30
ptly he turned away again. But in that instant, his eyes had roved Elza in a way that turned me cold.
They led us away, down a padded hallway into the instrument room. It was in full operation; our Inter-Allied news-tape was clicking; the low voice of the announcer droned through the silence. I started toward the tape, but Argo waved me away. He had volunteered us nothing, and again Georg advised silence.
Argo had given his orders. Through a window I saw men carrying apparatus from the house. A small metal frame of sun-mirrors, prisms and vacuum tubes. Georg whispered: "Father's model."
The man with it passed beyond my sight. Others came along, carrying the cylinders of books--Dr. Brende's notes--and a variety of other paraphernalia. Carrying it back from the shore toward the headlands of the Cape, where I realized now they had an aero secreted.
Argo was at a mirror; he had a head-piece on; he was talking into a disc--talking in a private code. I could see the surface of the small mirror. A room, with windows. Through one of the windows, by daylight, palms and huge banana leaves were visible. A room seemingly in the tropics of our own hemisphere.
Argo was triumphant--explaining, doubtless, that he had captured us. Mingled with his voice, the Inter-Allied announcer was saying:
"Greater-New York 10.32 Martian Helio, via Tokyohama: Little People Proclamation----"
A man standing near the tape switched off the droning voice. At the receiving table, every few seconds came the buzz of the laboratory's call. Wrangel Island again calling Robins; but no one paid any heed. Argo finished at the mirror. He glanced over the tape, smiling sardonically. Then, methodically, deliberately, he swept the instruments to the floor, jerked out the connections, turned out the current--wrecked it all with a few strokes. A moment later we were taken away.
Outside, from back by the low reaches of the Cape, we saw an aero rising. They had loaded it with Dr. Brende's effects, an