Читать книгу The Radio Planet - Roger Sherman Hoar - Страница 6

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The earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an omen.

“So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked.

“Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive the trip across the boiling seas.”

“Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen. No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are like the ants on my own planet Minos.”

Doggo’s reply astounded him.

“Do you remember back at Wautoosa, I told you that some of us lesser Formians had occasionally laid eggs? So now behold before you Doggo, Admiral of the Formian Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.”

This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they performed in their own country the duties assigned to men among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English.

When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom.

“Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person of some importance among the Formians.”

“It ought to,” the ant-man replied, “but as a matter of fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me. Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and for the Formians exclusively.”

“Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own difficulties.

But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then tore up all the correspondence. It is difficult to inculcate the thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an autocracy.

The earth-man, however, persisted.

“How many of the council can you count on, if the interests of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?”

“Only one—myself.”

And again Doggo tore up the correspondence.

Myles tactfully changed the subject.

“Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked.

“We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that you might be our lost leader, and that is why we landed and approached you.”

At about this point the conversation was interrupted by a worker ant who brought food: roast alta and green aphid milk. With what relish did the earth-man plunge into the feast, his first taste of Porovian delicacies in many months.

During the meal conversation lagged, owing to the difficulty of writing and eating at the same time. But now Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote:

“Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking on the planet Poros?”

“No,” the ant-man wrote in reply.

“Have you ever known me to be untrue to a principle, a cause, or a friend?”

“No,” Doggo replied.

“Then,” Myles wrote, “let us make your daughter queen in fact as well as in name.”

“It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he did not tear up the correspondence.

“Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason? Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look! I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?”

This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further correspondence.

“Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of the queen?”

The ant-man indicated that he could.

“If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued, “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.”

So the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had the pink light of Porovian evening faded from the western sky. The ceiling vapor-lamps were lit. The night showed velvet-black through the slit-like windows. And still the two old friends wrote on, Myles Standish Cabot, the Bostonian, and Doggo, No. 334-2-18, the only really humanlike ant-man whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant race of Poros.

Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators ceased their labors. All was arranged for the coup d’ etat.

They tore into shreds every scrap of used paper, leaving extant merely the ant-man’s concluding words: “Meanwhile you are my prisoner.”

Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered by a worker ant, whom he inaudibly directed to bring sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep which he had had in over forty earth hours.

It hardly seemed possible! Night before last he had slept peacefully on a conventional feather-bed in a little New England farmhouse. Then had come the S O S message from the skies; and here he was now, millions of miles away through space retiring on matted silver felting on the concrete floor of a Porovian ant-house. Such are the mutations of fortune!

With these thoughts the returned wanderer lapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When he awakened in the morning there was a guard posted at the door.

Doggo did not show up until nearly noon, when he rattled in, bristling with excitement.

Seizing the pad he wrote: “A stormy session of the Council of Twelve! We are all agreed that you must be indicted for high crimes and misdemeanors. But the great question is as to just what we can charge you with.”

“Sorry I can’t assist you,” the earth-man wrote. “How would it be if I were to slap your daughter’s face, or something? Or why not try me for general cussedness?”

“That is just what we finally decided to do,” the ant-man wrote in reply. “We shall try you on general principles, and let the proper accusation develop from the evidence.

“At some stage of the proceedings it will inevitably occur to some member of the council to suggest that you be charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king. This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis. If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.”

“I will waive anything,” Myles replied, “counsel, immunity, extradition, anything in order to speed up my return to Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.”

“All right,” Doggo wrote, and the conference was at an end. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles Cabot or the Prince Yuri over the new continent.