Another suggestion was that a night raid be made upon the outposts of the camp by a few men armed with machine guns fired from the shoulder, in an effort to capture one of the Mercutians garbed in a suit impervious to the light. With this suit even one man with a machine gun would probably be able to clean out the Mercutian camp.

This plan evoked much favorable comment. This black material, once in our possession, could be a.n.a.lyzed and possibly be duplicated in quant.i.ty by us. It seemed the logical way of making progress.

But, unfortunately, conditions around the Mercutian camp at present were not the same as that night when I escaped. At that time it would have been feasible; now it was impossible, for all the invaders were within the small circle of projectors, and the ground outside this circle was never free from the diverging rays of the light. Also, as one newspaper article replied, even with such a suit of armor a man with a machine gun could do little, for the light would instantly render useless the gun itself.

So the controversy went on, and General Price waited, knowing that each day must bring the enemy nearer starvation. Such was the condition of affairs in the latter part of June.

Then, one morning, I received a telegram from Alan Newland in Florida. I had been corresponding with him at intervals, but he had never given me a hint of what had happened down there.

The telegram read:

Important Mercutian development here.

Keep absolutely secret. Join us here at once.

Answer.

I wired him immediately. Three days later I was at Bay Head.

CHAPTER X.

MIELA'S STORY.

When I reached the little Florida town Alan was there to meet me. He would have none of my eager questions, but took me at once by launch to their bungalow. No one was on the porch when we landed, and we went immediately into the living room. There I found Beth and Professor Newland talking to this extraordinary girl from another world, of whose existence, up to that moment, I had been in complete ignorance. She was dressed especially for my coming, they told me afterward, exactly as she had been that morning when Alan found her. They wanted to confound me, and they succeeded.

I stood staring in amazement while Beth quietly introduced me. And Miela spread her wings, curtsied, and replied in a quaint, soft little voice: "I am honored, sir." Then she laughed prettily and, extending her hand, added: "How do you do, Bob--my friend?"

When I had partially recovered from my astonishment Miela put on the big blue-cloth cape she wore constantly to cover her wings. Then Alan and Beth plunged into an excited explanation of how he had found Miela, and how all this time she had remained in seclusion with them there studying their language.

"You never have seen such a.s.siduous young people," Professor Newland put in. "And certainly she has been a wonderful pupil."

He patted Miela's hand affectionately; but I noticed then that his eyes were very sad, as though from some unvoiced trouble or apprehension.

They had decided, the professor said, to keep the girl's presence a secret from the world until they had learned from her in detail what her mission was. The vehicle in which she had come was still on the island up the bayou. Alan had stationed there three young men of Bay Head whom he could trust. They were living on the island, guarding it.

During these two months while Miela, with uncanny rapidity, was mastering their language, the Newlands had of course learned from her all she had to tell them. The situation in Wyoming did not necessitate haste on their part, and so they had waited. And now, with a decision reached, they sent for me.

That evening after supper we all went out on the bungalow porch, and Miela told me her story. She spoke quietly, with her hands clasped nervously in her lap. At times in her narrative her eyes shone with the eager, earnest sincerity of her words; at others they grew big and troubled as she spoke of the problems that were hara.s.sing her world and mine--the inevitable self-struggles of humanity, whatever its environment, itself its own worst enemy.

"I am daughter of Lua," Miela began slowly, "of the Great City in the Country of Light. My mother, Lua, is a teacher of the people. My father, Thaal, died when still I was a child. I--I came to your earth--"

She paused and, turning to Beth, added appealingly: "Oh, there is so much--to begin--how can I tell--"

"Tell him about Tao," Beth said.

"Tao!" I exclaimed.

"He leads those who came to your earth in the north," Miela went on. "He was my"--she looked to Alan for the word--"my suitor there in the Great City. He wished me for his wife--for the mother of his children. But that--that was not what I wished."

"You'd better tell him about conditions in your world first, Miela," said Alan. He spoke very gently, tenderly.

I had already seen, during supper, how he felt toward her; I could readily understand it, too, for, next to Beth, she seemed the most adorable woman I had ever met. There was nothing unusually strange about her, when her wings were covered, except her quaint accent and sometimes curious gestures; and no one could be with her long without feeling the sweet gentleness of her nature and loving her for it.

"Tell him about your women," Beth added.

I noticed the affectionate regard she also seemed to have for Miela; and I noticed, too, that there was in her face that vague look of sorrow that was in her father's.

The habitable world of Mercury, Miela then went on to tell me, was divided into three zones--light, twilight and darkness. There was no direct sunlight in the Light Country--only a diffused daylight like the light on our earth when the sky is clouded over. The people of the Light Country, Miela's people, were the most civilized and the ruling race.

In the twilight zone around them, grading back to the Dark Country, various other peoples dwelt, and occasionally warred with their neighbors for possession of land in the light.

In the center of the Light Country, directly underneath the sun--that is, where the sun, would always appear near the zenith--was the Fire Country.

Here, owing to violent storms, the atmospheric envelope of the planet was frequently disturbed sufficiently to allow pa.s.sage for the sun's direct rays. Then would ensue in that locality, for a limited time, a heat so intense as to destroy life. This Fire Country was practically uninhabited.

"You see, Bob," Alan interrupted, "the dark part of Mercury--that is the side that continually faces away from the sun--is also practically uninhabited. Only strange animals and savages live there. And the twilight zones, and the ring of Light Country, with the exception of its center, are too densely populated. This has caused an immense amount of trouble.

The Twilight People are an inferior race. They have tried to mix with those of the Light Country. It doesn't work. There's been trouble for generations; trouble over the women, for one thing. Anyhow, the Twilight People have been kept out as much as possible. Now this fellow Tao--"

"Let Miela explain about the women first," Beth interjected.

Then Miela went on to tell me that only the females of Mercury had wings--given them by the Creator as a protection against the pursuit of the male. At marriage, to insure submission to the will of her husband, a woman's wings were clipped. For more than a generation now there had been a growing rebellion on the part of the women against this practice. In this movement Miela's mother, Lua, was a leader. To overcome this masculine desire for physical superiority and dominance which he had had for centuries seemed practically impossible. Yet, Miela said, the leaders of the women now felt that some progress was being made in changing public sentiment, although so far not a single man had been found who would take for mate a woman with wings unclipped.

This was partly from personal pride and partly because the laws of the country made such a union illegal, its parties moral outlaws, its children illegitimate, and thus not ent.i.tled to the government benefits bestowed upon all offspring of legitimate parentage. It was this man-made law the women were fighting, and of recent years fighting more and more militantly.

This was the situation when Tao suddenly projected himself into public affairs as the leader of a new movement. Tao had paid court to Miela without success. He was active in the fight against the woman movement--a brilliant orator, crafty, unscrupulous, a good leader. Leadership was to him purely a matter of personal gain. He felt no deep, sincere interest in any public movement for any other reason.

Interplanetary communication had become of latter years a possibility; science had invented and perfected the means. So far these vehicles had only been used for short trips to the outer edge of the atmosphere of Mercury--trips that were giving scientific men much valuable knowledge of atmospheric conditions, and which it was thought would ultimately enable them to counteract the storms and make the Fire Country habitable. No trips into s.p.a.ce had been made.

Tao now came forward with the proposition to undertake a new world conquest--a conquest of Venus or the earth. These planets recently had been observed from the vehicles. This, he said, would solve the land question, which, after all, was more serious than the clipping of women's wings.

He found many followers--adventurers, princ.i.p.ally, to whom the possibilities for untold personal gain in such a conquest appealed. Then abruptly the women took part. Dropping for the time their own fight, they opposed Tao vigorously. If Venus or the earth were inhabited, as it was thought they were, such an expedition would be a war against humanity. It would result in the needless destruction of human life.

In this controversy the government of the Light Country remained neutral.

But the women finally won, and Tao and his followers, a number of them men of science, were all banished by the government, under pressure of popular sentiment, into the Twilight Country.

Here Tao's project fell upon fertile soil. The Twilight People had every reason to undertake such a conquest; and Tao became their leader in preparing for it. These preparations were known in the Light Country. The government made no effort to prevent them. It was, indeed, rather glad of the possibility of being rid of its disturbing neighbors.

Only the women were concerned, but they alone could do nothing, since by principle they were as much opposed to offensive warfare against the Twilight People as against the possible inhabitants of the earth. Miela paused at this point in her narrative. The thing was getting clearer to me now, but I could not reconcile this feeble attempt to conquer the earth which we were then fighting in Wyoming with the picture she drew. I said so.

"She hasn't come to that," Alan broke in. "You see, Bob, Tao, with about a hundred followers, was banished to the Twilight Country a couple of years ago. There was plenty of brains in the party, scientific men and such.

They had only one vehicle, but they have been at work ever since building a lot of others.

"This expedition of Tao to Wyoming--with only about a hundred of the Twilight People with him--is not intended to be an offensive operation at all. He's only looking the situation over, finding out what they're up against. They decided before they started that the light-ray would protect them from anything on earth, and they have only come to look around.

"Right now up there"--Alan leaned forward earnestly, and in the moonlight I could see the flush on his handsome face--"right now up there in the Twilight Country of Mercury they're working their d.a.m.nedest over all kinds of preparations. This Wyoming business this summer does not mean a thing Tao will quit it any minute. You'll see. Some morning we'll wake up and find them gone. Probably they'll destroy their apparatus, and not bother to take it back.

"And then, in a year or two, they'll be here again. Not one vehicle next time, but a hundred. They'll land all over the earth at once, not on a desert--Tao probably only picked that this time to avoid complications--but in our big cities, New York, Paris, London, all of them at once. That's what we've got to face.