Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/70

58 pale face made her look yet more beautiful. He held one of her small hands in his, and was telling her how, when he returned, he would be made a captain, and then he could marry her. But she shook her head sadly as she thought of the dangers of the fearful campaign upon which he was about to enter. He laughed gaily at her fears, and talked lightly of the power of the people of Kairet, although his voice trembled just a little as he looked at the mouths of the gleaming cannon that bristled around him. Her father was up above on the deck chatting with the captain about some new device which had lately been discovered for preventing the radiation of heat from interstellar vessels. James Tarrant was walking along the ground a little way off, with the usual absent-minded look on his face, while his thin lips curled slightly as he looked at the great leviathans which lay around him. But no one noticed the pair of lovers, for every man that belonged