"And I'm going too!" A woman's voice, soft and a little husky, spoke beside them. Recognizing it, Bill turned to see Paula Trainor standing behind them, an eager smile on her elfinly beautiful face. Her amazing eyes were fixed upon the Prince, their brown depths filled, for the moment, with passionate wistful yearning.
"Why, no, Paula," the Prince said. "It's dangerous!"
Tears swam mistily in the golden orbs. "I will go! I must! I must!" The girl cried out the words, a sobbing catch in her voice.
"Very well, then," the Prince agreed, smiling absently. "You father will be along of course. But anything will be likely to happen."
"But you will be there in danger, too!" cried the girl.
"We start in an hour," said the Prince. "Smith, you may take Brand and Windsor back aboard the Red Rover."
"Curse his fatherly indifference!" Bill muttered under his breath as they walked out through the guarded door. "Can't he see that she loves him?"
Smith must have heard him, for he turned to him, spoke confidentially. "The Prince is a determined misogynist. I think an unfortunate love affair was what ruined his life—back on the earth. He left his history, even his name, behind him. I think a woman was the trouble. He won't look at a woman now."
They were outside again, startled anew by the amazing scene of a street of houses and gardens, that curved evenly up on either side of them and met above, so that men were moving about, head downward directly above them.
The heliocar was waiting. The three got aboard, were lifted and swiftly carried to the slender silver cylinder of the Red Rover, where it hung among the ponderous machinery of the air-lock, on the end of the huge cylinder that housed the amazing City of Space.