Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 ATR WONDER STORIES Outside his chambers I faced Miss Lois who had accompanied me. I did not know just what to say. She looked at me and smiled gently. ‘Our methods are strange to you, Jim Kennedy? I know from what Howard Wormley tells me that you do not go about such matters on the Outside as we do here.” I admitted as much, but I hurried on to tell her that my feelings had always been directed to her ever since I had first seen her; that I loved her and my reticence was due only to the fact that I feared she did not;feel the same toward me. And Becomes Acquainted With Her GRE blushed prettily and then declared that she had loved me the minute they had brought my mangled body to her, She went on to tell me of hours she spent at my bedside when it was thought I would die, and the tears she had shed! Wormley, she said, had known all along! You may be sure that I made up my mind to tell him just what I thought of him for not haying warned me. ‘And now,” said she in a tone that was strangely matter-of-fact for the occasion, “I suppose you are anxious to see the machineries they have brought for you?” She led me through the corridors down to the lower level and into the rooms where my news- paper was to take life. The delight I had expected to feel when I should first realize I had a printing press tnder my hand was not there. Instead | wanted to rtimaway somewhere with this Earthly angel, hold her in my arms and tell her how much I adored her. Instead I pretended enthusiasm in the presses, T could never rival the great New York dailies, but I would be able to work out a fairly good weekly paper on the shiny new machinery that awaited me. Everything was there to the smallest detail, even the conventional mats and great rolls of paper ready for use. I had to admit that Patriarch Mentor did things in a big way. Three fairly large chambers had been set aside for me and with the aid of six husky fellows we placed everything to my satisfaction, the various presses, the heavy rollers, and the bundle machine. By trade I am only a reporter, but I had learned my profession in the hard grind of a country news- paper and knew printing from pi to em! I arranged a desk of rough wood under a bright light, placed on it one of the three brand new typewriters, a stack of paper, pencils and what-not in prepara- tion of the work to come, The luncheon bell rang ere we were quite fin- ished placing everything. Lois had returned to her own work after directing me to the offices, but I found her in the common lounge awaiting me. Heretofore she had lived and eaten her meals in the hospital quarters, but I discovered that she had had her place changed so that henceforth we should be together during the dining hours, She was so sweet and unspoiled, so natural in what seemed to me such an unnatural position, that her very attitude made it easier for me. Still I did not have any appetite for the food put before me and I was glad when the meal ended and we would have an hour or so in which to become acquainted, for I realized that I knew very little about this young lady. We took a settee in the lounge and we talked throughout the hour, Lois wanted to know more about the Outside, what was marriage, how were courtships conducted as well as a great-many other things. She liked the thought of a couple setting up house-keeping together, but she had nothing to say against Mentorian methods. When the gone announced the end of the hour she shyly agreed to meet me after the working period. Perhaps Patriarch Mentor was laughing at me knowing full well how difficult it was for a man to serve two masters at once, ambition and love! I surely accomplished very little in the hours that followed. I sat there at my desk contemplating the stack of paper—for first off I had planned to lay out the set-up for the front-sheet of my paper. But as far as | went was to write at the top the name that it was to be known by, the Aerial, At the ringing of the gong I found Lois at the spot she had designated for our tryst and she con- fided that she had something to show me. I followed her along a path I had never been on before, and after walking rapidly we came to halt under a giant tree. She pointed out that I was to follow her up the rope that hung from the lowest branch, She went up quickly and easily, I more slowly, _ Up we climbed the little ladders that were barely strong enough for my weight, but up which the girl went as lightly as a bit of thistle. Scarcely ten feet below the roof of the jungle we halted and she showed me a pretty little nook that had been constructed of interwoven branches. A cushion of feathers covered the rough floor. And, only a few slender branches overhead, hid the platform from aboye, She blushed as she confessed, ‘When I was a child I built this little hide-out myself. Here, I now come often when I feel I wish to be alone. Could we not call this our... house... our own... Jim Kennedy?” Ah, the sweetness of her and the pity, for though she was of a people who had lived a communal life for almost five centuries the desire for something of her own was still in her and had spoken to her. There for the first time I took her in my arms and kissed her. I can say no more of the love that welled in me for her, it is hard to write of it, but I loved her then as I shall always love her, I, the hard-boiled reporter fellow ! And Goes to Work We did not stay long in our little love nest as I thought of it thereafter, for our rest period was of btt an hour’s duration before the drill—but we did come back again and again, and there were only the bright-plumed birds and the beady-eyed monkeys to tell of those hours. Often we took flights from there up into the blue of the skies or into the wonder of the silvery nights, The first strangeness of being carried in her arms wore off and I learned by proxy what it meant to fly... to really fly as the birds fly without the deadening roar of motors or the breath of burning oil. So life in Mentor started for me with a bang, Never again did J think of escaping. Poor Sima can wait for his story, The next weeks overflowed and seemed all too short. I was peo ling my office Ccomniclooolks.comn