"Time," growled Flick Muldoon, from the other end of the balcony, "he was getting back."
"Gary, you mean?" Dr. Boris Anjers, having placed his opponent destructively en prise, leaned back in his chair. "Have patience, my boy. These things take time, you know, and it is a difficult mission upon which our young friend has gone."
"It's all right for you and Doc Bryant. You've got a chess game to occupy your minds. Me, I got little pink and green meemies running up and down my corpuscles. I'm going to take a walk. Want to come along, Nora?"
Nora Powell said, "No, thanks, Flick. I'll wait here for him." Then, as the restless young cameraman stalked from the piazza and the two graybeards returned to their game, she wandered disconsolately to the far end of the balcony, for perhaps the dozenth time in the hour gazed out over the most heartbreaking beauty of the scene before and below her.
This eyrie from which she looked was a modest but charming pension in Geneva, a rustic famed for its beautiful surroundings and delightful old-world charm. To the south lay the valley of the Arve; beyond this the gray and barren rock of the Petit Salève rose like a wall, it, in turn, overtopped by the distant, imperial slopes of Mont Blanc. The sky was the bright and unbelievable blue of mountain country. From the vale below echoed the mellow lilt of a shepherd's yodeling.
Here, after hasty preparation, had the five comrades-in-adventure established residence until Gary Lane could convince the World Council, which gathered in this traditionally neutral nation, of the urgency of their demands ... and receive from this all-supreme body that terrestrial secret which was vital to the furtherment of their aims.[3]
Here had they cooled their heels for very nearly a fortnight while Gary wormed and forced and argued his way through hordes of underlings to finally reach the ear of those Councillors who alone could grant his request. Such an interview had finally been achieved, and today was the fateful appointment.
Alone, a few short hours ago, Lane had set forth to the Council Hall, laden with Muldoon's photographs, his own and Dr. Bryant's mathematical analyses, and all other documents necessary to prove his claims. Now his companions, placidly or nervously as their individual natures determined, awaited his return.
As to what sort of exhibition she herself was making, Nora Powell could not say. If she was not so openly impatient as Flick Muldoon, neither was she complacently attentive like the two older scientists. She was, she thought with sudden whimsy, much like one of those ancient volcanic peaks so gloriously sharp-limned on the horizon before her: surfacely cool, but inwardly and secretly aflame with constrained eruptive fires which might at any moment burst their bonds.