigor seemed to crumble and wilt. His hands shook; his mouth
trembled. At the same time the two women shrank from him, each
giving an inarticulate cry of alarm and distress. Dulnop gave no sound,
but the anger which had left the herdsman seemed to have come to him;
the youngster's eyes flared and his breast heaved. His gaze was fixed
upon Corrus's neck, where the sweat of fear already glistened.

Suddenly the big man dropped his head, as though in surrender. He
gasped and found voice; this time a voice as shaky and docile as it had
been strong and dominant a moment before.
"Very well," he spoke abjectly. "Very well. I--shall do as you wish." He
seemed to be talking to thin air. "We--will go home at once."
And instantly all four turned about, and in perfect silence took the back
trail.

III
WORLD OF MAMMOTHS
Immediately upon going into tele-consciousness Smith became aware
of a decided change in his surroundings. The interior of the study had
been darkened with drawn shades; now he was using eyes that were
exposed to the most intense sunlight. The first sight that he got, in fact,
was directed toward the sky; and he noted with an engineer's keen
interest that the color of the sky was blue, slightly tinged with orange.
This, he knew, meant that the atmosphere of Sanus contained at least
one chemical element which is lacking on the earth.
For a minute or two the sky remained entirely clear. There were no
clouds whatever; neither did any form of winged life make its
appearance. So Smith took note of sounds.
Presumably his agent--whoever or whatever it might be--was located in
some sort of aircraft; for an extremely loud and steady buzzing,
suggesting a powerful engine, filled the engineer's borrowed ears. Try
as he might, however, he could not identify the sound exactly. It was
more like an engine than anything else, except that the separate sounds
which comprised the buzz occurred infinitely close together. Smith
concluded that the machine was some highly developed rotary affair,
working at perhaps six or eight thousand revolutions a minute--three or
four times as fast as an ordinary engine.

Meanwhile his agent continued to stare into the sky. Shortly something
arrived in the field of vision; a blurred speck, far to one side. It
approached leisurely, with the unknown agent watching steadfastly. It
still remained blurred, however; for a long time the engineer knew as
little about its actual form as he knew about his mysterious agent.
Then, like a flash, the vision cleared. All the blurring disappeared
instantly, and the form of a buzzard was disclosed. It was almost
directly overhead, about a quarter of a mile distant, and soaring in a
wide spiral. No sound whatever came from it. Smith's agent made no
move of any kind, but continued to watch.
Shortly the buzzard "banked" for a sharper turn; and the engineer saw,
by the perspective of its apparent speed, that the aircraft whose use he
was enjoying was likewise on the move. Apparently it was flying in a
straight line, keeping the sun--an object vastly too brilliant to
examine--on the right.
The buzzard went out of sight. Once more the clear sky was all that
could be seen; that, and the continual roar of the engine, were all that
Smith actually knew. He became impatient for his agent to look
elsewhere; it might be that