“Lord!” he muttered. “Am I still asleep?”
“No,” smiled the dwarf, “you’re awake, Peter Van Dorn.” The misshapen creature did not seem unfriendly.
“Then where am I, and who are you?”
“You’re in one of the Zar’s rocket cars, speeding toward Dorn. We are but two of the Zar’s servants—Moon men.”
“Rocket car? Moon men?” Karl was aghast. He wanted to pinch himself. But a hollow roar to the rear told him he was in a rapidly moving vessel of some sort. Certainly, too, these dwarfs were not figments of his imagination.
“You’ve been kept completely ignorant?” asked the dwarf.
“It—it seems so.” Karl was bewildered. “You mean we are out in the open—traveling in space—to the Moon perhaps?”
The dwarf laughed. “No, I wish we were,” he replied. “But we are about halfway to the capital of the Continental Empire, greatest of world powers. We’ll be there in an hour.”
“But I don’t understand.”