Most of the world laughed. It was charged that Bill was insane. It was charged that the Herald-Sun was attempting to expand its circulation by a baseless canard. Worse, it was charged that Bill, perhaps in complicity with the management of the great newspaper, was making the discovery of a new sort of creature in some far corner of the world the basis for a gigantic fraud, to secure that vast amount of vitalium.
Examination proved that the wrecks in the desert had been demolished by explosion instead of by falling. A court injunction was filed against the Herald-Sun to prevent collection of the subscriptions, and Bill might have been arrested, if he had not wisely retired to Trainor's Tower.
Finally, it was charged that the pirate, the Prince of Space, was at the bottom of it—possibly the charge was suggested by the fact that the chief object of the Prince's raids had always been vitalium. A rival paper asserted that the pirate must have captured Bill and sent him back to Earth with this fraud.
Public excitement became so great that the reward for the capture of the Prince of Space, dead or alive, was raised from ten to fifteen million eagles.
Twenty-four hours later after he had been landed on Trainor's Tower, Bill was waiting there again, with bright stars above him, and the carpet of fire that was New York spread in great squares beneath him. The slim silver ship came gliding down, and hung just beside the vitrolite dome while eager hands helped him through the air-lock. Beyond, he found the Prince waiting, with a question in his eyes.
"No luck," Bill grunted hopelessly. "Nobody believed it. And the town was getting too hot for me. Lucky I had a getaway."
The Prince smiled bitterly as the newspaperman told of his attempt to enlist the aid of humanity.
"About what I expected," he said. "Men will act like men. It might be better, in the history of the cosmos, to let the Martians have this old world. They might make something better of it. But I am going to give humanity a chance—if I can. Perhaps man will develop into something better, in a million years."
"Then there is still a chance—without the vitalium?" Bill asked eagerly.
"Not without vitalium. We have to go to Mars. We must have the metal to fit our flier for the trip. But I have needed vitalium before; when I could not buy it. I took it."