Powart grasped the thought with his usual instant decision. "I understand. You are right, too. I had not thought of it before." A slight pause. "You fear that you may come to tire of me; is that it?"
She nodded emphatically. "If you had asked me a few years ago, before you had reached the top—it would have been different."
He remained standing, frowning hard. Presently he glanced at his watch, and said he would have to be going.
"I will see what can be done about it," he stated. "I have a plan which should get results."
"Are you going to take up a hobby?" eagerly.
"Not a new one; but a hobby I have always had." And with this enigmatic reply he was off.
Van Emmon kept track of his further movements, and reported everything to the other three. Powart had not been in flight long before he sent off a wireless despatch, to which he received a most extraordinary reply. It was from the expedition which he had sent to Alma a week before:
People of Alma give us warm welcome. Invite us to stay. We propose to do so. The planet infinitely preferable to either Hafen or Holl. Accept our resignations or not, as you please, and be damned to you!
Powart made no comment upon this, which he read in privacy after carefully decoding it. Van Emmon had no idea what he was thinking, of course, but wondered mightily how the chairman was going to deal with the situation. He could scarcely read that aerogram to the commission. For some time he paced the cabin of his yacht, and at the end he behaved like a man whose mind had been pretty strongly made up.
The commission met, it seems, in a central part of Hafen. Powart reached the place some hours after leaving Mona. He arrived to find the other nine members waiting for him; and without the least delay he took his place at the head of the table.