As a prelude to Earth's surrender, Axelson demanded that World President Stark and a score of other dignitaries should depart for the Moon as hostages. Every ray fortress in the world was to be dismantled, every treasury was to send its gold to be piled up in a great pyramid on the New York landing-stage. The Earth was to acknowledge Axelson as its supreme master.
he iron claws were turning with a screwlike motion, extending themselves, and slowly raising the interplanetary vessel until she looked like a great metal fish with metal legs ending with suckerlike disks. But already she was floating free as the softly purring engines held her in equipoise. Nat climbed the short ladder that led to her deck. Brent came up to him again.
"That teleradio message from Axelson—" he began.
"Yes?" Nat snapped out.
"I don't believe it came from the Moon at all."
"You don't? You think it's somebody playing a hoax on Earth? You think that wiping out of China was just an Earth-joke?"
"No, Sir." Brent stood steady under his superior's sarcasm. "But I was chief teleradio operator at Greenwich before being promoted to the Province of America. And what they don't know at Greenwich they don't know anywhere."
Brent spoke with that self-assurance of the born cockney that even the centuries had failed to remove, though they had removed the cockney accent.