' "The Music Halls?"
' "Aye. 'E says a friend of 'is could get Ted on as "The 'Uman Wireless Set." Might make five quid a week and more."
'I thought of the plans I had made for the boy, a good school and then Cambridge if it could be managed—and now, "T'Alls!"
' "Jim," I said earnestly. "You can't do this. He can't afford it, man, he's too important. He can't afford to spend the most impressionable years of his life in Music Halls, it'd be the ruin of him. How could he settle down to learn after that kind of life? And he must learn, he's got to study, as hard as he can, he must."
'Jim removed his pipe and looked hard at me.
' " 'Oo says 'e must? 'E's my own lad, isn't 'e? I got a right to do what I think best for 'im, ain't I?"
' "But you don't understand, Jim, this is important, tremendously important. It may mean a major turning point in history, Jim, pivoting on him. It's like a sacred trust, we must do our best to prepare him for it."
'I told him of my new discovery about Ted. I put my case for all I was worth—and I might as well have shouted at the hills. I could see his face harden into the all-too-familiar lines of obstinacy as I talked. He could not, would not, see, even if he believed. The stupendousness of the possibilities, contact with life beyond the Earth, perhaps knowledge from older, wiser worlds, the coming of a stage when man gropes out from the isolation of his little planet and makes himself known in the universe beyond, the importance to science, to mankind itself; all this was wasted, blunted against his conviction that it wasn't "right to borrow on t'lad's future."
'Because I felt so deeply, and partly because the coming storm made the air sultry and fretted the nerves, I lost my temper with him. But it would take more than words and threatening thunder to move Jim. Cloddish, without imagination, the embodiment of all the stupidities that clutter and clog the world, he seemed to me then.
'He wouldn't get excited, he refused to argue, he just sat there behind his unassailable rectitude, beating me off with flat negatives. No lash I used could sting him out of his quiet, narrow assurance. He just waited patiently for me to finish. I did that suddenly, for I felt that in another minute I should punch his silly face if only to make him come alive.
' "I'm going to see Pauley," I told him, "and I hope to Heaven that he at least has enough brains to see that this mustn't be allowed to happen. God, to waste the gift of the ages in a Music Hall!"
'I flung out of the place and across the pavement to my car. I was going to see the schoolmaster right away; perhaps he would believe easily, perhaps he would need convincing, but either way I could not believe that he would fail to see that Ted was going to deserve the best education possible. We might be able to raise the money as a gift, though I had my doubts whether Jim would accept it now. But somehow or other we must ensure Ted's—not only Ted's; the whole world's—chance.
'And then a rumble of thunder made me pause with my hand on the door handle. I looked up, suddenly aware that the sky was full of ominous black clouds; they looked fantastically heavy with an evil, almost green light in their caverns.
'That was why I did not rush off to see Pauley then; afterwards it wasn't necessary....
'The threat of the thunder brought young Ted vividly into my mind. I knew how storms worried him, I knew, too, that he was not at home. I hesitated. After my exit I could scarcely go back and ask where he was; besides, Jim could hardly fail in the circumstances to misconstrue my motive, which was, in fact, merely a desire to be sure that the boy was as well protected as possible against an electrical upset. Instead, I turned from the car and spoke to the woman who stood in the doorway of the next cottage studying the sky resentfully.
' "Young Ted Filler?" she said. "Aye, 'e's along t'canal with our Rosie. Fair soaked they'll be, the pair of 'em."
'I remembered Rosie; she was one of those children who get themselves remembered. She was suspected, and not without reason, of being concerned in any bit of trouble for streets around.
'Even now I don't quite know why I changed my mind and went to look for young Ted instead of for Pauley, but I did.
'The canal ends in Irkwell so there was only one way to go. A few minutes later I stopped the car on a hump-backed bridge just as the first big drops of rain began to fall. From there I had a view of the towpath for half a mile each way, but I didn't need it. The path was deserted save for two small figures a hundred yards or so away; any others who may have been there had wisely left to seek shelter.
'The children were scuffling on the cinders a yard or two from the water's edge, much too occupied to pay attention to me, the coming storm, or anything else but their own quarrel. Rosie was no silent scrapper; her yells of protest were forceful even at that distance. Perhaps that was not to be wondered at. It must be painful to have an opponent take a good grip of one's hair, even if one does manage to get in a hack or two on his shins. I leaned out of the car and shouted at the little brutes.
' "Ted," I called, "stop it and come here."
'Surprised, he looked round. The victim seized her chance to pull free. Quick as a flash she snatched his cap off, flung it into the water, and tore off down the towpath with screams of derision.
Ted clapped both hands to his head, as if in pain.
' "Come here," I shouted, getting out of the car.
'He heard me, for he turned and began to run with his hands still pressed to his head.
'I started off the bridge to get down to him. then I saw him stagger and stop. In the same split second came a vivid flash right above us and a crash of thunder like the end of the world. The rain fell as if a cloud had ripped right open. When I reached the towpath young Ted was lying there, pathetically asprawl and soaked through already.'
He paused.
'That's all,' he said, 'that was the silly end of it.'
We looked out over the dark lake in silence for a while.
'He was dead?' asked one of the Americans, at last.
'No, he wasn't dead. But the thing that made him different was dead. That terrific discharge of lightning had finished his sixth sense for good. In that new sense he had gone as blind as a man without eyes, as deaf as one with split eardrums. He came round again, an ordinary little Irkwell urchin, with a raging headache. Now, he's a quarryman like his father.
'Some day perhaps he'll do something silly and I shall be able to have a look at his brain—if his pigheaded relatives allow it. But there's pretty cold comfort in that when one thinks of the possibilities which were snuffed out in a second.'
No one spoke again for some minutes. Then there was a movement in the darkness from the Lancashire man's direction.
'Aye, it were a rum do,' he said, 'but 'e'll be 'appier that way, you know. Freaks ain't 'appy. Now, there was one as I once talked to at Blackpool. 'E wasn't 'appy, 'e said... .'
THE LAST LUNARIANS
Chapter One
THE VOYAGE OF THE SCINTILLA
The secretary of the Lunar Archaeological Society approached his employer with a nervous diffidence. His method of stating his business was, to put it mildly, indirect. The president was a man who hated circumlocution. He became testy.
'Come on, man. What's the trouble? Out with it!'
Still the secretary hesitated, then, with a sudden decision, thrust a packet of papers clumsily towards his chief.