"Oh thanks, Daddy, you're just a perfectly wonderful old darling!" Nadia exclaimed, as she threw her arms rapturously around his neck. "And this isn't a warship at all—you know perfectly well that it's a research laboratory, and that as soon as the Navy gets here, you won't let it fight a bit more, because such scientists can't be allowed to risk themselves! And also, you're forgetting that whole flock of women and babies that are coming out here just as fast as they can get themselves ready. So get going, daddy old dear, and let's do things! Steve's a Quaker and we're Presbyterians, so none of the chaplains will do at all. Besides, I promised Captain King ages ago that he could marry me, so go get him and we'll do it now. Bill can be my bridesmaid, you'll give me away, and Steve can have the other two of his Big Three for best men. I'm off to hunt up the flimsiest, fussiest white dress I can find in my trunks. Let's go!"
"Mr. Newton." Stevens spoke thoughtfully as Nadia darted away. "You said something about her mother, I didn't want to say anything to raise false hopes while she was here, but I've got an idea. Let's meet in Brandon's room instead of here. We can send code to Tellus easily enough on our ultrawave, and we may be able to fake up something on vision."
A few minutes later the Big Three were in Brandon's private study; staring intently into a screen of ground glass upon which played flickering, flashing lights, while the black-haired physicist manipulated micrometer dials in infinitesimal arcs.
"Once more, Mac," Brandon directed. "Pretty nearly had them that time. We're stretching this projector about six hundred percent, but we've got to make this connection. Can't you give me just a little more voltage on those secondaries?"
"I can not!" the voice of the first assistant snapped from the speaker. "I'm overloading now so badly that some of my plates are getting hot—if I hold this voltage much longer, the whole secondary bank of tubes is going out. All x—you're on zero!"
"All x!" Flashing and waning, the lights upon the screen formed fleeting, shifting, nebulous images of a relay station upon distant Earth; but the utmost power of the transmitting fields could neither steady the image nor hold it.
"Back off, Mac," Brandon instructed. "I'm afraid we can't hold 'em direct—no use blowing a bank of tubes. We'll try relaying through Mars—we can hold them there, I think. It will muss up reception some, but it will probably be better than direct, at that. Point oh five three six ... all x—shoot!"
Brandon's relay station upon Mars was finally raised and held, and a corps of keenly interested engineers there made short work of the Earth-Mars linkage. Soon the screen glowed with the picture of the transmitter-room of the Terrestrial station, and while the three men were waiting for Mrs. Newton to be called to her own television set, the door behind them opened. Nadia and her escorts entered the room—but Stevens' eyes saw only the entrancing vision of loveliness that was his bride. Dressed in a clinging white gown of shimmering silk, her hair a golden blond corona, sweetly curved lips slightly parted and wide eyes eloquent, she paused momentarily as Stevens came to his feet and stared at her, his very heart in his eyes.
"You never saw me in a dress before—do you like me, Steve?"
"Like you! You're beautiful!" and gray eyes and brown, deep with wonder and with love, met and held as, unheeding the presence of their friends, they went into each other's arms in a coalescence as inevitable and as final as Fate itself.