And that will be about all of Poros for the present. Let us now turn our attention to Myles Cabot on earth.
His life with us was very regular. From Monday until Friday of every week he attended Harvard. His week-ends he devoted to study and, with some slight assistance from myself and family and farmhands, to erecting the two huge steel towers on Cow Hill, and to installing his apparatus in a shack which we built at their base. This apparatus comprised a long-range long-wave-length sending and receiving set, and a matter-transmitting set.
Finally both were completed. One Sunday night in October, at the end of an unusually sultry day for that time of year, Cabot came down to supper full of suppressed excitement.
“I have nearly gotten Luno Castle on the air,” he announced, “but there is too much static to-night. Poor dear Lilla, she must be worried about me, for not a word have I sent her to let her know of my safe arrival. But I will get her tonight, if the static will only let up for a few minutes.”
“Why haven’t you used the G. E. set in Lynn?” I asked.
“I had thought of that,” Myles replied. “In fact I planned to do so, before I left Poros. But unfortunately they have recently dismantled their set, for the purpose of rebuilding it, and I could not very well ask them to hurry, without revealing my identity, which would never do, for that would get me so much publicity that my dear cousins would undoubtedly have me locked up in the asylum on the strength of my absurd belief that I have been on Venus. If they did that, then how could I ever get back to that planet again? My cousins would just as leave get hold of my property through a conservatorship, as by inheriting it. That lets Lynn out! But my set here is now complete, and is the equal of the G. E. installation; so I’ll talk to my princess tonight, if the static will only let up.”
He seemed very happy.
After the evening meal was over, he lit a lantern and started back to his laboratory. As we accompanied him to the door, he pointed to the evening sky.
“Late tonight, long after midnight,” said he, “there will appear above that horizon the star which holds all that is dear to me in this universe. My wife, my child, my people, and my home. Good night. Do not sit up for me. I may be very late.”