“She must wake!” John Star muttered again.
With a sort of fierce tenderness, he lifted Aladoree from where she lay.
Her body was limp, relaxed.
Her eyes were closed, her pale, full lips parted a little, her fine skin very white.
He could scarcely feel her pulse; her breath was very slow.
Deep, deep, she was sunk in the coma in which she had lain so long.
So lovely and so still!
He held her fiercely in his arms, staring up in mute, savage defiance at the red and black pocked Moon.
She must not die!
She was his!
Forever—his!
So warm, so dear!
He would not let her die.
No!
No, she must wake, and use her knowledge to build the weapon and destroy the menace of that red Moon.
He must wake her, so she could be his forever!
Unconsciously, he had been whispering it to her.
And he spoke louder now, in a desperate appeal.
He called to her, trying without actual hope to shout through her coma, to make her realize the desperate need that she should wake.
“Aladoree!
Aladoree!
You must wake up.
You must.
You must!
The Medusae are coming, Aladoree, to kill us with the opal suns!
You must wake up, Aladoree, and build your weapon.
You must wake up, Aladoree, to save what’s left of the System!
You mustn’t die, Aladoree! You mustn’t! Because I love you!”
He always believed that his appeal reached through to her sleeping mind.
Perhaps it did. Or perhaps, as a medical scientist has suggested, it was the irritating stimulation of the red gas itself that roused her, outside the Purple Dream.
That does not greatly matter.
She sneezed a little, and whispered sleepily:
“Yes, John, I love you.”
He almost dropped her, in his eager start at her response, and she came wide awake, staring about in amazed alarm at her strange surroundings.
“Where are we, John?” she gasped.
“Not—not back on that planet———”
She was gazing in horror at the red Moon in the red-bathed sky.
“No, we’re on the Earth.
Can you finish the weapon, quickly, before the Medusae come?
We brought the parts you made by the river.”
She stood up, looking dazedly around her, clinging uncertainly to John Star’s arm.
“Can this be Earth, John, under this terrible sky?
And that the Moon?”
“It is.
And those black specks are the spider-ships of the Medusae, coming down to kill us.”
“Ah, the lass is awake!” wheezed Giles Habibula, joyfully.
And Jay Kalam hurried forward with the small, unfinished device that Aladoree had built back on the other planet, useless for want of a little iron.
“Can you finish it?” he asked, still calmly grave.
“Quickly?
Before they come?”