Stowaway to Mars Read Free

on the subject, there can be no doubt that this new rocket 'plane is intended to contest yet another record. Whatever he intends to attempt with it, we know that not only our own' good wishes but those of all our readers will go with him. 'Curty', who has done more than any other man to put England 'on top in the air', will find when he makes his comeback that no one has been allowed to usurp his place in England's Hall of Fame. Good Luck to you, Curty.
    Mary pressed the bell push beside 'her bed. To the maid who answered she said:
    'Doris, tell Mr. Curtance I would like to see him at once, please.' The girl hesitated.
    'He's very busy, madam,' she said, uncertainly. 'The gentlemen from the newspapers.'
    Mary raised herself on her elbows and looked out of the window. A number of gyrocurts and other small aircraft was dotted about the lawn and the field beyond. Odd that she had not noticed them arriving.
    'Have they been here long?' she asked.
    'Some of them nearly all night, I understand, madam, and the others came very early this morning. They've been waiting to see Mr. Curtance, and he only went downstairs a few minutes ago.'
    'I see. Then perhaps you had better not disturb him at present.'
    As the girl went out, Mary relaxed on her pillow, looking unseeingly at the ceiling. It was impossible, as she knew from experience, to tear Dale away from the pertinacious young men of the Press. The Public came first, and herself second. She reached out her hand for the newspaper and re read the final paragraph. It had to come! What a fool she had been to pretend to herself that it would not. She let the paper fall and lay thinking of Dale and herself.
    When she had married Dale, she had partially understood him, and had managed to work up a sympathy with his interests. Now, she was forced to admit, she understood him better and had lost sympathy with those interests. In rare moments of complete frankness she admitted her jealousy of those other interests and her resentment of other people's share in him.
    Ten years ago, when he was just twenty four, he had won the first non stop Equatorial Flight and for that thousands of people had begun to idolize him. And it had only been the start of a fantastic record of success. He had gone on to triumph after triumph, collecting prizes and further acclamation in his spectacular career. Since then he had lowered the Equatorial record three times and still held it, together with the Greenwich to Greenwich Meridian record, and goodness knew how many more. Partly through luck, but mostly by hard work and endurance he had grown in the public view to the stature of a fabulous superman: the stuff of which the old world would have made a demi god.
    She had regretted, but accepted the tact that the mass could give him something which she as an individual could not. Curiously, it was his preoccupation with inanimate things which caused her more active resentment. Once, in a state of depression, she had confided to a friend:
    'With Dale it is not people who are my rivals so much as things. Things, things, things! Why do men think so much of things? Big, restless and to them such absorbing things. Why are they always wanting to change and invent more machines, more and more machines? I hate their machines! Sometimes I think they are the natural enemies of women. Often when I see a rocketplane go by, I say to myself: "Mary, that is your rival it can give him more than you can. It has more of his love than you have." . . . No, it's not nonsense. If I were to die now, he would turn to his machines and forget all about me in making them. But if his machines were taken away, he would not devote himself to me he would mope and be miserable. I hate his machines. I'd like to smash them all into little bits. They frighten me, and sometimes I dream of them. Big wheels whirling round and round and long steel bars sliding up and down with Dale standing in among them, laughing at me because I can't get at him, and