Chapter XI: To Save the World

Two days later Alan and Miela were quietly married in Bay Head. She still wore the long cloak, and no one could have suspected she was other than a beautiful stranger in the little community. When we got back home Alan immediately made her take off the cloak. He wanted us to admire her wings--to note their long, soft red feathers as she extended them, the symbol and the tangible evidence of her freedom from male dominance.

She was as sweet about it all as she could be, blushing, as though to expose the wings, now that she was married, were immodest. And by the way she regarded Alan, by the gentleness and love in her eyes, I could see she would never be above the guidance, the dominance, of one man, at least.

The day before their marriage Alan had taken me up the bayou to see the little silver car in which Miela had come. I was intensely curious to learn the workings of this strange vehicle. As soon as we were inside I demanded that Alan explain it all to me in detail.

He smiled.

“That’s the remarkable part of it, Bob,” he answered. “Miela herself didn’t thoroughly understand either the basic principle or the mechanism itself when she started down here.”

“Good Lord! And she ventured--”

“Tao was already on the point of leaving when she conceived the idea. He had already made one trip almost to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere, you know, and now was ready to start again.”

“That first trip was last November,” I said. “Tell me about that. What were those first light-meteors for?”

“As far as I can gather from what Miela says,” Alan answered, “Tao wanted to make perfectly sure the light-ray would act in our atmosphere. He came--there were several vehicles they had ready even then--without other apparatus than those meteors, as we called them. Those he dropped to earth with the light-ray stored in them. They did discharge it properly--they seemed effective. The thing was merely a test. Tao was satisfied, and went back to arrange for this second preliminary venture in which he is engaged now.”

“I understand,” I said. “Go on about Miela.”

“Well, she and her mother went before the Scientific Society, she calls it--the men who own and control these vehicles in the Light Country. They called it suicide. No one could be found to come with her. Lua, her mother, wanted to, but Miela would not let her take the risk, saying she was needed more there in her own world.

“As a matter of fact, the thing, while difficult perhaps to understand in principle, in operation works very simply. Miela knew that, and merely asked them to show her how to operate it practically. This they did. She spent two days with them--she learns things rather easily, you know--and then she was ready.”

I waited in amazement.

“For practical purposes all she had to understand was the operation of these keys. The pressure of the light-ray in these coils”--he was standing beside a row of wire coils which in the semidarkness I had not noticed before--”is controlled by the key-switches.” He indicated the latter as he spoke. “They send a current to the outer metal plates of the car which makes them repel or attract other masses of matter, as desired.

“All that Miela had to understand then was how to operate these keys so as to keep the base of the vehicle headed toward the earth. They took her to the outer edge of the atmosphere of Mercury over the Dark Country and showed her the earth. They have used terrestrial telescopes for generations, and since the invention of this vehicle telescopes for celestial observation have been greatly improved.

“All Miela had to do was keep the air in here purified. That is a simple chemical operation. By using this attractive and repellent force she allowed the earth’s gravity and the repelling power of the sun and Mercury to drive her here.”

He paused.

“But, doesn’t she--don’t you understand the thing in detail?” I asked finally.

“I think father and I understand it now better than she does,” he answered. “We have studied it out here and questioned her as closely as possible. We understand its workings pretty thoroughly. But the exact nature of the light-ray we do not understand, any more than we understand electricity. Nor do we understand this metallic substance which when charged with the current becomes attractive or repellent in varying degrees.”

“Yes,” I said. “That I can appreciate.”

“Father has a theory about the light-ray,” he went on, “which seems rather reasonable from what we can gather from Miela. The thing seems more like electricity than anything else, and father thinks now that it is generated by dynamos on Mercury, similar to those we use here for electricity.”