"Exactly!" cried Fort, looking ahead and down, toward the chasm of the contact, then at his watch once more. "Exactly what I found out, Mona! There was no use telling them the truth; they wouldn't believe it! They were too well satisfied.
"And so, when I heard of Powart's scheme to bombard Alma, I saw a way to free the poor idiots on Holl! A way to release them from their bondage—OUR bonds, Mona—and defeat Powart's trickery, and win you—all at one move!"
The girl was plainly thrilled. Yet she kept her voice comparatively cool as she asked:
"So far, so good. But I don't see that you've done anything at all except to kidnap me."
He made an impatient gesture. "Look at the ground!" he ordered curtly; and Mona wonderingly obeyed.
They were nearly to the contact. This time, however, they were not flying down into the cleft, but over it. The curious, canonlike chasm where the two worlds touched was perhaps ten miles below them.
"Look closely!" shouted Fort excitedly. He was glancing at his watch again, and changing the angle of his wings. "By heavens, we are just in time!" The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course. "Look closely, I tell you! It's something you've never seen before, and will never see again!"
And Mona, staring down at the point where Hafen and Holl came together—the curious region of balanced gravitations, like nothing else anywhere in the universe—saw, as she passed over, something that made her senses whirl.
Hafen and Holl were no longer one!
The two globes were now a quarter of a mile apart, and the distance was steadily growing. Even as Mona watched the gap increased until almost a mile separated the two great worlds.