Jones left us and came back with some food. Upon his arm he carried a stranger’s uniform, which he handed to me.

“You cannot wear those robes,” he said. “Take this. It should fit you; it belonged to one of our recruits who was ascribed last week and has not yet returned it to the Wool Stores.”

I was glad to see the last of the priest’s robes. He carried them away, promising to return for us in an hour. Elizabeth made us eat, but we had little heart to do so. At her insistence, however, we made the best display of appetite that was possible.

The room was only faintly illumined by the reflected solar light that issued up the elevator shaft. With it there mounted the sound of the voices of the airscouts in their barracks below. Sometimes the elevator rushed by, arousing a thrill of fear in each of us.

David drew me toward him and began speaking softly.

“You know nothing of Paul,” he said. “His name is Paul Llewellyn—for we observe Sanson’s laws no longer. He was to have mated Elizabeth.”

“Married?”

“Yes, married, before the Cold Solstice. His grandfather was my father’s steward at Dolgelly. Our families remained in touch through all the civil turmoil, and he is the last of his, as Elizabeth is the last of mine. He was given the name Paul, the father retaining the family name, which was to alternate in each generation, as is the custom nowadays. That law of Sanson’s must be one of the first to go. It aimed, of course, to destroy the vestiges of the family that remained.

“Paul was a Grade 1 defective, and we felt sure that Elizabeth would come under the same classification, so that they would be free to mate. They were waiting for the lists to be published, but Elizabeth had not been ascribed when the last list went up, and meanwhile Paul was sent to the defectives’ shops. Arnold, did you ever hear of the doctrine called Apostolic Succession?”

“Of course, David.”

“That the functions of the priesthood are transmitted by the laying on of hands? The English Church possessed the tradition, and it has never been lost, though most of our people attach, I am afraid, some magical idea to the ancient rite. Our bishop is a poor, illiterate old man, a machinist by trade, but Bonham laid his hands on him before he was burned in Westminster Hall. Bishop Alfred was to have blessed the union. A week before Fruit Equinox, Paul was taken in the bishop’s home by Sanson’s spies. Both were condemned to life imprisonment in the defectives’ shops as Christians. Both escaped among the last batch of fugitives. Elizabeth hopes to meet Paul tonight.”

“And I hope so, with all my heart,” I answered.

The cage stopped at the door and Jones came in.

“We can go now. The last of the scoutplanes has gone,” he said.

We went up to the roof. Deep night was over and about us. The phosphorescent fronts of the glow-painted buildings gave London the aspect of long lines of parallel and intersecting palisades of ghostly light; but the glow paint illumined nothing, and the deep canyons of the streets were of velvety blackness. The white circle of the fortress wall surrounded us. Outside the region of the glow, London was an indistinguishable blurred shadow, save where the searchlights from the departing scoutplanes illumined it. They hovered in a long line above the city, their position only discernible from the white searchrays that emanated from them as they swept the city below. Slowly they made their way into the southern distance.

I groped for reality in this succession of bewildering scenes, and hardly found it. Rain began to fall, spattering on the crystal walls of the adjacent gardens, in which the flickering colored lights still twinkled. My face was wet with it. I was thinking of the old days, when life was free: Sir Spofforth’s rain-swept garden, the scent of Esther’s tea-roses, and the hum of the ungainly, noisy town of Croydon that last evening. I saw Esther’s face vividly upon the velvet screen of the night.

Elizabeth’s hand stole into mine.

“You are our hope, Arnold. You can inspire us to victory,” she whispered.

Jones had gotten the scoutplane ready, and the vessel now rested on the flat roof, as a bird on its perching place. It was a little craft, even smaller than my memory of it had been, and it carried no Ray shield to betray its presence. Jones drew David aside and held a whispered colloquy with him.

“We are about ready,” he said, as they came back to us. “I’ve shifted the searchlight to the rear socket to balance the extra weight. She’ll carry us. I’ll have time to take you to your destination and report for scout duty when Hancock comes the round. But if I fly with the searchlight showing, any of the planes may signal me to stop—”

He rubbed his chin, and the old irresolution came upon his face.

“If I fly dark it’s a leather vat offense,” he added. “And the battleplanes would fire on us.”

He paused and rubbed his chin again.

“I’ll fly dark,” he said, and so settled the matter firmly in his own mind. And, his mind thus made up, I knew nothing would change it.

There was some difficulty in disposing of us. Finally Jones placed us three in the double seat, Elizabeth in the center and David and I on either side of her. He himself squatted upon the chassis before us, the wheel in his hands. He touched the starting lever with his right foot, and the craft rose heavily into the air, straining beneath her burden. In spite of the counterbalance of the searchlight behind, the nose of the plane dipped constantly, so that our flight was a succession of abrupt ascents and declinations.

It was freezing cold up in the air. Gradually we ascended, till I felt the fresh wind from the Thames estuary beat on my face. Presently the south was cleft by flaming serpents, with eyes of fire.

“The food airvans from France,” said David, pointing.

Now we soared over the outlying factories and warehouses. A huge, glow-painted building sprang into view out of the shadows below.

“The defectives’ workshops for this district,” David continued. “Yonder is the Council’s art factory.”

The darkness in front of us began to be studded with long parallelograms of dazzling glow, set at wide intervals, each capped with the conical Ray guns. From these, extending fanwise toward the ground, appearing pink in contrast with the glow’s intensely purple white, the searchlights wavered.

Jones halted the scoutplane. “The battleplanes,” he said, pointing. “They are posted nightly around London now. You know the reason, David?”

David started and placed his hand in inquiry upon the airscout’s shoulder. Jones’s voice sank to a whisper.

“It is the merest rumor among our men,” he said. “One reads it in their faces rather than hears it spoken, for we are afraid of one another. One can be sure that Sanson has his spies among us. But the scoutplanes are sufficient to patrol London and detect fugitives, and if the battleplanes are sent out there is hope the rumor may be true. If the Tsar has broken out from Tula—”

“Thank God!” said David in a tense whisper.

“He will overrun Skandogermania in a week, for it is as disaffected as Britain. The airscouts there will go over to him. There is no force to stop him, except our planes and the Guard.”

I saw the joy on David’s face. Could barbarous Russia indeed bring freedom to the Western World?

“It is only a rumor,” continued Jones. “A rumor, you understand, David, backed by the presence of the battleplane squadron around the city nightly, words let fall in the People’s House, retailed by gossiping servants, the sudden summons last night of Air-Admiral Hancock—”

“But the Russians have been slaughtered in thousands!” I exclaimed. “I saw the picture upon the screen.”

Jones laughed and David smiled.

“Those pictures are for the people,” said the airscout. “They were taken by night inside the fortress here. The Guard dressed for the part.”

“Still, how could the Russians win without the Ray?” asked David doubtfully.

“I can answer that,” I said. “All history shows that no weapon is strong enough to conquer men who are ready to die for a right idea against an evil one. Ideas are stronger than the deadliest arm man has contrived. That has always been so and always will be so.”

Again Elizabeth’s hand crept into mine. “You must tell our people that, Arnold,” she said. “You know the secret of stirring them.”

“But Hancock will stand by Lembken?” inquired David.

“Yap, and will hold at least a quarter of our men to him,” said Jones. “He will serve Lembken through Sanson, so long as Sanson remains loyal. If Sanson turns against Lembken to seize the supreme power, Hancock will fight him to the death. Sanson sent the Air-Admiral’s son to the Rest Cure as a moron, years ago, when Hancock was unknown. Sanson doesn’t remember it, but Hancock remembers.”

I shuddered. “Why, then, is not Hancock with us?” I asked.

“There are traditions of loyalty in his family,” answered Jones. “Hancock is queer. Now we go up. Hold fast.”

The scoutplane creaked and rocked and plunged like a ship in a gale as, foot by foot, he jerked her head into the higher air. The gleaming glow parallelograms of the battleplanes seemed to shoot downward as we soared above them. We had passed them when, like some black air monster, a large, dark plane glided beneath us. I felt our scoutplane thrill as she shot upward, so suddenly that she rose almost to the perpendicular, jerking us back against the uprights.

Jones was straining madly at the wheel, and I realized that the dark plane was in pursuit of us. I saw her swoop out of the night, missing us by a yard. She disappeared. I heard the divided air hiss as she approached again, and the next instant the blinding searchlight enveloped us, and a voice hailed us, piping thin through the frosty night. Then the light was astern, and groping impotently beneath us as we rose to a higher level. Jones strained at the vertical rudder, pushing the plane’s nose up and still upward, battling like a weather-beaten bird against the wind.

Again the searchlight found us, and then, out of the heart of it, turning the keen white glare to a baby pink that fringed it, there hissed a light ten times more brilliant, snapping and crackling, into the void. Jones veered, still mounting. The dazzling light flared out again. The upright that I held snapped in my hand. I slipped in my seat, but David reached out and held me.

Once more the Ray flash came, but under us. The darkness and our pilot’s courage had saved us. The searchlight groped far underneath. Our scoutplane dipped, soared, dipped, caught the wind, and we volplaned at furious speed for miles down a gradient of cushiony air.

I felt Elizabeth tremble, and placed my arms around her to hold her. Jones stayed the plane and clapped his numbed hands together, whistling through his teeth. He jerked his head around. The moon was beginning to rise; it was a little lighter, and I saw that his face was dripping wet.

“A thread of an escape!” he said. “If she had struck us fair with the Ray we’d have buckled up like paper. Snapped one upright, didn’t it?”

There was a cut of two inches in the steel—a clean cut, and the edges fused as if from fire.

“That was Hancock’s dispatchplane,” said Jones. “He carries no light. But—the voice didn’t sound like Hancock’s.”

“Are we safe now?” asked David, looking back to where the shrunken figures of the battleplanes were ranged behind us on the horizon.

“Safe long ago,” said Jones. “But it was touch-and-go while I was trying to top that southeaster. He lost us at the summit, though, and he couldn’t have caught us on that down-grade.”

We started again, traveling more slowly, at a lower altitude, and planing downward until I heard the wind in the tree boughs and saw the glistening snow beneath. We brushed the top-most twigs. The scoutplane flitted backward and forward, seeking the old road.

“I ought to know it in the dark,” said Jones. “I don’t want to turn on the searchlight if I can help it.”

To and fro we went like a fluttering bird, until the cleft of the road appeared among the trees. Then we dropped softly to the ground. I was almost too cramped and cold to move. With difficulty I descended and helped Elizabeth out. David followed, and we three stood chafing our hands and stamping until the circulation was restored.

Jones leaned forward from the airplane. “I’ll run her into the trees in case anyone comes along and sees her,” he said.

“We shall not see you until—?” asked David.

“I’m not going back,” answered the airscout. “Not after this night’s work. You’ll see me in ten minutes.”

“You are going to join us?” inquired David, joyfully. “Is it—do you mean Hancock knew you?”

“No. That wasn’t Hancock, either. I know who it was—at least, I think I know. No, I’ve had enough of the Twin Bosses, after Elizabeth’s adventures. Put me down as the first airscout who went over.”

David grasped him by the hand and shook it warmly. Jones whistled again, drew back, and the scoutplane rose to the tops of the trees, beat about, and vanished.

David turned to me. “Arnold, are you prepared for a great and stunning revelation?” he asked.

“Yes, he is prepared,” answered Elizabeth for me.

We set off through the trees along a small, well-worn trail, until the crumbling bricks beneath us heaped themselves into a mound, and I saw the ruined foundations of the Institute before me, and the hole in the cellar roof. A sentinel leaped out at us.

“For man?” he asked, leveling a Ray rod.

“And freedom,” answered David.

The sentinel called, and in a moment a crowd came rushing up a short ladder, wild-looking men with beards and hanging hair, all dressed in tatters and rags, a woman or two, and a youth who ran forward with a cry and caught Elizabeth in his arms. I saw the happiness they shared.

David led me to a tall old man with bowed shoulders and a ragged white beard that spread fanwise across his breast. His hands were seared and twisted like those of one who has lived years of hardest toil, and the staff on which he leaned had a crooked handle.

“Bishop Alfred,” he said, “this is the Messiah who was to come.”