Northwood's freezing lips translated some of the futile words that crowded against them. "I love you because you are not perfect. I hate perfection!"
"Yes. Perfection is the only hopeless state, John. That is why Adam wanted to destroy, so that he might build again."
They were sitting in the snow now, for they were very tired. The storm began whistling louder, as though it were only a few feet above their heads.
"That sounds almost like the sun-ship," said Athalia drowsily.
"It's only the wind. Hold your face down so it won't strike your flesh so cruelly."
"I'm not suffering. I'm getting warm again." She smiled at him sleepily.
Little icicles began to form on their clothing, and the powdery snow frosted their uncovered hair.
Suddenly came a familiar voice: "Ach Gott!"
Dr. Mundson stood before them, covered with snow until he looked like a polar bear.
"Get up!" he shouted. "Quick! To the sun-ship!"
He seized Athalia and jerked her to her feet. She looked at him sleepily for a moment, and then threw, herself at him and hugged him frantically.
"You're not dead?"
Taking each by the arm, he half dragged them to the sun-ship, which had landed only a few feet away. In a few minutes he had hot brandy for them.
While they sipped greedily, he talked, between working the sun-ship's controls.
"No, I wouldn't say it was a lucky moment that drew me to the sun-ship. When I saw Eve trying to charm John, I had what you American slangists call a hunch, which sent me to the sun-ship to get it off the ground so that Adam couldn't commandeer it. And what is a hunch but a mental penetration into the Fourth Dimension?" For a long moment, he brooded, absent-minded. "I was in the air when the black ray, which I suppose is Adam's deviltry, began to destroy everything it touched. From a safe elevation I saw it wreck all my work." A sudden spasm crossed his face. "I've flown over the entire valley. We're the only survivors―thank God!"
"And so at last you confess that it is not well to tamper with human life?" Northwood, warmed with hot brandy, was his old self again.
"Oh, I have not altogether wasted my efforts. I went to elaborate pains to bring together a perfect man and a perfect woman of what Adam called our Black Age." He smiled at then whimsically.
"And who can say to what extent you have thus furthered natural evolution?" Northwood slipped his arm around Athalia. "Our children might be more than geniuses, Doctor!"
Dr. Mundson nodded his huge, shaggy head gravely.
"The true instinct of a Creature of the Light," he declared.
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