Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/14

14 tion perfectly when Loren Bayard dies."

"Sure he will!” Dane scoffed. "Just the man to rule America. He's been raised for the job. 'By Loren Bayard; out of Ann Palfrey'; that's how I think of it. Bred. Like horses, or pedigreed dogs. Mentality from old Loren himself. Physique and strength of character from his mother's third-generation ancestors. And maybe a dash of cruelty and craft from some wolf who frightened the test tube that gave him birth!"

"Just the same, he's brilliant and strong and—"

"That doesn't enter into it!" Dane snapped. "Do you love him that's the point!"

"No!" Brooke admitted it with a defiant lift of her chin. "After all, what difference does it make? Love won't produce perfect children, will it? It won't be of any help in the advance of the state, will it?"

The scorn in her eyes cut Dane to the heart.

ROOKE, you can't!" he pleaded. "Remember—that first day—when you told me that some day we'd marry, no matter what The Hundred thought about it? Even if we had to run off to some other planet !"

"That's not fair," Brooke snapped. "We were so young, then. I was just seventeen, an interne in Telepathy House. You were only twenty-one yourself. You can't hold a girl to a bargain like that."

"But I'm going to! Listen to me—!" Brooke winced as his fingers dug into her shoulders. Dane's black brows knitted and his eyes held an unnatural gleam. "We'll go to Venus, Brooke! I can get work as a technician in the mines there. We'll have a home, freedom—children!"

"Children?" Brooke struck his hands off and laughed mockingly. "One endless mess and bother! And what of my figure, man? As for keeping house—No, Dane. Even if I weren't to marry East, I shouldn't care to do that. Try to understand that it's over between us. I'm pledged to East Bayard. In a few months, you'll be pledged to some girl yourself. We're all finished—do you understand?"

She opened the sliding door as she spoke the last words. The tall, heavy-shouldered man standing outside the elevator, wearing the white and gold of a member of The Hundred, must have heard her. At any rate, his arrogant features were blank with astonishment as the pair stepped from the lift.

Dane and Brooke both started. Brooke was first to break the awkward pause.

"You—startled us, East,” she faltered. "We didn't expect—"

East Bayard, sub-leader of the United Americas, began to smile, his eyes warming behind their thick, pinkish glasses. His face was not handsome, the forehead starting too close to his heavy brows and his nose flat and mashed-looking.

"Looks as though I almost missed you,” he remarked. "I've been hunting you since the news came out. Anson just told me you were here."

Dane snorted, jealousy burning in him like sulphur. Jeffrey Anson was the head of the Vedette.

"So you keep the Vedette even on your fiancee!" he grunted. "If I couldn't trust a woman more than that—"

Brooke whirled angrily. But East Bayard laid a hand on her arm.

"The man's entitled to a little jealousy," he chuckled. "I understand Dane rather fancied a Loring-Cabot alliance himself. Losing a girl like you