The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life
Public Domain
Chapter XV: Back!
By the time Smith had driven the strange craft fifty yards, he had it under control. Billie glanced back; Estra was out on the balcony, now, and the mob was surging against the windows she had locked against them. She shifted the baby to the hollow of one arm while with the other she broke the cord of the packet.
At the sight, the crowd in the street gave voice. “Let us have it!” they were crying; they drowned out the uproar within the house. Estra did not even look at the other car.
Then the windows gave way. Like the breaking of a dam, a flood of Venusians poured and tumbled at Estra’s feet. She raised her hand, and shouted something Billie could not hear; then, scarcely without pause, the crowd bore down upon her.
And even as she was crushed against the railing, with one hand she dropped the baby to eager, upstretched arms below; and with the other she tossed the package high in the air. There it broke apart, the air caught it, and the thousands of leaflets fluttered down upon that street full of sympathizers.
Leaflets, each of which described a discovery which was to give to women the power of abolishing the opposite sex, of making Venus a world not only one in country, one in industry and one in thought, but--one in sex!
The thunderous meaning of Estra’s last action almost made Billie forget that it was, in truth, the woman’s last act. For next moment her lifeless form was being crushed beneath the feet of that supremely cultured, marvelously civilized mob; for it was only a mob, despite its astounding advancement; a mob which had retained all the brute’s fanaticism, and all the male jealousy of the female.
For they were all men.
The four had been on Venus almost twenty-four hours when Smith, knowing the condition of the machinery in the cube, warned the others that they must return. Secretly, he was tired of the Venusians’ continual smiling; for they had fairly outdone each other to show the visitors all that could be shown. But it was Van Emmon who thought to ask for Estra’s wonderful library.
“These chemicals and metals you are giving us,” he said, making a regular speech of it, “are extremely welcome; they will enable us to perform experiments otherwise out of our reach.
“But Estra’s books will mean still more to the people of the earth. If there is no one else with more need for them, who is going to put in a claim, then why not let us have them?”