Much to my indignation, she refused to attend the demonstration. As an excuse, she said it had just dawned on her mind that Henry's discovery was incredulous, and it would be dreadfully humiliating to her if he failed to establish interstellar communication.
"It's such a crazy thing, anyway," she said. "No one ever has succeeded in doing it, and I think Uncle Henry is just plumb crazy. It's idiotic; it simply can't be done. There's a queer streak in him. Look how he treated poor Mr. McGinity."
At the mention of the reporter's name, her nerves gave way, and tears began to flow. Then I realized that her explanation about the incredulity of Henry's feat had nothing to support it but her own word. Her tears were the direct proof that she was refusing to go because she had to sit formally with Jane and me, and Prince Matani, when she much preferred to be mixed up in the excitement with McGinity.
I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I took her firmly by the arm, and conducted her downstairs; and after she had made a mysterious telephone call, we were soon on our way to the city. Then something else disconcerting happened at the entrance to the auditorium. McGinity met us there, as though by accident. It looked to me as if he had been tipped off by telephone in advance of our—or Pat's—arrival. Pat seemed so excited and thrilled, I fancied I could hear her heart going at the rate of a million beats a minute.
We occupied seats in the front row, where the Prince, with a terrible black eye, joined us, about five minutes after we had arrived. I noticed him glaring in the direction of McGinity, who sat at the head of the press table, with about fifty other reporters. Occasionally McGinity would glance up from his work, and exchange smiles with Pat, when the Prince wasn't looking. So the only delight she got out of seeing him there had to be a secret one. No more than a furtive glance, or smile, whenever it could be managed with discretion.
Jane's nerves were jumpy. Careful inventory of the invited guests, who taxed the capacity of the auditorium, and the crowd I had glimpsed outside the building as we came in, convinced me that everyone was sitting, or standing, on needles and pins. My nose and ears have a habit of twitching whenever I am under a tense, nervous strain, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that persons back of me, in the audience, were watching my ears wiggling. My nose kept twitching and jumping like a Mexican bean.
I tried to distract my thoughts and ease my anxiety by studying the mechanical equipment on the stage. I couldn't have explained what they were if some one had pointed a shot-gun in my face. Radio has always been a great mystery to me. I can never seem to get it into my brain that radio waves can travel 186,000 miles a second. As for bridging the sidereal abyss, as Henry calls it, between the earth and Mars, I was stumped.
When Henry and Olinski finally stepped on to the stage, and my wiggling ears rang with the tumult of thunderous applause, my first horrifying thought was that my brother had gone mad, and that Olinski had gone crazy with him. Pat's words of warning came back to me: "It's idiotic! It simply can't be done!" The voice of wisdom often comes from unexpected sources.
Henry looked scared, but he showed no nervous hesitancy in his introductory remarks, after being formally presented to the audience by Mr. Scoville, who acted as host. It was just nine-thirty when he took his place before the microphone. The signaling and messages from Mars were due to arrive at ten; they had never failed to come through at that hour, during all the preliminary experiments, extending over a period of three weeks.
"My dear friends," he began, in his modest, shrinking way, "I feel privileged to be here tonight, to tell and show you something of interest in connection with the research studies on static, recently made by my co-worker, Mr. Serge Olinski, and myself.