"You might even have to work," I ventured.
The Countess bestowed on me one of her most bewitching smiles. "My dear Herr Chemist," she said in sugary tones, "you with your intellectual genius can twit us on our psychic lacks and we must fall back on the divine blood of our Great Ancestor--but would you really wish the slaves of dull toil to think it as human as their own?"
"But to me it seems a little gross," I said.
"Not at all; on the contrary, it is a master stroke of science and efficiency--inferior creatures must worship; they always have and always will--then why waste the worship?"
~3~
My position as director of the protium works soon brought me into conference with Admiral von Kufner who was Chief of the Submarine Staff. Von Kufner was in his forties and his manner indicated greater talent for pomp and ceremony than for administrative work. His grandfather had been the engineer to whose genius Berlin owed her salvation through the construction of the submarine tunnel. By this service the engineer had won the coveted "von," a princely fortune and a wife of the Royal Level. The Admiral therefore carried Hohenzollern blood in his veins, which, together with his ample fortune and a distinguished position, made him a man of both social and official consequence.
It did not take me long to decide that von Kufner was hopeless as a prospective convert to revolutionary doctrines. Nor did he possess any great knowledge of the protium mines, for he had never visited them. Inheriting his position as an honour to his grandfather's genius, he commanded the undersea vessels from the security of an office on the Royal Level, for journeys in ice-filled waters were entirely too dangerous to appeal to one who loved so well the pleasures and vanities of life.
I had explained to von Kufner the distinctions I had discovered in the various samples of the ore brought from the mines and the necessity of having new surveys of the deposits made on the basis of these discoveries. After he had had time to digest this information, I suggested that I should myself go to make this survey. But this idea the Admiral at once opposed, insisting that the trip through the Arctic ice fields was entirely too dangerous.
"Very well," I replied. "I feel that I could best serve Germany by going to the Arctic mines in person, but if you think that is unwise, will you not arrange for me to consult at once with men who have been in the mines and are familiar with conditions there?"
To this very reasonable request, which was in line with my obvious duties, no objection could be made and a conference was at once called of submarine captains and furloughed engineers who had been in the Arctic ore fields.