Seaton

“ Seaton retraced his steps up the beach. He had no notion where he was going, but habit led him back to his own verandah, where he remained, staring before him with wide unseeing eyes, until dawn.
The following day elicited nothing. Wade was adrift on the Coral Sea by now, that was all Seaton knew. He pictured him at the tiller, steering for deep water with his awful knowledge as sole company. The little scene became etched on Seaton's brain. He could not erase it. He could neither sleep nor eat for it. Yet what had he done? Everything, he told himself viciously. ”

“ The goddess of neglect brooded in secret.
“You ain't much of a gardener, Seaton,” I said, with a sigh of ease.
“I think, do you know, I like it best like this,” said Seaton. “We haven't any man now, of course. Can't afford it.” He stood staring at his little dark square of freshly-turned earth. “And it always seems to me,” he went on ruminatingly, “that, after all, we are nothing better than interlopers on the earth, disfiguring and staining wherever we go. ”

“ After a few days of impatient waiting and of eager anticipation, Seaton had settled down into the friendly and companionable routine of the flight. But inaction palled upon his vigorous nature and, physical outlet denied, he began to delve deeper and deeper into the almost-unknown, scarcely plumbed recesses of his new mind—a mind stored with the accumulated knowledge of thousands of generations of the Rovol and of the Drasnik; generations of specialists in research in two widely separated fields of knowledge. ”

“ Still the old face solemnly blinked at me in silence.
“You must find it very lonely, Miss Seaton, with Arthur away?”
“I was never lonely in my life,” she said sourly. “I don't look to flesh and blood for my company. When you've got to be my age, Mr. Smithers (which God forbid) , you'll find life a very different affair from what you seem to think it is now. You won't seek company then, I'll be bound. It's thrust on you.” Her face edged round into the clear green light, and her eyes groped, as it were, over my vacant, disconcerted face. ”

“ Seaton instantly threw off his headset and opened the power switch.
"Grab a stopwatch quick, Mart!" he called, as he leaped to the discarded vacuum suit and searched out the peculiar timepiece. They noted the exact time consumed by one complete revolution of one of the dials, and calculated rapidly.
"Better than I thought!" exclaimed Seaton. "That makes his year about four hundred ten of our days. That gives us eighty-two days before the torpedo gets there—longer than I'd dared hope. We've got to fight, too, not run. They figure on getting the Skylark, then volatilizing our world. ”

“ I knew the man to be able; I thought him fitted for Seaton’s place. I made up my mind what to do, believing this. Seaton went on to say that he would rather take my opinion.
“‘You know him well?’ he asked. ‘You’ve known him some time—seen quite a bit of him?’
“I said simply: ‘Yes.’ You know, my boy, that [Pg 270] one can at times lie and steal and commit murder with a syllable? Well, I did that. But Seaton wanted it clear. He looked at me sharply. ”

“ Seaton answered cheerfully. "If we're not a match for you and your gang, on foot or in the air, in body or in mind, we'll deserve whatever we get. We can outrun you, outjump you, throw you down, or lick you; we can run faster, hit harder, dive deeper, and come up dryer, than you can. We'll play any game you want to deal, whenever you want to deal it; for fun, money, chalk, or marbles."
His brow darkened in anger as a thought struck him, and the steady gray eyes bored into the unflinching black ones as he continued, with no trace of his former levity in his voice:
"But listen to this. ”

“ Arthur Seaton still lived with his aunt at the big house just beyond the village. He poked his head in at the little parlour door.
"Here's a gentleman enquiring after young Mr. Seaton, Millie," he said. "He's dead, ain't he?"
"Why, yes, bless you," replied a cheerful voice from within. "Dead and buried these three months or more—young Mr. Seaton. And just before he was to be married, don't you remember, Bob?" ”

“ The structure of force, which Seaton knew was the secondary projector, swung around as if sentient, and a lurid green ray extended itself, picked up the faidon, and lengthened out, hurling the jewel a thousand yards out through the open side of the laboratory. Rovol moved more controls and the structure again righted itself, swinging back into perfect alignment with the tube and carrying the faidon upon its extremity, a thousand yards beyond the roof of the laboratory. ”

“ All seemed nearer and there was no hint of familiarity in their arrangement. Like gems thrown upon darkness they shone in multi-colored beauty upon the daring wanderers, who stood in their car as easily as though they were upon their parent Earth, and gazed upon a sight never before seen by eye of man nor pictured in his imaginings.
Through the daze of their wonder, a thought smote Seaton like a blow from a fist. His eyes leaped to the instrument board and he exclaimed:
"Look there, Mart! We're heading almost directly away from the Earth, and we must be making billions of miles per second. ”

“ Seaton, with his mind in a whirl, walked slowly to his desk, picked up his blackened and battered briar pipe, and sat down to study out what he had done, or what could possibly have happened, to result in such an unbelievable infraction of all the laws of mechanics and gravitation. He knew that he was sober and sane, that the thing had actually happened. But why? And how? All his scientific training told him that it was impossible. It was unthinkable that an inert mass of metal should fly off into space without any applied force. ”

“ As Crane and DuQuesne finished their tasks, Seaton fitted his sweetheart's helmet, placed her tenderly upon the seat, buckled the heavy restraining straps about her slender body, and donned his own helmet. He took his place at the main instrument board, DuQuesne stationing himself at the other.
"What did you read on it, Blackie?" asked Seaton.
"Two degrees, one minute, twelve seconds diameter," replied DuQuesne. "Altogether too close for comfort. How shall we apply the power? One of us must stay awake, or we'll go on as long as the bars last." ”

“ This, however, was mainly because the window reached all but to the floor of her bedroom. She was in reality rather an under-sized woman, in spite of her long face and big head. She must have stood, I think, unusually still, with eyes fixed on us, though this impression may be due to Seaton's sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious and subdued air that had fallen on him at sight of her. ”

“ The Seaton urchin begins to hear the school cheers as soon as his legs are strong enough to take him where students gather or heroes battle. Classes pass before him as the generations of men [Pg 278] before the aged Nestor. There were boys on that fence who could already have repeated the Seaton battle cries when fellows who were now leaders of elevens and nines in Yale and Harvard and Princeton and Dartmouth had just set foot in the Seaton streets. The gamin's term of instruction is long; so the cheer from the fence had the true ring. ”

“ Seaton snorted. "Amœbic! Must be handy, though, at that, to sprout eyes, arms, ears, and so on whenever and wherever you want to—and when you want to rest, to pull in all such impedimenta and subside into a senseless green blob. Well, we've seen the attackers, now let's see what the natives look like. They can't cut us off without sending their whole works sky-hooting off into space." ”

“ It is quite conceivable that there are many people who would want to be paid a great deal more than six shillings for the discomfort of fourteen hours railway travel on a Sunday.
The dominant note of Seaton is its apparent newness. From the golf links and the club-house on the down by Haven Cliff on the east, to Seaton Hole on the west, it looks a creation of yesterday, and the casual visitor is incredulous when told [20] of a fourteenth-century parish church. But such a building exists, nearly a mile inland, with a hoary tower and curious monuments ”

“ Seaton and Tom Halstead were keenly aware of the presence of the prisoner in the starboard stateroom.
“You don’t seem as overjoyed as I thought you might be,” observed Powell Seaton, in a tone of disappointment.
“I’m going through for you, sir, and I’ll deliver the papers into the proper hands, if I live,” replied Tom Halstead.
“And you’re not afraid of the big chances of danger that you may be running?” persisted his employer.
“Why, I believe every human being has times when he’s afraid,” Skipper Tom replied, honestly. ”

“ Withers, if ever there was one. Get a shawl, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo! My poor, poor Alice, how laggard a lover!”
Seaton returned with a shawl. They drifted out into the moonlight. My companion gazed after them till they were out of hearing, turned to me gravely, and suddenly twisted her white face into such a convulsion of contemptuous amusement that I could only stare blankly in reply. ”

“ If only ... "Anyone who finds me will die—anyone!" That was what he had said. Did it sound like the threat of a man who would readily part with life? And the whale-boat.... The hurricane season was past, the Coral Sea like a millpond. ... A trifle thin, that upturned whaleboat. ...
"If you're right, I'll find him," Seaton said. "Oh, I'll find him for you!"
From that hour he was a man transformed. He had a life-work, a passion—which was to find Wade. Save for that, the world held nothing for Seaton, not even Joyce Graham, though without her he would have been helpless. ”

“ There was a roar, a shower of sparks, a blaze of colored fire as the great rocket flew upward; but to Seaton's surprise, Nalboon took it quite as a matter of course, saluting as an acknowledgment of the courtesy.
Seaton motioned to his party to approach, and turned to Crane.
"Better not, Dick. Let him think that you are the king of everything in sight."
"Not on your life. If he is one king, we are two," and he introduced Crane, with great ceremony, to the Domak as the "Boss of the Skylark," at which the salute by his people was repeated. ”

“ I wish that I could make you understand that Seaton and Crane have got something that we haven't—but for the good of our plants, and incidentally for your own, please remember one thing, anyway; for if you forget it, we won't have a plant left and you personally will be blown into a fine red mist. Whatever you start, kill Seaton first, and be absolutely certain that he is definitely, completely, finally and totally dead before you touch one of Dorothy Seaton's red hairs. As long as you only attack him personally he won't do anything but kill every man you send against him. ”

“ At the good old mansion passed his childhood. There, too, according to what was then the wont in Virginia, he trod the first steps of learning, under the guidance of a domestic tutor, a decayed gentleman, old and bedridden; for the only part left him of a genteel inheritance was the gout. But when it became necessary to send his riper progeny abroad, for more advanced studies, Mr. Seaton very justly bethought him of going along with them; and so betook himself, with his whole family, to Richmond, where he was the possessor of houses enough to afford him a good habitation and a genteel income. ”

“ Then, as Miss Seaton was about to go on, Mrs. Thayer threw all the cards into a heap, saying:
"No, I don't want to hear any more; I shall have the same luck throughout; clubs always come to me."
"Have you always had such bad fortune?" asked Miss Seaton.
"Oh! no; only a few years ago, I used to be as happy as a bird; sorrow was unknown to me, and one enjoyment seemed to pass away only to be succeeded by another. Now I have nothing but trouble all the time."
"Your lot seems hard," remarked Miss Seaton, in a sympathizing tone; "probably you feel worse since your husband has been dead." ”

“ As she spoke, the two men stepped out of the "testing shed"—the huge structure that housed their Osnomian-built space-cruiser, "Skylark II." Seaton waddled clumsily, wearing as he did a Crane vacuum-suit which, built of fur, canvas, metal and transparent silica, braced by steel netting and equipped with air-tanks and heaters, rendered its wearer independent of outside conditions of temperature and pressure. ”

“ The Earth-people quickly secured the few personal belongings they had brought with them. Stepping out into the hall and waving away the guards, Seaton motioned Dunark to lead the way. The other captives fell in behind, as they had done before, and the party walked boldly toward the door of the palace. The guards offered no opposition, but stood at attention and saluted as they passed. As they approached the entrance, however, Seaton saw the major-domo hurrying away and surmised that he was carrying the news to Nalboon. ”

“ I'm going to bed.” His lips quivered, but he made no answer. I poured out some water into my basin and, with that cold pictured azure eye fixed on us, bespattered Seaton's sallow face and forehead and dabbled his hair. He presently sighed and opened fish-like eyes.
“Come on!” I said. “Don't get shamming, there's a good chap. Get on my back, if you like, and I'll carry you into your bedroom.”
He waved me away and stood up. So, with my candle in one hand, I took him under the arm and walked him along according to his direction down the corridor. ”