After a while she inquired, “Why the rush with the radio set, when Vairkingi is in peril?”
Myles replied, “Our only hope now is to get Cupia on the air, and persuade my followers there to send across the boiling seas enough aerial wagons to defeat the beasts of the south, or ‘Formians,’ as we call them.”
“And will you talk with your Lilla?” she asked innocently.
“Yes, if the Builder wills,” he eagerly and reverently replied.
To his surprise, Quivven jumped to her feet with flashing eyes, and, seizing a small iron anvil from the workbench, she held it over the precious pile of platinum elements.
“And if I drop this anvil, you will not talk to her. Is not that so?”
Myles, horrified, sat rooted to his seat, unable to move.
XVII
THE BATTLE FOR VAIRKINGI
But the flaming Quivven did not drop the anvil on the precious tube elements. Instead she flung it from her to the floor and sank limply into her seat, her golden head on her arms on the workbench.
“I couldn’t do it,” she moaned between sobs, “for I too know what it is to love. Talk to her, Myles, and I will help you.”