Chapter XVII: The Devolution

Mona removed from her ears two tiny devices like collar-buttons. She noted Fort and the others doing the same. Without this protection their eardrums would have been burst. And while the girl was doing this she heard the athlete hailing the dictator:

“Good for you, Powart! It’s a fine job, and I’m ever so much obliged to you.”

The dictator stared in amazement. Mona looked from the one to the other, perplexed. Fort was laughing shakily.

“You may as well make your apologies now, Powart; you’re out of it! I’ve won, and you’ve lost! I’ve done a bigger thing than you have!”

Mona gave an exclamation of impatience. “What do you mean?” she cried shrilly. “Are you out of your head?”

“Not a bit of it! I mean just what I say! Powart hasn’t succeeded; he’s failed. And because he has failed, I’ve outdone him.”

He was gazing impudently at the dictator as he said this; Powart was leaning over the railing of the bridge, a short distance away, too indignant to speak. Next instant, however, Fort glanced at his watch.

“Have to be leaving you now,” he called. He turned his machine around. “You’ll learn soon enough, Powart, exactly what I mean. And you’ll know that I’m right. Good-by!”

Within a minute he and Mona were two miles away. Fort kept silent all the while. He seemed to be intent upon getting the most out of his machine, and kept looking anxiously at his watch. Finally Mona could hold in no longer.

“Boy, I’ve simply got to know what your game is. You’ve kept me waiting long enough.”

He immediately began to explain. First, he told her frankly and fully, just what she had said to him over the telephone, when she was under Billie’s “influence.” “I was so sure it was genuine I went right ahead on that lead, Mona.”

“You are positive you heard me say that?” from the girl thoughtfully.

“Absolutely. And somehow I knew it was the truth.”

“Powart had tricked us; not merely the workers, whom he has been hoodwinking all along, but you and me and all the rest! So I looked into the matter and discovered that the poor devils on Holl have been treated all wrong. All wrong, Mona! I never realized it before, until I investigated; but they’ve been enduring rank injustice for generations, and we’ve encouraged them to be satisfied with it.”

“I know it,” she interrupted softly. “I’ve known it for years, boy. What could we do to help them?”

“Exactly!” cried Fort, looking ahead and down, toward the chasm of the contact, then at his watch once more. “Exactly what I found out, Mona! There was no use telling them the truth; they wouldn’t believe it! They were too well satisfied.

“And so, when I heard of Powart’s scheme to bombard Alma, I saw a way to free the poor idiots on Holl! A way to release them from their bondage--OUR bonds, Mona--and defeat Powart’s trickery, and win you--all at one move!”

The girl was plainly thrilled. Yet she kept her voice comparatively cool as she asked:

“So far, so good. But I don’t see that you’ve done anything at all except to kidnap me.”

He made an impatient gesture. “Look at the ground!” he ordered curtly; and Mona wonderingly obeyed.

They were nearly to the contact. This time, however, they were not flying down into the cleft, but over it. The curious, canonlike chasm where the two worlds touched was perhaps ten miles below them.

“Look closely!” shouted Fort excitedly. He was glancing at his watch again, and changing the angle of his wings. “By heavens, we are just in time!” The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course. “Look closely, I tell you! It’s something you’ve never seen before, and will never see again!”

And Mona, staring down at the point where Hafen and Holl came together--the curious region of balanced gravitations, like nothing else anywhere in the universe--saw, as she passed over, something that made her senses whirl.

Hafen and Holl were no longer one!

The two globes were now a quarter of a mile apart, and the distance was steadily growing. Even as Mona watched the gap increased until almost a mile separated the two great worlds.