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Van Emmon stopped, unable to go on without blasphemy.
The doctor had got over the horror of what he had seen. "We want to be fair,
Van. Look at this matter from the bees' view-point for awhile. What were they
to do? They had to make sure, as far as possible, that their supremacy would
never be threatened again. Didn't they?"
"Oh, but damn it all!" cried Van Emmon. "There's a limit somewhere! Such
cruelty as that no one could conceive of it!"
"As for the bees," flared Billie, "I don't blame 'em! And unless I'm very much
mistaken, the ruling class ANYWHERE, here on the earth or wherever you
investigate, will go the limit to hold the reins, once they get them!"
The expression on Van Emmon's face was curious to see. There was no fear
there, only a puzzled astonishment. Strange as it may seem, Billie had told
him something that had never occurred to him before. And he recognized it as
truth, as soon as she had said it.
"Just a minute," remarked Smith in his ordinary voice; "just a minute. You're
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forgetting that we don't really know whether Rolla and Cunora are safe.
Everything depends upon them now, you know."
In silence the four went back into telepathic connection. Now, of course,
Smith and Van Emmon were practically without agents. The prisoners could tell
them nothing whatever except the tale of increasing agony as their torture
went on.
All that Van Emmon and Smith could do was lend the aid of their mentality to
the efforts of the other two, and for a while had to be content with what
Billie, through Supreme, and the doctor, through Rolla, were able to learn.
However, Kinney did suggest that one of the other two men get in touch with
Cunora.
"Good idea," said Smith. "Go to it, Van Emmon."
The geologist stirred uneasily, and avoided his wife's eyes. "I I'm afraid
not, Smith. Rather think I'd prefer to rest a while. You do it!"
Smith laughed and reddened. "Nothing doing for an old bach like me. Cunora
might well, you know go in bathing, for instance. It's all right for the
doctor, of course; but let me out!"
Meanwhile the two women on Sanus, taking the utmost care, managed to retreat
from the river bank without being discovered. Keeping their eyes very wide
open and their ears strained for the slightest buzz, the two contrived to pass
through the village, out into the fields, and thence, from cover to cover,
into the foothills on that side of the valley where their lovers had found the
pyrites.
"If only we knew which stream they ascended!" lamented Cunora, as they stood
in indecision before a fork in the river.
"But we don't!" Rolla pointed out philosophically. "We must trust to luck and
Mownoth, ye and I."
And despite all the effort the doctor could put forth to the contrary, the two
women picked out the wrong branch. They searched as diligently as two people
possibly could; but somehow the doctor knew, just because of the wrong choice
that had been made, that their search would be unsuccessful. He thought the
matter over for a few moments, and finally admitted to his three friends:
"I wonder if I haven't been a little silly? Why should I have been so precious
specific in impressing Rolla about the pyrites? Pshaw! Almost any hard rock
will strike sparks from flint!"
"Why, of course!" exploded Van Emmon. "Here let's get busy and tell Rolla!"
But it proved astonishingly difficult. The two women were in an extraordinary
condition now. They were continually on the alert. In fact, the word "alert"
scarcely described the state of mind, the keen, desperate watchfulness which
filled every one of their waking hours, and caused each to remain awake as
long as possible; so that they invariably fell to sleep without warning. They
could not be caught in the drowsy state!
For they knew something about the bees which the four on the earth did not
learn until Billie had overheard Supreme giving some orders.
"Set a guard on that river bank," she told her subordinate, "and maintain it
night and day. If any inferior attempts to recover the magic stone, deal with
him or her in the same manner in which we punished the finders of the deadly
flower."
"It shall be done, Supreme. Is there anything further?"
"Yes. Make quite sure that none of the inferiors are missing."
Shortly afterward the lieutenant reported that one of the huts was empty.
"Rolla, the soil-tester, and Cunora, the vineyardist, are gone."
"Seek them!" Supreme almost became excited. "They are the lovers of the men we
punished! They would not absent themselves unless they knew something! Find
them, and torture them into revealing the secret! We must weed out this
flowing blossom forever!"
"It shall be done!"
Such methods were well known to Rolla and Cunora. Had not their fellow
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villagers, many of them, tried time after time to escape from bondage? And had
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