CHAPTER XXV.
A MESSAGE FROM MARS.
IN order to adequately explain the origin of the peremptory recall which, although of course he obeyed it without question, seemed so incomprehensible to Alan, it will be necessary to go back to the night of the 12th of May.
While all Aeria was rejoicing over the return of the exiles and their restoration to the rights of citizenship, there was one of the inhabitants of the Valley who took little or no part in the festivities. This was Vassilis Cosmo, a man of between forty-six and forty-seven, and elder brother of the George Cosmo who had been chief engineer of the Narwhal, and was now first officer of the Avenger.
A striking distinction of personality and temperament had, ever since he had reached a thinking age, marked him as one apart from the rest of his fellow-countrymen.
He had little or none of the gaiety of disposition and social cordiality that were the salient characteristics of the Aerians as a people. He was serious almost to taciturnity, solitary and studious, and wholly engrossed in a single pursuit—the study of astronomy in its bearing on the great problem of interplanetary communication.
After twenty years of constant labour, assisted by all the knowledge and inventive progress which had placed the Aerians so far ahead of the rest of the world, he had at length solved this problem and realised the dream of ages six years before Olga Romanoff had dropped her defiance from the skies.
As yet, however, his success had been confined to one planet, and this, as will have been learnt from the conversation between Alma and Isma on that memorable night on which Alan’s letter had been received from the island, was the planet Mars.