Next morning early he was up, rested, parched and ravenous. As the first faint pink tinged the eastern sky Myles Cabot shook off the leaves and completed the ascent.
It only required a few moments for him to reach the top, a narrow plateau, about a mile in length, near the farther end of which there stood a small cabin with its two towers and aerial.
With a cry of joy—which he knew the earless Formians could not hear—he raced toward it. The huge chain and lock, which secured its door on the outside, indicated that it was unoccupied, and a glance through the narrow slitlike windows confirmed this.
The glance through the window also revealed the presence of a complete radio sending and receiving set of the same general hook-up which he himself had adapted for the use of Cupians and Formians on the other continent.
“Imitation is the most insulting form of flattery,” as Poblath, the Cupian philosopher, used to say. Yet Cabot was willing to brook the insult, until suddenly it dawned on him that the set had no earphones nor microphone!
Of course not, since it was designed for use by creatures who possessed neither ears nor vocal speech! Gone then was all hope of news from home, even if he could succeed in breaking in. At the most, he would merely be able, by interposing an interrupter in the primary or secondary of that aerial circuit, to send a dot-dash message across the boiling seas—I use the term “aerial circuit,” because “antenna circuit” would be ambiguous, as the latter term might have either its conventional earth significance, or might mean the circuit in which the Formian operator would place his living antennae in sending and receiving.
Well, even a chance to send to Cupia a message to the effect that he was free and safe, would be worth something. Myles Cabot tried the slitlike windows, and finding them too narrow, slid quickly down the near-by slope, soon to return laboriously with a twenty-pound rock, which he heaved against the door.
Again and again he heaved the rock, until he had the satisfaction of seeing the door crack and then give. Finally a large enough opening was effected to afford passage for a man, although not for a Formian; and through this breach Myles Cabot squeezed into the station.
A few minutes’ scrutiny familiarized him with the details of the hook-up, the generator set, and the trophil-engine. Everything was in running order and the fuel tank was full. So he fashioned a rude sending key, broke one of the circuits and tied in the key. Then he warmed-up and cranked the trophil-engine, clutched-in the generator, threw the main switch, and sat down to flash across the seas the message which was to hold firm his partisans in Cupia until he could join them.
But at that instant an arrow hummed through the hole in the door, and struck quivering in the bench beside him.