This was the supreme test. Could Myles Cabot hear the reply? Adjusting his set to the extreme limit of its sensitivity, he waited, his hands on the wave-length dials.
Faintly but distinctly came the answer in the well-known voice of Yuri the usurper: “You have done well. Now I will hand the antenna-phones to the Princess Lilla, and I wish you to repeat to her what you have just told me, so that she may hear it with her own antennae and believe.”
A pause and then Cabot heard the ant-man stationed at the shack on the mountains near Yuriana recount the tale of Doggo’s abortive revolution and flight, of Cabot’s wrecking the radio set and disappearing, of the Formian alliance with Att the Terrible, of the fall of Sur, and of the attack on Vairkingi, ending with the words which he had already caught.
As he listened to this narration, the earth-man was rapidly making up his mind what to do, and, as soon as the ant-man signed off, Cabot cut in with: “Lilla, dearest, do not show any sign of surprise, but listen intently, as though the Formian were still speaking. This is your own Myles. I am sending from a station which I have only just completed after many sangths of intensive work.
“It is true that the Formians are now attacking our city but they cannot win. Sur fell because we were taken by surprise, but we were warned in time to defend Vairkingi. Already I, myself, have driven off one plane and killed three Formians.
“As yet I have been unable to secure an airship, or I should have flown back to you. Please get in touch with Toron, or some other of my friends, and persuade them to fly across the boiling seas and bring me back.
“Yuri has made it twice, and ‘what man has done, that can man do.’ Now I am about to finish. When I sign off, please request Yuri for permission to talk to the Formian at Yuriana, to ask him some questions. Then tell me as much as you can of yourself, our baby, and the situation in Cupia, before Yuri shuts you off. I have spoken, dearest.”
And Myles stood by to receive.
With what a thrill did he hear his own Lilla’s voice answer: “Oh, Formian, I have Prince Yuri’s permission to speak to you. You may answer what I ask you, and reply to what I tell you, but he himself will receive, lest I hear something which I ought not. This leads me to believe that affairs are not so bad with Cabot as you report.”
“She is doing fine,” Myles remarked to himself, admiringly. “So far, Yuri will not suspect that she is talking to me.”