The lights went out. Later it was realized that, simultaneously, the movement of the currents of warmed air ceased; but at first this was appreciated only by those stationed near the fans, which whirred to a stop in a humming diminuendo.
Not only the great halls were blackened, but the streets became tombs.
It was an overcast night; and no single star showed even to the watchers on the towers. Light died and was buried; and all in silence.
In the unbreathing, Stygian oppressiveness of the dining-hall, Tony arose—an invisible figure. He felt blotted out. He wondered whether his voice, when he spoke, could be heard.
“They’ve done it, my friends. This is no accident, no failure which they will repair. They have shut off our power-source. So immediately we put into effect our plans for this emergency! we go under the power-loss orders which you all already know.”
Matches were struck and applied to torches previously fixed on brackets about the hall. Everybody pretended to like it; everybody sat down again. Dinner went on in a medieval gloom.
Ransdell, charged with the security of the streets, went out and inspected the guard positions where he was challenged by his sentries, who examined him in the glare of flashlights attached to condenser batteries; but the stored electricity was to be used but sparingly. The company had charged the batteries by the thousand; but what were they against the darkness and cold to come?
Combustible substances must be used for light wherever possible, and always for heat.
“It’s begun,” said Dodson, the surgeon, to Eliot James.
“I won’t worry about putting it down in my book to-night,” the diarist replied. “I’ll not forget it before to-morrow!”
He was aware of an anger within him which had no parallel in his experience—a smoldering anger that grew and grew.
“They’re doing this,” he said, scarcely more to Dodson than to himself. “They’re doing this deliberately to freeze us out to them—to take their terms.”
“What terms exactly, d’you suppose?” some one inquired calmly.
Eliot turned, and in the flickering glow of a flare, he faced Peter Vanderbilt.
“We’ll hear soon enough, I’d say.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FATE OF THE OTHER PEOPLE
BUT no terms came.
No proclamation, no communication at all, arrived from those in control of the capital city—and in control, therefore, of the five shielded ci
ties.
Gorfulu maintained its illumination, as Eliot James and Ransdell ascertained by flying at dawn and sighting the great glowing dome of the ancient capital. Light pervaded that city as before; and beyond question, heat was there.
Ransdell circled the city and turned back, as larks, piloted by the Midianites, rose into the sky. Ransdell had promised Tony neither to seem to offer attack, nor to provoke it. He flew directly home.
Other pilots inspected the three other cities—Wend, Strahl and Danot, the shields of which, like the dome of the capital, remained aglow; and these pilots flew back also to Hendron-Khorlu, which alone of the five cities lay lightless and cold in the winter morning.
In the great Hall of the Council, these pilots joined James and Ransdell and completed their reports:
“They’ve cut us off—and us alone.”
“Why not, then,” some one said, “move to another city? To Wend?”
“Then wouldn’t they cut us off there?” countered Ransdell practically. “The only reason those cities aren’t cut off is because we aren’t there.”
“But they’re not occupied, are they?”
“Not in force,” replied Ransdell. “But they’ve an observation group in each of the other cities—as they had here.”
“Then how about some other cities—elsewhere?”