Saying no more, he withdrew to his own cabin, wrapped the Myzab and the Stone in the blanket and laid them carefully under his berth. Opening his desk-drawer, he assured himself the Pearl Star was still there. This done, he turned again to the map, carefully studied the location of the point Rrisa had designated, and—going to the pilot-house—gave directions for a new course to "Captain Alden," now at the wheel.
This course, he calculated by allowing for wind and lateral drift, would carry Nissr directly toward the site of the still half-mythical Iron Mountains and the Bara Jannati Shahr.
He now returned to his cabin, locked himself in and—pondering over a few khat leaves—passed the remainder of the afternoon sunk in deep abstraction.
Evening and night still found him in profound thought, while the giant air-liner steadily rushed into the south-east, bearing him and the Legion onward toward dim regions now veiled in purple darkness under strange stars.
At nine o'clock he ordered Nissr stopped, and had the body of Dr. Lombardo sent down with six men in the nacelle, for burial. No purpose could be served by keeping the body, and all unnecessary complications had to be dispensed with before the morrow. Lombardo, who had fully atoned for his fault by having given his life in the service of the now depleted Legion, was buried in his service-uniform, in a fairly deep grave on which the Legionaries heaped a great tumulus of sand. The only witnesses were the Arabian Desert stars; the only requiem the droning of the helicopters far above, where Nissr hung with her gleaming lights like other, nearer stars in the dense black sky.
By ten o'clock, the air-liner had resumed her course, leaving still another brave man to his last sleep, alone. The routine of travel settled down again on the ship and its crew of adventurers.
At half-past eleven, the Master issued from his cabin. All alone, and speaking with no man, he took a quarter-hour constitutional up and down the narrow gallery along the side of the fuselage—the gallery on which his cabin window opened. His face, by the vague light of the glows in this gallery, looked pale and worn; but a certain gleam of triumph and proud joy was visible in his dark eyes.
All about him, stretched night unbroken. Far behind, lay vast confusions involving hundreds of millions of human beings violently wrenched from their accustomed routines of faith and prayer, with potential effects beyond all calculation. Ahead lay—what?
"It may be glory and power, wealth past reckoning, incredible splendor," thought the Master, "and it may be ignominy, torture, death. 'Allah knows best and time will show.' But whatever it may be—is it completion? The human heart, alone—can that ever be complete in this world?"
He bent at the rail, gazing far out into the vague emptiness through which the air-liner was pushing.