Chapter XVIII: The Silver Heart

Mona leaped to the controls. She turned the craft about automatically and started toward Hafen. Then she glanced over the side. What she saw brought her heart to her throat.

About a mile below, and under Fort as he sank through the air, was another flying machine which neither had noticed before. In it was the figure of a man standing; he was maneuvering his craft so as to intercept the falling aviator. And the clear air of the high altitudes carried the sound of his voice faintly but surely to Mona’s ears.

“Thought you’d get away, did you, Fort?” in heavy, insolent tones. “Well, you get--left, my boy!”

“Eklan Norbith!” cried Fort at the same instant. Next second he had landed on the deputy’s machine.

“Norbith!” thought Mona, immediately recalling her patient at the hospital. She hesitated only an instant, then dove in a steep spiral down toward the two.

Fort had fouled his parachute on a stanchion, in landing. Breathless, he lay in a tangle heap, looking up at the towering bulk of the deputy.

“You’re not going to get clear this time, Fort, like you did that night with the Cobulus and Ernol’s gang!” Norbith was saying savagely, gloating over the man at his feet. “Thought the lad killed me, I suppose. I was barely stunned. And I’ve been on your tail--ever since.”

His eyes glowed with anger. Mona watched him in silence as she circled nearer. Norbith! The commission’s deputy in Calastia; he represented all that was evil and cruel in the government. It was he who did the nasty work, the things which Powart himself was too much of a gentleman to do. Norbith--the strong, cruel right arm on an unjust law!

“Well”--Fort had regained his breath somewhat--”now that you’ve got me, Norbith, what do you intend to do about it?”

“Do!” The man’s voice fairly boomed. “I’m going to tear that parachute off your back and pitch you overboard, you infernal outlaw! And I’m going to claim that you resisted arrest!”

At that instant he noted Mona for the first time. He started as he recognized her. “The surgeon!”

Then his rage came on him again. “You hold your tongue, young woman, or I shall have it--pulled out! Do you understand?” he demanded, thrusting his face up toward hers.

And then Fort was upon him. All he cared for now was to get his fingers in Norbith’s throat. And next moment Mona was desperately steering his machine clear of the other as it swayed and thrashed about under the struggling of the two men.

The advantage was with the deputy. Powerful man that he was, he was more than a match for even Fort’s great strength, while the athlete’s agility did him no good in the restricted space of the cockpit. The parachute hindered him, too. Down on the ground, on a clear spot, it would have been different. As it was, Fort was quickly thrust to his knees, and, despite all that he could do, he could not fight off the deputy’s grip. In a moment it had shifted to the athlete’s throat.

“You would, would you!” roared the deputy. “By--you’ll be dead even before you reach the ground!”

Fort struggled wildly. In a moment he was strangling; Mona could see his protruding eyes and lolling tongue. She could not help. She was not athlete enough to leap to his aid. But all of a sudden, just as Fort had once come to her own rescue, her tongue came to his.

“Boy! Boy! Tear open his shirt! Tear open his shirt!”

Fort heard. For a second he hesitated, dull wonder in his starting eyes; then he reached up, and with a spasmodic jerk of his hands, ripped Norbith’s shirt wide open. The man’s bare chest was exposed.

“Don’t you see?” shrieked Mona hysterically. “Look, boy! Look!”

And Fort saw. Saw the two silver tubes leading from the brown scar in the breast of this man--the man whose heart had been replaced by a silver instrument. Saw the tubes, leading to a belt around the man’s middle, where the pumping mechanism was concealed. And as Fort saw, he understood.

With a final burst of strength he raised his quivering fingers and clutched one of the little pipes. A jerk, an exclamation from Norbith; and then, even as Fort’s head fell back insensate, his hand snapped the little tube in two.