Interplanetary communication had become of latter years a possibility; science had invented and perfected the means. So far these vehicles had only been used for short trips to the outer edge of the atmosphere of Mercury—trips that were giving scientific men much valuable knowledge of atmospheric conditions, and which it was thought would ultimately enable them to counteract the storms and make the Fire Country habitable. No trips into space had been made.
Tao now came forward with the proposition to undertake a new world conquest—a conquest of Venus or the earth. These planets recently had been observed from the vehicles. This, he said, would solve the land question, which, after all, was more serious than the clipping of women's wings.
He found many followers—adventurers, principally, to whom the possibilities for untold personal gain in such a conquest appealed. Then abruptly the women took part. Dropping for the time their own fight, they opposed Tao vigorously. If Venus or the earth were inhabited, as it was thought they were, such an expedition would be a war against humanity. It would result in the needless destruction of human life.
In this controversy the government of the Light Country remained neutral. But the women finally won, and Tao and his followers, a number of them men of science, were all banished by the government, under pressure of popular sentiment, into the Twilight Country.
Here Tao's project fell upon fertile soil. The Twilight People had every reason to undertake such a conquest; and Tao became their leader in preparing for it. These preparations were known in the Light Country. The government made no effort to prevent them. It was, indeed, rather glad of the possibility of being rid of its disturbing neighbors.
Only the women were concerned, but they alone could do nothing, since by principle they were as much opposed to offensive warfare against the Twilight People as against the possible inhabitants of the earth. Miela paused at this point in her narrative. The thing was getting clearer to me now, but I could not reconcile this feeble attempt to conquer the earth which we were then fighting in Wyoming with the picture she drew. I said so.
"She hasn't come to that," Alan broke in. "You see, Bob, Tao, with about a hundred followers, was banished to the Twilight Country a couple of years ago. There was plenty of brains in the party, scientific men and such. They had only one vehicle, but they have been at work ever since building a lot of others.
"This expedition of Tao to Wyoming—with only about a hundred of the Twilight People with him—is not intended to be an offensive operation at all. He's only looking the situation over, finding out what they're up against. They decided before they started that the light‑ray would protect them from anything on earth, and they have only come to look around.
"Right now up there"—Alan leaned forward earnestly, and in the moonlight I could see the flush on his handsome face—"right now up there in the Twilight Country of Mercury they're working their damnedest over all kinds of preparations. This Wyoming business this summer does not mean a thing Tao will quit it any minute. You'll see. Some morning we'll wake up and find them gone. Probably they'll destroy their apparatus, and not bother to take it back.
"And then, in a year or two, they'll be here again. Not one vehicle next time, but a hundred. They'll land all over the earth at once, not on a desert—Tao probably only picked that this time to avoid complications—but in our big cities, New York, Paris, London, all of them at once. That's what we've got to face.