“I warned you. Why didn't you pull out north? The east-bound packets have.”
“Me? Not till I'm running a Polar consumptives' sanatorium boat. I was squinting through a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my son.”
“I'd be the last man to deny it,” the captain of the Mark Boat replies softly. “The way you handled her just now—I'm a pretty fair judge of traffic in a volt-hurry—it was a thousand revolutions beyond anything even I've ever seen.”
Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George on the c. p. winks and points to the portrait of a singularly attractive maiden pinned up on Tim's telescope bracket above the steering-wheel.
I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!
There is some talk overhead of “coming round to tea on Friday,” a brief report of the derelict's fate, and Tim volunteers as he descends: “For an A. B. C. man young Williams is less of a high-tension fool than some. Were you thinking of taking her on, George? Then I'll just have a look round that port-thrust seems to me it's a trifle warm—and we'll jog along.”
The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointed eyrie. Here she will stay a shutterless observatory; a life-boat station; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteorological bureau for three hundred miles in all directions, till Wednesday next when her relief slides across the stars to take her buffeted place. Her black hull, double conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent all that remains to the planet of that odd old word authority. She is responsible only to the Aerial Board of Control the A. B. C. of which Tim speaks so flippantly. But that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score of persons of both sexes, controls this planet. “Transportation is Civilisation,” our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we please so long as we do not interfere with the traffic AND ALL IT IMPLIES. Practically, the A. B. C. confirms or annuls all international arrangements and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders.
I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on the c. p. while George fans her along over the white blur of the Banks in beautiful upward curves of fifty miles each. The dip-dial translates them on the tape in flowing freehand.
Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which record “162's” path through the volt-flurry.
“I haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years,” he says ruefully.