Chapter 13: Further Progress

His change of tactics had worked, although it made him feel like a brute. But only by arousing Quivven’s anger could he stir her to continue the journey; and to remain would have menaced her safety and her health.

She had a good head start of him. The silver sky was turning crimson in the west. Night was coming on. So he hurried after her down the wet and slippery trail.

At last it became so dark that he had to slow down and walk; and finally merely grope his way, shoving his feet ahead, one after the other, in order to be sure to keep to the trail and not to stumble.

Time and again his foot would touch something soft, which he would picture as some strange and weird Porovian animal, a gnooper for instance. Quickly he would withdraw the foot. Then waiting in suspense for the creature either to go away or to spring upon him, at last he would cautiously push his foot forward, touch the object again, kick it slightly, and find that it was only a clump of Porovian grass or a rotted piece of lichen log.

Poor Quivven! How terrified she must be at such encounters!

After a while he got a bit used to these occurrences, and accordingly each succeeding one of them delayed him less than the preceding.

“You know,” he said to himself, “this will keep on until finally one of these obstacles will actually turn out to be a gnooper, and it will eat me alive before I can get out of the way.”

Just then his groping foot touched another of these soft objects.

“Get out of my way,” Cabot shouted, and gave it a kick. But this time it was not attached to the soil. It yielded and wriggled a bit. Then it gave a peculiar groaning sound.

Myles leaped backward and waited. But nothing happened; so he tried to circle the creature. Again the groan. His scientific curiosity got the better of his caution. He approached once more and investigated more closely, reaching down with his hand. The animal was covered with wet and muddy fur.

It was Quivven!

Tenderly he raised the crumpled form in his arms, and groped on down the treacherous trail.

Myles wondered how long he could bear up with this dead weight in his arms. But just as he was beginning to stagger, the road gave a turn and flattened out, and there before him were lights, the flares and bonfires of a city! They had reached the plain.

“Quivven!” he cried joyfully. “This is home! There ahead lies Vairkingi!”

But she made no reply. Her body was cold and still.

Quickly he laid her on the ground and placed one ear to her chest. Thank the Great Builder! Her heart still beat. So he chafed her hands and feet, and worked her arms violently back and forth until she began to groan protestingly.

“Quivven!” he cried. “Wake up! We are home!”

“Are you here, Myles?” she murmured faintly,

“Yes.”

“And you won’t make me walk any more?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll wake up for you,” she murmured cheerfully, and promptly fell fast asleep.

Again lifting her tenderly in his arms, he resumed the journey.

On reaching the city he circled the wall until he came to one of the gates, where he stood the girl on the ground and shook her gently into consciousness.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“At the gates of Vairkingi,” Myles answered.

She ran her hands rapidly over her mud-caked fur.

“Oh, but I can’t go in like this,” she wailed, “I’m covered with mud from head to foot! Think how I must look! No, I refuse to go in.”

“If you stay here,” he urged mildly, “then when morning comes every one will see you, the Princess Quivven, bedraggled with mud, hanging around outside the city gates. Better far to go in now, and take a chance of being seen by only one sentinel.”

“Oh, you beast, you beast!” she sobbed, beating him futilely with her tiny paws.

For reply he seized her in his arms, swung her across one hip, and shouted: “Open wide the gates of Vairkingi for Cabot the Minorian, magician to Jud the Excuse-Maker, and to his Excellency Theoph the Grim!”

The gates swung open, and the sentinel stared at them with surprise and some amusement. Myles whipped out his sword, and the smile froze on the soldier’s face.

“Thus do I teach men not to laugh at Myles Cabot,” the earth-man growled. “Remember that you have seen nothing.”

And he handed the soldier the choice blade of Grod the Silent. The soldier smiled again.

“I have seen nothing but a Roy, whom I robbed of his sword and drove off into the darkness. It is a fine sword, and I will remember that I have seen nothing. May the Great Builder bless Myles Cabot the Minorian.”

Cabot glanced at his burden, Quivven, the beautiful. No wonder she did not want to be seen. It always humiliates a lady not to look her best in public. But by the same token, no one could possibly recognize her. He might perfectly well have saved the sword.

So he passed on through the city streets. Finally he had to put the girl down, and ask her to help him find the way, which she did grudgingly. At the gate of Jud’s compound, Myles again swung her across his hip, before he demanded entrance. No swords this time, for diplomacy would take the place of payment.

“Myles Cabot demanding entrance,” he cried.

The local guard inspected them carefully by the light of his torch.

“It is Cabot all right,” he replied, “and you look as though you had seen some hard fighting. But who is this with you?”

“A girl of the Roies,” answered Myles. “That is what the fighting was about.”

“Not for mine!” the soldier asserted, grimacing. “Though there is no accounting for tastes. They are filthy little beasts, and spitfires as well, so I’m told. My advice to you, sir, is to throw it down a well.”

Quivven wriggled protestingly.

“Perhaps I will,” Myles laughed.

At their own gate at last, he placed her once more on her feet, whereat she shook herself free, raced into the house, slammed the door of her room.

Cabot himself went right to bed, without waiting to wash or anything, and dropped instantly to sleep the moment he touched his pile of bedding; yet, so intent was he on wasting no time in getting Cupia on the air that he was up early the next morning.

He found his laboratory force sadly demoralized, owing to the absence of Quivven and himself, but he quickly brought order out of chaos, and set the men to work on their first real construction job, to which all the other work had been mere preliminary steps.

Quivven kept to her rooms, but one of the other maids roguishly informed him: “The Golden One says she hates you.”

Now that his fire-bricks were ready, Myles Cabot laid out on paper the plans for his smelting plant, all the units of which were to be lined with fire-brick.

First he designed a furnace for roasting his ore. This furnace was to be in two sections, one above the other, the lower holding the charcoal fire, and the upper holding the ore. Later he planned to use the sulphur fumes of this roaster to make sulphuric acid, which in turn he would use to make sal ammoniac for his batteries. But at present he had not yet figured out this process in detail.

The smelting furnace, for smelting the roasted ore into copper-matter, was to consist of a chimney about two feet in diameter, sloping sharply outward for about two feet, and thence sloping gradually inward again for a height of about ten feet. Near the bottom were to be a number of small holes leading from an air passage.