As he plodded along, day after day, he did a great deal of thinking. Most of it was useless recrimination: “Why wasn’t I a bit quicker on the draw, that fatal morning in the stadium? Why did I ever leave Lilla alone at Lake Luno, even at the behest of her father, the king? Was I not influenced by my conceited desire to pose as a popular hero on the anniversary of the beginning of my great victory over Formia, and by my wish to star as a pistol shot, rather than by deference to the king?”
And so on. And so on.
Then, too, he worried a great deal about the safety of Lilla, and their little son. And about the progress of the civil war. Not daring to approach any towns, he was completely cut off from all knowledge of current events. The only clues he had were the fact that he met no Cupians stirring abroad, that the roads were constantly patrolled by ants in kerkools, and that airplanes scoured the sky.
This might mean any one of several things. For instance, it might mean that the insurrection had crumbled, and that the last survivors were being run down. Or perhaps the ant men were trying to prevent reenforcements from joining an already augmented Cupian army in the Okarze Mountains. Or perhaps it might even be that they were scouting against an impending advance of overwhelming forces from the Cupian strongholds. But whatever it meant, Cabot was resolved to reach Lake Luno, and find out what had happened to Lilla, and little Kew.
Finally, one day, he espied through the woods the tower of one of the radio relay-stations which formed a part of the network of wireless communication which he had installed throughout the kingdom.
As Minister of Play in the cabinet of King Kew XII, Myles had introduced radio broadcasting, and thus had given to the Cupians the benefit of music, which heretofore their lack of ears had denied them, but which he had been able to translate into their antenna-sense.
One of the stations of his broadcasting system now loomed before him. There was more than an even chance that it was an automatic station, and that the attendant would be absent. Although a trip to this tower would take Cabot a bit out of his way, yet it might enable him to listen in on the news of the day, and thus find out how his loved ones fared, and how the revolution was progressing. So thither he turned his weary steps.
The aerial loomed above the tree-tops about a stad away to the right of the road. Thick woods intervened. The trees were mostly of that typical Porovian variety which resembles a greatly enlarged form of that red-knobbed many-branched gray lichen which is so commonly found growing on rocks and tree-stumps on the earth. There was a heavy underbrush of ferns and small conifera. Gayly colored plants, of the sort which grace the fields and gardens of Poros, were conspicuously absent; but there was no lack of tropical vines and gray moss. Here and there flitted four-winged snakes, but in numbers merely sufficient to be a nuisance, not a menace.
Through all this tangle, Myles Cabot had to plow his way for at least one whole stad, in order to reach the relay-station. And to add to his discomfiture, the sky began to darken. This portended one of those torrential Porovian thunderstorms, the like of which is never experienced on earth.
Well, there was one thing to be thankful for: the relay-station would furnish a shelter from the storm, if he could but reach it in time.