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My heart yearned for the moment when, gazing into the depths of Zarlah's wondrous eyes, I should see there not the appealing timid look, full of the dread of hopeless separation from her lover, that had so wrung my heart at our last parting but the radiant happiness of perfect contentment and fulfilled desire.
Reaching the stream, I stumbled over an entanglement of vines and plunged headlong therein, only to scramble, dripping and bruised, up the opposite bank and continue my frantic efforts to reach the aerenoid, before Zarlah's car had disappeared from sight.
Rising high enough to avoid small aerenoids, I proceeded at a considerable speed and soon came within sight of Zarlah's dwelling. The serene and peaceful appearance of this beautiful white marble villa, as the morning sun glorified it, quickly dispelled the fears that had brought me hither at such an early hour, and I gladly attributed them to overwrought nerves and the loss of a night's sleep.
It was Zarlah's voice, and some terrible danger confronted her. Rushing into the adjoining room, I glanced anxiously about all was still. The numerous books and instruments lay just as I had left them, and I gradually realized that, tired with the experiences I had lately undergone, I had unconsciously fallen asleep, and Zarlah's cry for help was only a dream.
Seeing a merry party in a large open aerenoid, and knowing them to be Zarlah's friends, I would have escorted her to them, but in a low tone she earnestly besought me to lose no time in reaching the observatory.
Beyond, all was black, and as this sharp-cut boundary line rapidly approached Zarlah's car, my blood froze in my veins, for in this vast area of bare black rock I recognized the terrible power of the North Repelling Pole. There was another moment in which my heart refused to beat, then a groan of great anguish escaped my lips, as Zarlah's car was hurled upwards into space with frightful velocity.
As this was the first trial of the instrument, Almos himself was unaware of the success that had crowned Zarlah's invention, though he had taken much interest in it, and had on several occasions given his advice during its construction.
Shutting my eyes I awaited death. For an instant it seemed to me that I heard Zarlah's voice call to me in clear accents, then came a terrific shock which hurled me to the far end of the aerenoid, amid a confusion of furniture, books, and instruments that had been torn from their fastenings.
Opening to its fullest extent the valve that controlled the exhaustion of air in the chamber beneath, the velocity of the car soon became terrific, and, rising still higher as I sped along, I caught sight of Zarlah's aerenoid proceeding in a northerly direction.
The truth of Zarlah's words flashed upon me, and with it a full realization of the terrible mistake I had made. In the eyes of Zarlah I was a Martian, her life-long friend, Almos, and her anxiety for me to return to the observatory was the prompting of her Martian sense of duty her sole creed.
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