Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 05.djvu/74

Professor Rudge laughed when he read the letter.

"The little traitress! Got out of her depth and had to scramble back, and now stands on the side of the enemy. Put not thy confidence in woman! That girl is a brick, and would scratch my face cheerfully if I returned to the charge. But I know now all about it. My theory is absolutely established."

May received the following reply:

"My Dear Miss Treherne,—

"Short of hearing the voice myself, I could not desire any better confirmation of its reality, and that of the personality behind it, than your letter. This remark may appear to you cryptic, so I will explain. Your opinion respecting the will of Mr. Macrae compared with your own, and, I may say, with mine, is correct. When I found we did not succeed, a reason for this had to be sought. On reading over the reports in my possession, I find that at the moment when he lost consciousness, he had the distinct impression of an order being given him. The order itself, quite in accordance with the well-known laws of hypnotism, does not now rise to the level of consciousness, but, none the less, absolutely decides his will and conduct.

"We have both been wasting our exertions, and distressing our friend, uselessly. He does not yield because he cannot. It is, in fact, not him we are up against, but the Venerian! Therefore there is the Venerian. It is possible, although not certain, that, by means of hypnotism, the order itself might be discovered, but I think the course would be open to objection in this case. For the purpose of investigation I am now so interested in, it will be better to do nothing hastily that might interfere with the influence now at work. The order may have been a prohibition from returning to the instrument for ever, or for a time only. In the latter case it may not be a long time. So I propose to wait awhile, and do nothing. I wish the whole matter to remain a secret for the present, so will you please burn this so soon as read.

"With kind regards,

May was pleased with the letter, principally because Alan was not going to be worried any more. On the general argument she did not feel competent to form an opinion. Seeing the whole subject had become very distasteful to him, Macrae was not even shown the letter, which May Treherne duly burnt, as requested.

It must not be supposed that the subject by any means died out of the Professor's thoughts. He continued at intervals to give it careful study. He often puzzled over the mystery of the two voices. Why were there two? What was the disagreement among the Venerians? It was inconceivable that there could be any person or party who could have any objection to communicate with the Earth. The voice had distinctly said they had longed for it for thousands of years, that nothing but our own backwardness had prevented it. In its last words, according to Macrae's report, the voice had appeared to be about to give a warning, when the other voice, the "greater voice"——"My God!"—the Professor sprang from his chair in the excitement of his discovery—"That's it," he said to himself; "the whole thing is clear! Clear as possible! That voice was from Mars!"

Arrived at this new hypothesis, Professor Rudge felt as a man might who had been hammering away with hammer and cold chisel at some old shell from a battlefield, and suddenly discovered before it was too late, that the shell was charged. He fully realized that if his surmise were correct, the situation was not to be played with. He also remembered that he had once made an attempt to establish communication, or at least to exchange signals, with Mars. He had failed.

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," he muttered to himself (no one else would have used the word as applied to him). "How fortunate that the influence of the Venerian was too strong for my meddlesome interference!"

Time passed with things in this state, no one having the least desire to make any further move. It was as though Station X had never existed.

At the expiration of Macrae's leave of absence, he had been ordered to one of the home stations, after a medical examination as to fitness. From there May Treherne received frequent letters from him. She thought she could perceive by these that he seemed in some way changed by his experiences. There was none of the buoyancy of former days. She wondered if it was regret at the loss of the double pay that had lasted so short a time, and the consequent postponement of their plans. If his life were as monotonous as hers, she could forgive him any amount of depression.

On the 10th of June of the following year, Professor Rudge, who had come with regret to fear that the whole episode was closed, was surprised to receive a letter from Macrae, written from the West of Ireland installation, known as the Cruaghaun Station, which looks down on the Atlantic rollers from a height of two thousand feet.

"Dear Sir" (it ran),—

"If you still have the same wish as you had when last I saw you, I would be glad to hear from you. For my part, I am now quite willing to go with you to the place you wished to visit. Looking back on it, I feel quite ashamed of my previous obstinacy, and am at a loss to account for it. My inclination now is quite the other way. I wish to go there, and dream of it continually, not only in sleep, but frequently in a sort of waking dream, while in this lonely spot, almost as lonely as that other. I seem as though called, requested, to come. Even a date seems put into my head, and I feel a great desire to be there at that time. You will think this a fanciful thing in the extreme, but would it be possible to be there on the 27th of July? I am writing you in the hope that your wish is the same, and that the time is sufficient, I think it is, by the