"What," almost yelled Hilary, "you mean—"
"That your ship is resting comfortably outside on the terrace. When little Wat here caught your message in the communication disk, we were busy organizing companies of Earthmen in the hills back of Suffern. As recruits poured in, we'd tell them off in hundreds, appoint officers, see that they had arms, or gave them directions where to find the old caches, and hustled them off. Had to shift our quarters continually, because Mercutian fliers would pick us up with their search-beams, and start raying. Had some close shaves. But when we heard you were caught, we turned over the command to the nearest new officer, hurried to the gorge, and here we are. The Vagabond handled beautifully."
"I could take her myself to the Moon," Wat boasted.
"Hadn't we better be going?" Joan asked anxiously.
"There is work first to be done," Hilary, answered grimly. "There's a certain weather machine in the laboratory I want to take a look at."
"Weather machine?" Grim echoed, puzzled.
"Yes. The Viceroy let something slip about it. For some reason it's very important to them that it continues to function. I'm curious."
A gasp from Joan. Surprised, the men turned to her.
"Of course," she said breathlessly. "Father had been working on it for the longest time. It was a machine to control weather. Something to do with broadcasting tremendously high voltages, ionizing the air and causing rain clouds to form or reversing the process and scattering clouds back into thin air. This was the Master Machine. All over the Earth, at spaced distances, were smaller replicas, substations, controlled from this one. He had great hopes of furnishing equable weather to all the Earth. It was just completed, when...." She trailed off.