飞艇(2)

Vashti watched his face in the blue plate. "But I can see you!" she exclaimed. "What more do you want?"

"I want to see you not through the Machine," said Kuno. "I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine." "Oh, hush!" said his mother, vaguely shocked. "You mustn't say anything against the Machine."

"Why not?" "One mustn't." "You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men.

The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you.

I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind."

She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit. "The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you." "I dislike air-ships." "Why?"

"I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air-ship." "I do not get them anywhere else." "What kind of ideas can the air give you?" He paused for an instant.

"Do you not know four big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close together in the middle of the oblong, and hanging from these stars, three other stars?" "No, I do not. I dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting; tell me."

"I had an idea that they were like a man." "I do not understand." "The four big stars are the man's shoulders and his knees.

The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like a sword." "A sword?" "Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men."