Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/62

Rh sarcastic tone. "And you blinking smart-Alecks had the nerve to ask me if I have been sleeping all this time! Say: Who do you think replenished the fuel tanks?"

"We thought it was Santa Claus," Brink declared solemnly.

"Don't tell me you did it."

"Sure I did it. When the Titanians sneaked up on me, I happened to be in the storage chamber. They were all over the control cabin before I had time to do anything. I thought the best thing to do was to hide. So I got inside a sack and tried to look like some hecto-liters of beans. Lucky for me they didn't find me. But they must have monkeyed with the valves and let all our fuel escape.

"When they had all gone away, I sneaked out and discovered that they had moved our ship into a building where there was another space-flier. In the dead of night, I shifted the tanks. It was a dickens of a job. I got so blooming tired that I crawled into a hammock for a bit of a nap."

The girls greeted this recital with a chorus of laughter.

"Surely," Vera giggled—"surely you don't mean to tell us that you slept all through that hullabaloo while we were diving into the lake, playing submarine and shaking off the Titanians."

"Nothing remarkable about that," Sullivan declared. "At least to anyone who is familiar with Captain Hawkins' sleeping proclivities."

Brink was busy at the instrument board. He slowly opened the throttle and headed the ship toward the colorfully brilliant star which he knew to be Jupiter.

When he had set the course he called to Hawkins, "Here. you lazy, somnolent lout. Come here and take the controls. The rest of us have some important business to attend to."

"Business?" Hawkins questioned. "What kind of business?"

To which Brink replied with a significant grin, "Business that we hope will be both pleasant and profitable. It is about time Jimmy and I got acquainted with the Valentine sisters." 

of a fur coat you want. And, would you like to—would you like to go to Peacock's and pick you out a ring, an engagement ring?"

By way of reply, she threw her arms about Buffum's neck and buried her face in his shoulder. In order to address Oliver, Buffum had to bury his neck and chin in her tousled hair.

"Oliver!" he said. "Ah—hrrr! You young scamp, from now on you are manager of the publicity department. Do you hear? And Regina, I can see business coming in again; so you may have that new airplane you've been wanting so long. 

And so, the slow parade of stars and earth and moon faded and died. I had come to the end of my first adventure.

When I awoke again, I was back in the laboratory on a deep pile of cushions in the centre of the triangle formed by the three vacuum tubes. The professor was bending over me anxiously. My strength had returned. I felt my chest—no bullet hole there. I grinned up at him and reported: "Your theory is correct. I have been to the year 8117 A. D—seen machines utilizing the energy of the atom—but died before I could get the secret. Got darn close to it, though." 

