The Radio Planet, Ralph Milne Farley [manga ereader txt] 📗
- Author: Ralph Milne Farley
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The next morning he plunged into his work with renewed vigor. He now had copper wire, copper plates, wood, mica, solder, platinum, glass, and batteries—everything that he needed for his radio set except a better vacuum for his tubes; but without that he was as far from success as when he started.
Of course he knew what he needed—magnesium. But it was one thing to step into a drug store on the earth, or into a chemical laboratory in Cupia, and take magnesium off the shelves, and quite another matter to pick this elusive element out of thin air in Vairkingi.
Nevertheless, in spite of this lack, Myles kept on working. He wound his inductances, transformers, earphones, and rheostats. He assembled his variable condensers and microphones. He fashioned his sockets and lamp bases. He strung his antennae. He wired up his baseboard and panel.
Small sets were installed in Quivven’s rooms at the palace, at Jud’s house, and at the brickyard. Each of these was equipped with a transformer-coupling for Doggo’s antennae, as well as with mouthpieces for the others, so that now at last oral conversation was possible with his Formian friend. Later he would prepare a portable head-set such as he had worn in Cupia.
Laboratory experiments demonstrated the success of his sets in everything except durability of tubes. Yet in spite of this drawback he was able to communicate across his laboratory, and even with Jud’s house, and under favorable conditions with Quivven at the palace by using a cold-tube hookup. But this was not powerful enough to send as far as the brickyard, let alone Cupia.
At this juncture there appeared one morning at his gate a Vairking soldier in leather tunic and helmet, requesting entrance with important secret news. Myles grudgingly left his work-bench and gave audience. The fellow had a strangely familiar appearance and smiled in a quizzical manner; yet Myles could not place him.
“Who are you?” Myles asked.
“Do you not know me?” the other asked in reply.
“No.”
The soldier doffed his leather cap. “Do you know me now?”
“No.”
“A life for a life?”
“Now I know you!” Cabot exclaimed. “You are Otto the Bold, son of Grod the Silent, who is King of the Roies. To paraphrase one of the proverbs of my own country, ‘A face that is familiar in Sur is oft a stranger in Vairkingi.’ I did not recognize you away from the surroundings in which we met. What good fortune brings you here?”
“Not good fortune, but bad,” the Roy replied. “It is true that Grod, my father, is our king, but it is also true that Att the Terrible likewise claims the kingship. Att loves Arkilu, and is even at this moment on the march against Vairkingi with the largest army of Roies ever gathered.”
Myles smiled. “We are grateful for the information,” he said. “With this forewarning we are secure against attack.”
“If you will pardon me,” Otto continued, “I think that you are not secure. For one of your own Vairkings, Tipi by name, marches with Att. Att has promised Tipi the glorious golden Quivven in return for Tipi’s support. And Tipi has many partisans within this city.”
Myles continued to smile. “We can deal with traitors,” he asserted smugly. “There are many lamp-posts in our city.”
But Otto kept on: “Sur has fallen.”
“What!” the earth-man shouted, at last shocked out of his complacency. “The rock-bound impregnable fortress of Sur fallen? Impossible!”
“Not impossible to those who travel through the skies and drop black stones which fly to pieces with a loud noise,” Otto calmly replied. “The beasts of the south have made alliance with Att the Terrible, and Tipi the Steadfast, and are marching with them. Good Builder! They are upon us even now. Quick, the beasts enter this very room. Come, draw, defend yourself!”
Wheeling quickly, Cabot confronted Doggo standing in the doorway. Much relieved, he explained to Otto who this newcomer was; then, seizing a pad and a lead stylus of his own manufacture, he hurriedly sketched the situation to his Formian friend.
In reply Doggo wrote: “At last I have magnesium ore. Some soldiers brought it in, attracted by its pretty red color. There is no time to be lost. To the laboratory. You must complete our set and summon aid from Cupia. Meanwhile I will get Jud on the air, and call him here for a conference. We have no time to wait upon him, or even Theoph, in this emergency.”
Myles read the message aloud to Otto.
“It is well,” the latter commented. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must be running along. My disguise as a Vairking soldier will get me safely out of your city, and I must join my father, who is planning to counter-attack, if a fit opportunity presents itself. Till we meet again.”
“Till we meet again, in this life or beyond the waves,” the earth-man replied. “And may the Builder bless you for your help this day.” Then he rushed to the laboratory.
Doggo was already tuning the set. “Jud is not at home,” he wrote. “Shall I waste a tube on the brickyard?”
“No,” Myles signified with a shake of his head; then seizing the pad and stylus again, he wrote: “I will try and get Jud. You meanwhile attempt to extract magnesium from this piece of carnallite.”
The ant-man knew exactly how to proceed. Grinding the ore, he mixed it with salt and melted the mass in an iron pot, which he connected electrically with the carbon terminal of a line of electric batteries. In the boiling pot he placed a copper plate connected with the zinc elements of his cells.
By the time the earth-man returned from calling Jud on the radio, a coating of pure magnesium had begun to form on the copper anode.
An hour or so later he scraped off his first yield of the precious metal, the final necessity of his projected radio set.
At this stage Jud appeared. “Pardon the delay,” he started to explain. “You see, I—”
But Myles cut him short with: “Never mind explanations now. It is enough that you are here. Sur has fallen. The beasts of the south and Att the Terrible are on the warpath. They seek to rob you of your Arkilu. With their aerial wagons they will drop magic rocks upon this city and destroy it. Give Doggo back his plane, and he will try to combat them.”
But Jud shook his head. “You would merely escape,” he replied, “and then we would be worse off than now.”
“Then you admit that you know the whereabouts of Doggo’s plane?” Myles eagerly asked.
“Not at all, not at all,” the Vairking suavely replied. “I was merely stating that, even if I knew where this ‘plane,’ as you call it, is—”
“For Builder’s sake, man!” Cabot cut in. “This is no time to quibble over words! Give us the plane, if you would save Theoph, yourself, and Arkilu.”
“It’s hardly necessary,” Jud asserted, unruffled. “Don’t get so excited! If Att wants Arkilu, he certainly won’t drop things on the palace. And we can defend the palace against all the Roies in Vairkingi.”
“But not against magic slingshots,” replied the earth-man.
“Perhaps not,” the noble said with a crafty smile; “but we shall see. Now I go to prepare the defense. You are at liberty to come with us, if you will, or putter around your tubes if you had rather. Good-by.”
“Shift for yourselves then!” Myles shouted after him, and frantically resumed his work. His attempt to get the plane by stratagem had failed. Perhaps Jud did not know anything about the plane after all. It would be typical of him.
Myles had plenty of sets of grids, plates, and filaments all prepared. Also plenty of long tubes of pyrex glass. All that remained necessary was to coat the platinum elements with magnesium, fuse them into the tube, exhaust the air by the water method as before, seal the tube, and his radio set would be complete.
“Where is Quivven?” he wrote to Doggo. “She ought to be here helping with this.”
“On her way from the palace,” the ant-man replied. “I radio-phoned her there.”
Presently she entered, and jauntily inquired what all the excitement was about. Myles explained as briefly as possible.
Her only answer was to shrug her golden shoulders and remark, “Tipi is a little fool. He can have me if he can get me.”
Then she took her seat at the workbench.
After a while she inquired, “Why the rush with the radio set, when Vairkingi is in peril?”
Myles replied, “Our only hope now is to get Cupia on the air, and persuade my followers there to send across the boiling seas enough aerial wagons to defeat the beasts of the south, or ‘Formians,’ as we call them.”
“And will you talk with your Lilla?” she asked innocently.
“Yes, if the Builder wills,” he eagerly and reverently replied.
To his surprise, Quivven jumped to her feet with flashing eyes, and, seizing a small iron anvil from the workbench, she held it over the precious pile of platinum elements.
“And if I drop this anvil, you will not talk to her. Is not that so?”
Myles, horrified, sat rooted to his seat, unable to move.
XVIITHE BATTLE FOR VAIRKINGI
But the flaming Quivven did not drop the anvil on the precious tube elements. Instead she flung it from her to the floor and sank limply into her seat, her golden head on her arms on the workbench.
“I couldn’t do it,” she moaned between sobs, “for I too know what it is to love. Talk to her, Myles, and I will help you.”
He gasped with relief. “You wouldn’t spoil all our days and days of labor, I am sure,” he said. “What was the matter? I don’t understand you.”
“You wouldn’t,” was her reply, as she shook herself together and resumed work.
After a while one of the soldiers attached to the laboratory brought in word that the Roies and Formians were attacking the walls, and that “planes” were sailing around in the sky overhead. Cabot gave word to mass his men to defend the laboratory at all costs and went on working.
One by one the tubes were completed and tested.
From time to time Quivven would step into the yard, glance at the sky, and then report back to Myles. The Formian planes were scouting low, but were not dropping bombs. Jud had apparently been right in one thing—that the beasts would not risk injuring the expected prizes of war, namely Arkilu and Quivven.
From time to time runners brought word of the fighting at the outer wall of the city. It would have been an easy matter for the ant-men to bomb the gates, and thus let in their Roy allies, but evidently they were playing safe even there. At last, however, word came that traitors—presumably friends of Tipi—had opened one of the gates, and that the enemy was now within the city.
Still Myles worked steadily on.
Suddenly Quivven returned from one of her scouting trips in the yard with the cry, “One of the air wagons has seen me, and is coming down!”
At that the Radio Man permitted himself to leave his bench for a few moments and go to the door. True, the plane was hovering down, eagerly awaited by a score or so of Cabot’s Vairking soldiers armed with swords, spears and bows. As the Formians came within bowshot they were met with a shower of arrows, most of which, however, glanced harmlessly off the metallic bottom of the fuselage.
The ant-men at once retaliated with a shower of bullets. Two Vairkings dropped to the ground, and the others frantically rushed to cover within the buildings, forcing back Myles and his two companions, as the fugitives crowded through the door.
“Where is your magic slingshot?” one of them taunted him as they swept by.
The earth-man shook himself and passed the back of one hand across his tired brow, then hurried to his living room. Seizing his rifle, he cautiously approached one of the slit windows which overlooked the yard, and peeked out. The plane was on the ground. Four ants were disembarking.
Here at last was a chance to secure transportation!
Myles opened fire.
The Formians were taken completely by surprise. Oh, how it did Cabot’s heart good to see those ancient enemies drop and squirm as he pumped lead into them! They made no attempt to return his fire, but scuttled toward their beached plane.
Only one of them reached it; but one was enough to deprive the earth-man of his booty. Up shot the craft, followed by a parting bullet from Myles. Then he proceeded to the yard once more. His furry soldiers, brave now that all danger was over, were already there before him, putting an end to the three wounded ant-men, with swords and spears.
A strong and pungent odor filled
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