Chapter II: Warning

It must have been nearly nine o’clock when a personal message came for me. Not through the ordinary open airways, but in the National Length, and coded. It came to my desk by official messenger, decoded, printed and sealed.

Jac Hallen, Inter-Allied News. Come to me, North-east Island at

once, if they can spare you. Important. Answer.

Dr. Brende.

Our Division Manager scanned the message curiously and told me I could go. I got off my answer. I did not dare call Dr. Brende openly, since he had used the code, but sent it the same way. I would be up at once.

With a word of good-bye to Greys, I shoved aside my work, caught up a heavy jacket and cap and left the office. The levels outside our building were still jammed with an excited throng. I pushed my way through it, up to the entrance to the Staten Bridge. The waters of the harbor beneath me had a broad band of moonlight upon them, dim in the glare of the city lights. I glanced upward with satisfaction. A good night for air-traveling.

My small personal air-car was on the stage near the bridge entrance. The attendant was there, staring at me as I dashed up in such haste. He handed me my key from the rack.

“Going far, Jac? What a night! They’ll be ordering them off if many more go up ... Going north?”

“No,” I said shortly.

I was away, rising with my helicopters until the city was a yellow haze beneath me. I was going north--to Dr. Brende’s little private island off the coast of Maine. The lower lanes were pretty well crowded. I tried one of the north-bound at 8,000 feet; but the going was awkward. Then I went to 16,000.

But Grille, the attendant back at the bridge, evidently had his finder on me, out of plain curiosity. He called me.

“They’ll chase you out of there,” came his voice. “Nothing doing up there tonight. That’s reserved. Didn’t you know it?”

I grinned at him. In the glow of my pitlight I hoped he could see my face and the grin.

“They’ll never catch me,” I said. “I’m traveling fast tonight.”

“Chase you out,” he persisted. “The patrol’s keeping them low. General Orders, an hour ago. Didn’t you know it?”

“No.”

“Well, you ought to. You ought to know everything in your business. Besides, the lights are up.”

They were indeed; I could see them in all the towers underneath me. I was flying north-east; and at the moment, with a following wind, I was doing something over three-fifty.

“But they’ll shut off your power,” Grille warned. “You’ll come down soon enough then.”

Which was also true enough. The evening local-express for Boston and beyond was overhauling me. And when the green beam of a traffic tower came up and picked me out, I decided I had better obey. Dutifully I descended until the beam, satisfied, swung away from me.

At 8,000 feet, I went on. There was too much traffic for decent speed and the directors in every pilot bag and tower I passed seemed watching me closely. At the latitude of Boston, I swung out to sea, off the main arteries of travel. The early night mail for Eurasia, [4] with Great London its first stop, went by me far overhead. I could make out its green and purple lights, and the spreading silver beam that preceded it.

[Footnote 4: Now Europe and Asia.]

Alone in my pit, with the dull whir of my propellers alone breaking the silence of the night, I pondered the startling events of the past few hours. Above me the stars and planets gleamed in the deep purple of an almost cloudless sky. Venus had long since dropped below the horizon. But Mars was up there--approaching the zenith. I wondered what the Martian helio might be saying. I could have asked Greys back at the office. But Greys, I knew, would be too busy to bother with me.

What could Dr. Brende want of me? I was glad he had sent for me--there was nowhere I would rather have gone this particular evening. And it would give me a chance to see Elza again.

I could tell by the light-numerals below, that I was now over Maine. I did not need to consult my charts; I had been up this way many times, for, the Brendes--the doctor, his daughter Elza, and her twin brother Georg--I counted my best friends.

I was over the sea, with the coast of Maine to my left. The traffic, since I left the line of Boston, had been far less. The patrols flashed by me at intervals, but they did not molest me.

I descended presently, and located the small two-mile island which Dr. Brende owned and upon which he lived.

It was 10:20 when I came down to find them waiting for me on the runway.

The doctor held out both his hands. “Good enough, Jac. I got your code--we’ve been waiting for you.”

“It’s crowded,” I said. “Heavy up to Boston. And they wouldn’t let me go high.”

He nodded. And then Elza put her cool little hand in mine.

“We’re glad to see you, Jac. Very glad.”

They took me to the house. Dr. Brende was a small, dark man of sixty-odd, smooth-shaven, a thin face, with a mop of iron-grey hair above it, and keen dark eyes beneath bushy white brows. He was usually kindly and gentle of manner--at times a little abstracted; at other times he could be more forceful and direct than anyone with whom I had ever had contact.

At the house we were joined by the doctor’s son, Georg. My best friend, I should say; certainly, for my part, I treasured his friendship very highly. He and Elza were twins--twenty-three years old at this time. I am two years older; and I had been a room-mate with Georg at the Common University of the Potomac.

Our friendship had, if anything, grown closer since my promotion into the business world. Yet we were as unlike as two individuals could possibly be. I am dark-haired, slim, and of comparatively slight muscular strength. Restless--full of nervous energy--and, they tell me, somewhat short of temper. Georg was a blond, powerful young giant. A head taller than I--blue-eyed, from his mother, now dead--square-jawed, and a complexion pink and white. He was slow to anger. He seldom spoke impulsively; and usually with a slow, quiet drawl. Always he seemed looking at life and people with a half-humorous smile--looking at the human pageant with its foibles, follies and frailties--tolerantly. Yet there was nothing conceited about him. Quite the reverse. He was generally wholly deprecating in manner, as though he himself were of least importance. Until aroused. In our days of learning, I saw Georg once--just once--thoroughly angered.

“ ... Came up promptly, didn’t you?” Georg was saying. He was leading me to the house doorway, but I stopped him.

“Let’s go to the grove,” I suggested. We turned down from the small viaduct, passed the house, and went into the heavy grove of trees nearby.

“He’s hungry,” Elza declared. “Jac, did you eat at the office tonight?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you really?”

“Some,” I admitted. In truth the run up here had brought me a thoroughly hearty appetite, which I just realized.

“I was pretty busy, you know,” I added. “Such a night--but don’t you bother.”

But she had already scurried away toward the house. Dear little Elza! I wished then, for the hundredth time, that I was a man of wealth--or at least, not as poor as a tower timekeeper. True, I made fair money--but the urge to spend it recklessly dominated me. I decided in that moment, to reform for good; and lay by enough to justify asking a woman to be my wife.

We reclined on a mossy bank in the grove of trees, so thick a grove that it hid the house from our sight.