CHAPTER 4
THE WATCHERS
We spent the rest of that night in the little observation room on the upper story of Dr. Gryce's home; with him and Frannie beside me I sat watching the vehicle's flight through the electro-telescope. It was not a high-powered instrument, but it served. I could see the vehicle plainly as it passed through our atmosphere and out into Space. A tiny blob with darker rectangles of windows.
Dr. Gryce sat with instruments, charts and his computations before him. Occasionally he would ask me for the vehicle's position; and I would give him the points and clock the time with all the accuracy of which I was capable. He seemed solemn, perturbed no longer; the scientist in him was all-absorbing. He said once with satisfaction, "Brett is competent—the boy hasn't varied a hair from my directions."
I knew that he and Brett had picked up the image of the girl and her assailants within a month past; and that Brett had accurate calculations which he could follow until able to capture the image on his own instruments.
"How long will it take them to get there?" I asked. "When will they be back? You said within a few days. How long?" Dr. Gryce looked up from his work with a faint smile. "There's no answer to that, Frank. Without a change of their time it might take them to reach that realm out there a thousand years or a million years—the vehicle's maximum velocity we do not know—that they are to find out."
"A million years! And another million to come back!"
His smile broadened. "As we measure Time, yes. But they will change their Time-rate; the trip may seem to them only a few days."
"But," I persisted, "two million years of our Time! And we can not change our Time."
"No, Frank. But you speak thoughtlessly. Brett can return to any point in our Time he wishes. Not with exactitude—but, we hope, within a few days. They will return here—within that Time we have agreed."
Frannie's face was very solemn though she said nothing; and I knew then that she was wondering if her brothers would be able to keep their promise.
Dr. Gryce rose from his chair. "I must adjust the aural ray—Brett may need it."
He had already explained this ray. A device similar to the familiar aurometer by which the aural power of the earth is measured. He had perfected an instrument for projecting into Space the invisible aura of the earth—projecting it in a tiny, very intense beam. An instrument for visualizing its characteristic bands was in the vehicle. They hoped that the ray might reach out into distant, interstellar Space; a flash of it crossing the sky as our earth rotated. And, coming back, Brett would see it, recognize it. A guide, as he came back from beyond all the universes strewn there throughout the magnitude of Space. If it could reach out there—if he saw it. My heart sank at the thoughts, doubts, which rushed upon me.
Dr. Gryce set his aural projector, with its ray, invisible to the naked eye, flashing after the vehicle. Silently he returned to his seat.
"Can you see them? You can still see them, Frank?" Frannie turned to me with anxious face.
I could still see the vehicle. But faintly, for faster than any mail flyer it was winging its way outward. Mars—approaching its closest point to the earth now to bring a deluge of the Martian Mails—red Mars at midnight had been above us. The vehicle had gone that way; and now, visually beside the planet, they were sinking together in the western sky. The stars were paling with the coming dawn. The east flushed with it, and presently I could see the vehicle no longer.
And as I turned from my instrument, I heard Dr. Gryce. "Why Frannie, girl! You're worn out! Come, it's dawn—they've vanished."
Little Frannie had fallen asleep.