The guards, at a motion from the giant, pushed the prisoners inside of the laboratory. Toplinsky shot his eyes around the room for a second, and then bounded forward with energetic fury across the floor to where ten men were working as if death was just ahead of them.
With a light slap of his big hand he turned a man upside down, and rolled him across the floor.
“That for your ignorance,” he shrilled. “Have not I, the great Herman Toplinsky, repeatedly told you nitrogen is an inert element—that it does not care to unite with other elements, and that we must be very careful at the beginning if we want to live when we get to the moon? We cannot wait until we can grow vegetables. We must have nitrogen free for the atmosphere, and we must also have it fixed so that we can charge the new atmosphere with electric currents and cause it to rain on the face of the moon. Yes, I, the great Toplinsky, tell you all these things, and yet you attend to this apparatus slothfully—you do not complete the electric arc; you do not hook three hydrogen atoms to one of nitrogen. Ah, ha! Do I not tell you again, and again, that as condensed ammonia we shoot it easily into the moon, and that when it releases it becomes again hydrogen and nitrogen?”
He kicked the prostrate form of the unfortunate worker, who was an American aviator, and turned amiably to Joan and Epworth, all traces of anger disappearing. Epworth and his sister looked at each other in a puzzled way. Was the giant crazy? The idea of shooting hydrogen and nitrogen at the moon in small packages indicated that he was.
“My friends, it is so.” Toplinsky smiled amiably. He was pleased with the impression he was making. “I, the great Toplinsky, do more than shoot packages of NH₃ to the moon. I shoot everything I need, and soon—well, we shall see what we shall see. In the meantime——”
He bowed like a diplomat to Epworth. The young American caught the intent.
“Did I understand you to say that you objected so violently to my marrying this young maiden that you were ready to fight for her?”
Epworth shivered slightly. This was the biggest man he had ever seen—a man as strong as Samson. If he went into a fight with him it would be a very desperate affair. He glanced at Joan. She was looking at the giant with a loathing that she did not attempt to disguise, and she was his sister.
“Yes, I am ready to fight for my sister. She shall marry when she pleases, and the man she wants.”
Joan gave him a look of intense gratitude. She had great confidence in her brother’s fighting ability.