CHAPTER VI
"IF I HAD BUT KNOWN!"
"Look here, young man," said the War Secretary, "can you operate a plane of the Arctic A type?"
I could, and so could Freddie, I said. The War Secretary continued his pacing of the room. It was about nine o'clock of the morning of March 15—black as midnight outdoors; cold, with clouds scudding low over the Florida keys, clouds which promised snow. The War Secretary had sent for us.
Conditions were worse everywhere, it seemed now by this morning's news—as though each day brought its disasters worse than any which had gone before. The invaders from Xenephrene were obviously almost impregnable to our attack. The efforts of Robinson and Davis had proved it, if nothing else. It was obvious also that the invaders at New York City so far had made no offensive move. Their barrage—the crimson howling sound, or light, whatever it might be—was merely their defense.
"Heaven knows," the secretary exclaimed, "what weapons they may have to loose when they begin an attack!"
And now, another huge silver ball had landed in Venezuela—on the coastal plain near La Guayra. In the deserted frozen wastes of New York State the invaders were not an immediate, serious menace. But in Venezuela it was a far different condition.
La Guayra was the main receiving port for all our refugee ships. A twilight had fallen there, but the temperature still was mild. It was colder up in Caracas, but the people thronged there, and with heroic efforts the Government and the citizens were doing their best to receive them.
It was not a wholly unselfish effort. With the new climate, Colombia, Venezuela, the former jungles of the Amazon basin of Brazil; Ecuador, Peru, even the mountain fastnesses of Bolivia, and the arid coast of north Chile—this was the land of promise. It was the best, the only tolerable all-year climate left to the Western World. Here the new great cities would spring up—centers of industry and commerce; here would be the new great fields of grain; the cattle ranges.
But here, in the midst of the confusion of arriving settlers, the enemy from Xenephrene had landed! We had no details; we only knew that around the silver ball a barrage of red howling sound was standing up into the sky. Within that circular mile of the red barrage, all that had been evidence of our human life—houses, trees, people—all was vanished!
The War Secretary stopped before me. "I've radioed your father this morning, Peter. Told him to send that Xenephrene girl up here to us at once! We've got to do something. We must learn if we can what these unearthly enemies are like—do scientifically what we can to oppose them."
He gestured at me vehemently. "You Hollanders are very stubborn, young Peter. Your father told me he was very busy—he'd have full information for me in a day or two! That's the scientist for you! Taking it methodically, with that damn scientific routine, when a day or two is an eternity just now!"
I regarded Freddie. We did not smile; in these terrible days there was not a smile left in us. But Freddie nodded.
"That's father's way," I said. "But—"
"Well, I told him I was sending a special plane down there at once to get him and the girl. The Venezuelan Government is demanding details of us. Every thirty minutes Caracas calls me up. Makes a fool of us—a girl of this unknown enemy race right in our hands and we don't produce her! Your father said, 'Good! Send Peter and young Fred Smith—I want to see them anyway.'"
There was nothing that could have pleased Freddie and myself better. The secretary offered us a pilot, but we did not want one. We started that morning, armed with legal papers, given us jocularly, but with serious intent, nevertheless, and commanding father's presence with Zetta in Miami the next day.
It was eleven o'clock when we got away in the big Arctic A plane. A black morning with swift, low clouds, and a wind from the north. Flying southeast, we had scarcely left the Bahamas behind us when the weather cleared. Cold starlight shone on a dark, cold ocean. Icebergs had been seen down this far, but we did not chance to pass any now. But we saw many scurrying steamships.
In some four hours we raised the Morrow light of San Juan and I turned southwest, to strike the coast beyond Arecibo. Flying low, we headed in, over the line of breakers on the white beach. Columbus landed near here, not so many lifetimes ago. Yet how different was the world then!
The tumbled mountains rising behind the sea which Columbus had described to Isabella rose before us now. The same shape; every tiny peak undoubtedly the same. But they were not the vivid warm green which had so enchanted the mariner. These were cold and blue gray, and the tops of them were white with snow.
It was mid-afternoon when, in the darkness, we dropped with a roar upon Dan's landing stage at the foot of the knoll. We leaped from the plane and hurried up the hill, to see Dan and father, and Hulda and the Cains waving at us from the veranda, and a small, strange white figure of a girl standing among them.
If one could only glimpse the future, even for a brief moment! It makes me shudder sometimes to think how blindly we are forced to tread our way through life, raising each foot without the knowledge of what will happen before it reaches the ground! That afternoon, for instance, I was very happy to burst in upon father and Dan. If Freddie and I had known what was impending, we would have done anything rather than arrive at that moment. If we had delayed our arrival even an hour! Yet, even in a seeming tragedy, there is evidence of some all-guiding purpose. We may not see it, we may deny it, but I think that always it is there.
We came upon the plantation house within a moment after Zetta had begun her narration. She had told it to father; she was beginning it for Dan and the others, when the sound of our arriving plane checked her.
The few remaining hours of that afternoon and evening were crowded with the confusion of our arrival, our exchange of news and ideas, and listening to the world news from the radio. Zetta did not tell her story that afternoon or that evening. Father, with a quizzical smile, looked over the legal papers with which we served him.
"Good enough, boys! I'll obey. We'll take Zetta and go up to Miami to-morrow morning." He turned to Dan. "You come with us. Zetta will tell her story to the authorities in Miami, just as she's told it to me. And I'll have some interesting scientific data for them, I promise you."
He gestured with a voluminous sheaf of papers—his scientific notes on Zetta's narrative and on the girl's mental and physical being. He gestured with the papers and then stuck them back in his pocket. Fate! Providence! Call it what you will. He did not hand them to Dan or to Freddie or to me—he stuck them back in his pocket!
The news of Hulda's and Dan's engagement brought me pleasure. I shook Dan's hand warmly and kissed my sister as she flung herself into my arms. Little Hulda was radiant. Dan's handsome, tanned face was flushed as he received our congratulations; and when they were over, he stood towering over Hulda, with his arms around her as she clung to him.
Happy lovers, snatching at their happiness even in the midst of the world's turmoil! Happy that afternoon and evening.
I shall never forget my meeting with Zetta as they introduced me to her that afternoon. She stood in the center of the room, and something momentarily diverted the rest of them from us; for an instant we were alone. I stared at her.
What futile words of greeting I may have uttered I do not know, and I think that she said nothing. I saw a quaintly beautiful young girl, curiously different in a way not to be defined from any girl I had ever before beheld. A strange, weird beauty. I took her hand as she held it out in the gesture they had taught her.
I have mentioned Dan's feelings under similar circumstances. Dan was in love with Hulda; the instinct of all that was upright and true within him rose to cast out this surge of alien emotion. Not so with me—I was wholly fancy free.
I took Zetta's hand. It seemed then as though the contact might suddenly become beyond my power to break. Her gaze held mine. I saw a sudden startled look in her eyes, and then saw something else—the mirrored play of emotions like my own.
Her body seemed to sway toward me; I could see and feel her withstanding its sway. An attraction between us. Do I mean that literally? Scientifically? I do not know. There is, perhaps, between the sexes on earth such an attraction. Or it may perchance be psychological, emotional, nothing more.
I felt it with Zetta, and I could see that she felt it and was startled. But in her eyes there was more than surprise—a swift melting look of tenderness.
Mrs. Cain bustled up to us. "Isn't she a darling little thing, Peter? We all love her. Oh, dear me, these terrible, strange times!"
Our hands broke apart. Was it love we had felt in that instant? Could love be possible, could it be right between a man and a woman so different? Does the Creator intend the worlds thus to be joined, or is the isolation He has imposed upon each of them an evidence that such cannot be?
Love between Zetta and me? I do not know. But all that afternoon and evening, I found my eyes turning to her, and found her somber gaze upon me.
We chanced to approach each other several times, and always I was conscious of the attraction of her nearness. Not so strong as at first. All my instinct, my reason, was prepared for it now; a thousand barriers of conventionality and time and place and circumstance contributed subconsciously to resist it. But it was there, invisibly, intangibly holding us.
The evening's radio news brought a measure of relief to the world. From New York came the report that the invaders had vanished. Moved somewhere else, perhaps—but where it was not known.
Father made one comment; his words, which proved to be true enough, linger clear in my memory. "They left New York yesterday afternoon, after the attack by Robinson and Davis. There are not two vehicles—only one! It left New York and landed last night in Venezuela! It may leave there presently." His glance turned to Zetta. "I have reason to think that the invaders will voluntarily withdraw from the earth. Very soon, I imagine—while Xenephrene is still comparatively near us."
True enough! At midnight that night the radio told us that the Xenephrene vehicle, with all its people, had left Venezuela. The night was heavily overcast, with a rain and wind storm all up through Central America and the lower Caribbean; and north of sixteen degrees there was snow. Where the invaders had gone, no one knew. The world was anxiously awaiting news of their next landing place.
We sat up for perhaps an hour. It was snowing outside, with a howling wind that swirled the snow about the eaves of the little plantation house. At about one o'clock we all bade each other good night and went to bed.
Ah, if we had but known!
I awoke to find Freddie shaking me. He and I had slept together. It was four in the morning, and the house was noisy with the storm outside. Freddie was alarmed—he did not know why. Something had awakened him—we decided it was a thumping which we now heard in the living room, a door banging in the wind, with a queer, broken rattle to it.
There is a sense of evil which comes to any one awakened unexpectedly in the night. I felt it very strongly now. And Freddie's face was very white and solemn in the glow of the night light which he had switched on.
"The door to the porch," I said. "It's blown open—it's banging."
We went out to close it. The living room was very cold; snow was blowing in through the outer doorway. We turned on the light. The door was not only open, it was hanging askew, half torn from its hinges. More than that, part of its wooden framework was gone. Not broken—vanished—as if melted off. A leprous wreck of a door, hanging there, banging with a thump and rattle in the wind!
No need to tell us what had happened—I think we both knew then. The door to father's bedroom stood open. He was not there. The bed had been occupied; there was no sign of a struggle, no abnormal disorder anywhere about the house, except for that dismembered front door, which had been locked.
Our light and our voices awakened Dan and his parents. They came out from their rooms. But Hulda did not come, nor Zetta! Their bedroom doors, like father's stood open; but the occupants were gone.
Horrified moments followed, during which we searched the house and the buildings near it. There was no evidence of any kind of how, in the noisy night, while the rest of us slept, father, Hulda and Zetta had been spirited away.
The terrified elder Cains remained in the house. Hastily dressing, Dan, Freddie and I rushed to the corral. The chilled little ponies welcomed us. We saddled, and in single file, slowly against the wind and driving snow, we rode out into the night.
There was no surprise left for us when we reached the "Eden tract" in the valley by the caves where once the Cains' treasured fruit trees had grown so luxuriantly. It was all a dim gray expanse of snow, with the naked tree branches showing in black, forlorn rows.
The trunks of the coconut trees stood like huge black sticks in a patch of white. But among them there was no small silver vehicle. The guards had been withdrawn a week before. There was no evidence here of anything.
The heavy falling snowflakes would have covered up even recent footprints; there was only the depression in the sand and snow to mark where the vehicle had been.
The last communication was broken. The last remaining evidence of Xenephrene upon our earth was gone!