"I do get a little homesick now and then," he said. "But I'm also very curious about this world. Besides, as I said, it's my patriotic duty to stay here."
"Very well. It's only by thinking of the here and now that one can survive three centuries. Though it's always necessary to keep in mind the near future if you don't want to die. Sometimes... Never mind. Get your flying machine ready, and make your first report. Be sure that that is brief. And do not put in either report how old I am, nor even suggest that others have lived as long or longer."
Hank started to ask why he shouldn't, but he said, "Telling them that would ensure that they would try to get here. They would want your secret of longevity. That, more than gold and jewels and more territory and the marvels of another universe, would bring them here. Everybody wants to live forever."
"Yes, that would be the irresistible lure. However, not everybody wants to live that long. And few will ever have the means to do so. I could allow you to explain that, but they would not believe you."
The morning of the seventh day after the message from Pershing, Hank was summoned to Glinda's apartment. She told him to sit down.
"You do that so often I'm beginning to feel like a dog," he said.
"Toto," she said, and she laughed. "Yes, I can remember that curious creature. Well, a dog, I assume, does not resent being ordered to sit down. Not if it loves its mistress. Here, Hank. Hold this in your hand."
A little man with a long gray beard extended a round whitish-gray object the size of a large plum.
"The Black Pearl of Truth," Glinda said as Hank took it. "It's not a genuine pearl; it just looks and feels like one."
There were no oceans or oysters known to this land, but apparently, there were river mussels which had pearls.
"My mother told Mr. Baum about this. She said that you had shown it to her. Baum used it in his second book. But he assumed that you wore it next to your body. I suppose that he was wrong."
"Right. Wrong," Glinda said. "You, the one being tested, must hold it or wear it next to your skin."
He thought that it probably detected the shifting electric potential of the holder's skin. It would turn from gray to black if the holder lied. But what if the wearer believed that he was telling the truth, though he was not?
As if she'd read his mind, Glinda said, "It couldn't be depended upon if you were insane. But you're sane, at least, I judge you to be so. Relatively speaking, that is. No one is completely sane. A person that is would go crazy."
Hank held the "pearl" up between his thumb and forefinger.
"This also represents a danger to my world. If these could be manufactured and put in every court of justice, in every home, society would crumble."
"I know that," she said. "That's why you won't mention it. As yet, anyway. However, it is unique. It can't be duplicated. No one knows how to make another like it. It's something the Long-Gones left behind them. It was found seven hundred years ago and has been owned by the Quadling witches ever since."
At her command, he interpreted the message he had written the night before. The Pearl did not change color.
"Good. What I expected," Glinda said.
The report was placed inside a very thick insulated envelope, and that was placed inside a disc-shaped receptacle. This had a framework of spring steel and a triple-fold covering of tough leather. An accidentally drowned cow had provided the leather. The interior of the case and the insulation of broken walnut shells would hold the report and some photographs Hank had taken with the small camera, and some Quadling artifacts, including a tiny solid-gold statuette of Glinda. She looked at these before permitting them to be put into the case.
"Too bad you don't have film that shows color," she said. "They won't be able to see the auburn of my hair."
Hank grinned.
"If Your Witchness would cut off a lock for export?"
"Don't be a smart aleck."
What would the Army brass and President Harding make of these pictures? One of the castle from the ground, an aerial view of it and the town, himself standing among a crowd of pygmies, Glinda on her throne, Glinda in a moose-drawn chariot, Glinda by him in front of the Jenny, the open pages of a book, the castle guard on review, a raccoon writing on a pad of paper, a cat reading a newspaper, two views of the cemetery, and many other photographs.
Hank had captioned each. Surely, the mention of Glinda and Quadlingland would cause an uproar. Also, unbelief.
He took off in the Jenny in a cloudless sky at 10:15 A.M., Central standard daylight saving time. The hawk, Ot, rode with him, her talons digging into the right shoulder of his heavy leather jacket. Though Hank knew the approximate area where the cloud had appeared, Ot claimed that she could pinpoint it. She gave him instructions, and he circled the place where the green haze was supposed to show. Eleven o'clock came. The air remained empty. Fifteen minutes passed. Something had gone wrong. The gate-opening equipment had broken down or was malfunctioning. Or there was not, for some reason, enough power available. Or the opener-generator had blown up. Or the brass had decided to call off the operation because of bad weather.
A half hour went by. He observed four of the giant balls rolling far out in the desert. When he had the opportunity, he would photograph some of them.
After a while, Hank was both bored and anxious. He was also tired of circling counterclockwise, so he straightened out and turned and went on the clockwise path. And then, just as he had noted that it was 11:46:12, Ot startled him by screaming in his ear. He looked up from the watch to his left. About forty feet below a green cloud was beginning to form.
He banked even steeper and nosed down. With his left hand, he picked up the disc by its edge and held it edgewise out into the airstream. By the time he was above the haze, it had expanded into a diamond-shaped area the widest part of which could easily enfold the Jenny.
His heart beat like the pick of a miner who had just seen the start of a gold vein.
If he dived suddenly and steeply, he could zip through the cloud and be back on Earth.
But he did not, and he was glad that he had not. The green began to shrink rapidly. When he flipped the disc in it, the haze was the size of a large desk, and for a second, he thought that it would miss the target. If he had tried to escape, his plane, and, possibly, himself, would have been sliced.
"They didn't give you much time," Ot yelled in her Victrola-like voice.
"They would have if they could have!" Hank yelled back.
Evidently, they were having trouble with the machine.
Glinda would be somewhat comforted when he reported that.
When he came to her counselling-room, she did not ask him, as he had expected, if he had been tempted to pass through. She told him to do what he could towards his report but not to let that interfere with the pick-up flight.
"Do you still think that you can return in six days?"
"Give or take a few," he said. "I may be grounded by bad weather or engine trouble. I would like permission to have more time so that I could see my mother's house in Munchkinland."
"I can understand your sentiment," she said. "But you'll have to do that some other time. I have reports that Erakna's armies on the Winkie and Oz borders have been considerably increased. Is it possible for you to leave sooner than planned?"
Hank thought for a minute, and then said, "I could go tomorrow if I forget about mounting the machine-guns on the Jenny."
Glinda smiled. "At dawn then."
"If the weather's good."
"Don't worry. It will be."
He did not believe, as her subjects did, that she could control the weather. But she might have meteorological data brought to her by her bird agents. And, after three hundred years, she must be able to "predict" weather as well as or better than the best weather-forecasters of Earth. Not that that meant much.