DuQuesne had retired, cold and reticent as usual. After making sure that he had overlooked nothing, he put on the leather suit he had worn when he left Earth. He unlocked a cubby, taking therefrom a Kondalian parachute. Then, making sure every foot of the way that he was not observed, he made his way to the airlock and entered it.
Thus, when the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, he was ready. Smiling sardonically, he opened the outer valve and stepped out into ten thousand feet of air. “The neutral color of his parachute was lost in the twilight a few seconds after he left the vessel.
The course computed, Seaton set the bar and the Skylark tore through the air. When about half the ground had been covered Seaton spoke suddenly.
“Forgot about DuQuesne, Mart. We’d better lock him in, don’t you think? Then we’ll have to decide whether we want to put him in the jail-house or turn him loose.”
“I’ll see to it,” Crane said.
He returned immediately with the news.
“Hmmm. He must have picked up a Kondalian parachute. You can’t quite put one in your pocket, but pretty near. But I can’t say I’m sorry he got away. . . . Anyway, we can get him any time we want him, because that compass is still looking right at him.”
“I think he earned his liberty,” Dorothy declared.
“He deserves to be shot,” Margaret said, “but I’m glad he’s gone. He gives me the cold, creeping shivers.”
At the end of the calculated time they saw the lights of a large city beneath them; and Crane’s fingers tightened upon Seaton’s arm as he pointed downward. There were the landing-lights of Crane Field—seven searchlights throwing their mighty beams upward into the night.
“Nine weeks, Dick,” he said unsteadily, “and Shiro would have kept them burning for nine years if necessary.”
The Skylark dropped easily to the ground and the wanderers leaped out, to be greeted by the half-hysterical Japanese. Shiro’s ready vocabulary of peculiar but sonorous words failed him completely and he bent himself double in a bow, his face one beaming smile. Crane, with one arm around his wife, seized Shiro’s hand and wrung it in silence.
Seaton swept Dorothy off her feet and their arms tightened around each other.
THE END