To Venus in Five Seconds - Story Book
To Venus in Five Seconds
Fred T. Jane
London, 1897
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
Before Thomas Plummer vanished from Earth, one threat from Thomas's Father drove him into the London Hospital: disinheritance.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
Broad-shouldered, fashionable, and perfectly healthy, he treated medical training as another inconvenience wealth ought to soften.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
He cultivated elegant excuses, avoided unpleasant duties, and preserved a comically confident opinion of his own promise.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
Then, in the tiled operating room, steel met flesh, and Thomas's practiced composure vanished with his color.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
His knees loosened; his broad frame collapsed before the watching students, an heir brought low by reality.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
Consciousness returned quickly, together with the humiliating certainty that opening his eyes would require an explanation.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
So Thomas lay motionless, breathing carefully, while concern gathered around the supposedly senseless young gentleman.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Unwilling Heir
His performed helplessness left him entirely vulnerable to anyone prepared to discover whether he truly slept.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
Thomas's counterfeit collapse, meant to spare him embarrassment, instead invited Zumeena to propose a treatment far more alarming than any hospital reprimand.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
With clinical calm, she suggested curare, then spoke of observing its effects upon his supposedly insensible body.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
Thomas sprang upright, all illness forgotten, and struck her assistant before the experiment could begin.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
Zumeena neither recoiled nor apologized; behind her dark glasses, she coolly explained that the threat had merely tested whether he was shamming.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
Questions followed, and Thomas, indignation yielding to vanity, disclosed he was Thomas Plummer, wealthy heir to his father's pill-manufacturing fortune.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
Mistaking her composure for professional admiration, Thomas straightened his coat and demanded the respect owed to his station.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Curare Test
Her scrutiny changed at once: the cowardly patient was wealthy, vain, and physically exceptional, a combination worth keeping close.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Scientific Courtship
Having discovered the vanity beneath Thomas Plummer’s bluster, Zumeena cultivated him at London Hospital with cool, deliberate friendliness.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Scientific Courtship
Whenever they met, day after day, she praised his broad shoulders, healthy frame, and splendid physical proportions, observations he received with growing delight as richly deserved admiration.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Scientific Courtship
Her brick-red skin, fine facial down, dark glasses, and strangely foreign speech briefly puzzled him, but never enough to disturb his pleasure.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Scientific Courtship
Zumeena’s exact questions about his strength and health sounded clinical; Thomas Plummer, serenely self-satisfied, heard only the language of attraction.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Scientific Courtship
Soon enough, their walks through sooty London became habitual, with Thomas Plummer displaying fashionable confidence while Zumeena watched him through unreadable lenses.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Scientific Courtship
Thus, when she invited him to her private lodging at Bark Place, he followed eagerly, never wondering why her courtship resembled an examination.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
Chasing imagined romance, Thomas entered the summerhouse behind Bark Place, where Zumeena poured champagne beside padded machinery.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
He drank eagerly, mistaking her attention for desire, while she watched him and quietly tested the levers.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
“Shut the door,” she said, with the calm authority he had already learned to obey.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
Thomas swung it closed; metal met metal, the latch seated, and the chamber sealed around them.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
There was no jolt, no wheel-noise, no sense of speed—only Zumeena’s fingers moving once across the fittings.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
Then she raised her glass, regarding him through dark glasses with playful composure.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
“You are millions of miles from London,” Zumeena announced. “We are already within the atmosphere of Venus.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
Five Seconds
Because nothing had moved, Thomas clutched disbelief like a railing and demanded that she open a scuttle and show him proof.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Scuttle Opens
Zumeena met Thomas's denial without argument: she unfastened a scuttle and drew him toward the impossible daylight beyond its glass.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Scuttle Opens
Below, flowers rose like cathedral towers, violet undergrowth heaved, and monstrous creatures wandered among stems thicker than London chimneys.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Scuttle Opens
Thomas recovered his vanity and declared the spectacle Zumeena's magnifying contrivance, built to frighten a man whose scientific wits remained sound.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Scuttle Opens
Zumeena touched the levers, and the Transit Car sank fifty feet through blazing air before settling with a soft, final jar.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Scuttle Opens
The door opened; Thomas stepped boldly out, plunged ankle-deep into boiling violet moss, recoiled screaming, then looked upward into a white sun that stabbed his eyes.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Scuttle Opens
As he staggered back, Zumeena calmly told him he was sober, awake, and truly on Venus, leaving him no choice but to follow his only guide.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
Among forms he could not name, Thomas clung to Zumeena as his only guide.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
She led him along an emerald road beneath colossal flowers, toward burrow-like openings in the ground.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
Below, Venus City unfolded through glowing tunnels and domes, crowded with brick-red Sutenraa and towering, winged Thotheen.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
Thomas searched each alien face for reassurance, but Zumeena took him into a strange house and turned away.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
“You amuse me,” she said, “but Science has the greater claim upon your body.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
She departed before he could plead, leaving him alone amid low couches and dim lamps.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
Then a seven-foot Thothen emerged and spoke clearly, its expressive horned eyes fixed directly upon Thomas.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Science's Claim
Its flexible trunk touched him gently and guided him through a curtained doorway, proving that Zumeena's betrayal had delivered him to an intelligence beyond denial.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
From the darkness came a woman's groan, proof that Thomas was not the only prisoner in the house.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
Phyllis Alson stepped into the lamplight and warned him that their captors intended a death no earthly imagination could properly conceive.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
Then, with fragile brightness, she proposed a tour of Venus City, because movement was kinder than waiting.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
In the Captives' House, Reverend Winward met them gravely and asked Thomas whether he understood what awaited him.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
Thomas did not; Winward answered that the Thotheen were neither fable nor beasts, but mighty minds the Sutenraa could not own.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
He introduced Ef, whose towering winged form and watchful horned eyes made intelligence undeniable.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Those Who Know
Yet Thomas heard the warning as an insult to courage, not yet as the map of power it truly was.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
Phyllis repeatedly hid behind curtains when Sutenraa passed, her terror goading Thomas into reckless swagger.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
Thomas struck a towering Thotheen’s trunk, and a blue electrical shock instantly dropped him senseless.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
The Thotheen bore him to Zumeena, who examined him with cool contempt.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
Afterward she pronounced Thomas normal, explaining that his brain was merely inactive by nature.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
She named the Sutenraa descendants of ancient Egyptians, whose pyramid-linked Transit Cars crossed worlds instantly.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
They collected Earth bodies as specimens, seeking resistance to sunlight, which killed their kind.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
The Thotheen resisted Sutenraa rule, and Zumeena admitted that open war might be near.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
Madness could no longer protect Thomas: intelligent captors truly meant to use the captives’ bodies.
To Venus in Five Seconds
No Dream of Madness
He could only face Zumeena’s personal decision about what would be done to his own.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Now Zumeena made the threat personal: Thomas must either mate with her or surrender himself to Science.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Horrified by the imagined marriage, he drew himself up and grandly chose Science.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
She regarded him with startled admiration, praising his sacrifice and promising that anesthetics would soften the work.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Only then did Thomas understand: Science meant his living body opened beneath Sutenraa instruments.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Panic erased dignity; he declared sudden love for Zumeena and begged to reconsider.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Her composure never shifted; detecting the lie, she withdrew the anesthetics and ordered every experiment performed without mercy.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Thomas hurled an insult, then crawled toward the Captives' House, expecting the contempt he knew he deserved.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Choosing Science
Instead, Phyllis met his return with silent sympathy, and that unexpected mercy stopped him where boasting had failed.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Hand in the Dark
Thomas's self-contempt faltered when Phyllis Alson, offering no reproach, quietly took his trembling hand in the dim room.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Hand in the Dark
He wanted to snatch it away, yet her steady blue-eyed sympathy slowed his breath until panic loosened its grip.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Hand in the Dark
Reverend Winward then explained that every meal brought to the Captives' House purchased merely one more day before the Sutenraa experiments began.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Hand in the Dark
In a low voice, Phyllis told how a false employment advertisement had lured an orphan seeking honest work into captivity on Venus.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Hand in the Dark
Her trust wounded him more sharply than Zumeena's contempt, and, before courage could object, Thomas declared that he already possessed a plan of escape.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Hand in the Dark
Hope brightened Phyllis's fearful stillness; Reverend Winward studied Thomas gravely, and the lie became a promise he could no longer abandon without betraying her.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Promise Made Real
When Reverend Winward left them alone, the hush that followed drew Thomas Plummer and Phyllis Alson beyond gratitude into a trembling confession of love.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Promise Made Real
For one brief moment, the Captives' House seemed less a prison than a sanctuary, and Phyllis's quiet happiness made Venus itself recede.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Promise Made Real
Then Thomas, searching his clothes, found his forgotten revolver, still loaded, and hope flashed through him with a darker companion.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Promise Made Real
If escape failed and the Sutenraa came to torture Phyllis, he vowed to use the final shot to spare her their knives.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Promise Made Real
She neither recoiled nor doubted him; instead, she said his cleverness would surely discover escape before such mercy became necessary.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Promise Made Real
Her absolute faith shamed his old cowardice, turning a lover's boast into calculation as Thomas began seeking not a merciful death, but a road to life.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
His promise to Phyllis hardened into a route: reach the distant Venus Pyramid, seize a Transit Car, then return for her and Reverend Winward.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
Winward warned that every earlier fugitive had fallen to blinding daylight, the monstrous country, or nameless dangers.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
Thomas insisted darkness offered a chance, although his confidence sounded thinner in the quiet house.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
Asked whether capture should end in suicide, Winward refused; life and death, he said, belonged to God.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
Thomas bowed, yet privately resolved that if the Sutenraa raised their knives, his revolver would give Winward a quicker mercy.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
Then Winward named Ef, a Thotheen opposition leader, and Thomas saw a possible ally against Sutenraa cruelty.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Pyramid Plan
He would warn the Thotheen, seek their help, and begin at twilight, while lethal sunlight sealed every doorway.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Into the Grove
At last, twilight thinned the murderous glare, and Thomas Plummer crept to the tunnel mouth to search the dim horizon.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Into the Grove
Beyond the violet moss, distant pyramids rose like black teeth, fixing the direction of his desperate gamble.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Into the Grove
He drew Thomas's Revolver, waited for the last white fire to fade, then stepped alone from shelter with a courage he scarcely recognized as his own.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Into the Grove
Each stride across the springing violet carpet carried him farther from Phyllis Alson, Reverend Winward, and every safe retreat.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Into the Grove
Inside the Nasturtium Grove, gigantic overlapping leaves swallowed the sky; tangled stems turned his chosen line into a blind, breathless maze.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Into the Grove
Then immense artificial lamps burst alive overhead, bleaching every shadow, erasing the pyramids, and proclaiming that a conflict greater than his escape had begun.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
The failed path from the Nasturtium Grove spilled Thomas into the first violence of the revolt.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
He crawled among wounded and dead Thotheen as blue electrical fire jumped between trunks and winged bodies fell.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
A fleeing figure struck him, and Thomas, wild with rage, bore the captive down and closed both hands upon her throat.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
Then her dark glasses shifted, revealing Zumeena, and he released her, unable to choose the deliberate killing of a woman.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
Composed, Zumeena offered immunity to Thomas, Phyllis Alson, and Reverend Winward if he carried her back to Venus City.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
Thomas accepted only the bargain and dragged her through bursting arcs, falling Thotheen, and showers of burning leaves.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Enemy in His Hands
He hauled Zumeena into the Venus City tunnel, where mercy had won a promise that war and her nature might yet destroy.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
As Thomas brought Zumeena back into Venus City, he believed her promised immunity had purchased survival.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
Zumeena reported the allied army annihilated, adding calmly that whichever side prevailed would still need doctors.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
At the Captives' House, Thomas repeated that promise to Phyllis Alson, trying to make the bargain sound unbreakable.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
Phyllis clasped her hands, thanked God, and smiled through tears as though deliverance had already entered the room.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
Reverend Winward's grave eyes stopped Thomas's celebration.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
No promise from the Sutenraa was safe, he warned; defeat would only hasten their sunlight experiments upon the captives.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
Thomas and Reverend Winward wrestled with escape, but Earthward travel seemed impossible to explain reliably to the superior Thotheen.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Worthless Reprieve
Before either man found an answer, the lamps trembled, and electrical pressure gathered beyond the refuge walls.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Winward's warning became fact when a scream tore Phyllis from sleep: in her dream, the Sutenraa had already entered.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Thomas calmed her, then ventured into the corridor, where one of the Thotheen stood rigid beneath the lamps, frozen dead.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Its horned eyes stared blindly, and cold terror settled over the Captives' House.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Returning to Phyllis, Thomas abandoned caution and asked her to marry him at once.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Wonder, fear, and tenderness crossed her face; before she could answer, she fainted into his arms.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Blue fire burst from the walls, lamps exploded, and invisible force flung Thomas, Phyllis, and Winward across the room.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
Sparks rained through sudden darkness as all three lay senseless, stripped of shelter, weapons, and time.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The City Goes Dark
When consciousness returned, Thomas's Revolver was emptied, and Winward's selection left them less than an hour to act.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
When consciousness returned, Thomas found Phyllis and Reverend Winward stirring beside him, while smoke curled from Thomas's Revolver.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
The electrical surge had fired every cartridge without aim, leaving their last defense useless.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
Reverend Winward quietly urged them to marry at once, and Phyllis answered Thomas with a steady yes.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
Then Reverend Winward indicated the untouched table: no breakfast had been brought for him.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
That omission, he explained, meant the Sutenraa would take him for experimentation before another day passed.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
Thomas searched couches, corners, and clothing for a loose cartridge or hidden weapon, but found nothing.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
Before the dim lamps, Reverend Winward placed Phyllis's Mother's Ring in Thomas's hand and solemnly joined their vows.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Marriage Before Breakfast
As he spoke the final blessing, footsteps gathered beyond the curtain, and the Sutenraa entered to claim him.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
The blessing had scarcely ended when Zumeena and the Sutenraa swept in, turning sanctuary into capture.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
Thomas lunged at Zumeena, but one of the Thotheen pinned his arms and crushed his furious resistance.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
Though trembling, Phyllis proudly answered Zumeena: “Thomas Plummer is my husband.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
Zumeena went to claim Reverend Winward, only to find the gentle clergyman dead beyond her instruments.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
At her order, the Sutenraa bound cloth across Phyllis's blue eyes and carried the newlyweds into the Laboratory Prison.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
“Accept my congratulations upon your honeymoon,” Zumeena told Thomas, her composed face making the cell seem crueler.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
Later, as Phyllis slept, Thomas bent over her, wondering whether death by his hands was kinder than the laboratory.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Honeymoon Cell
But he drew back; he could not destroy the life he had sworn to protect, and waited for Zumeena.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
When Zumeena returned and opened the cell, Thomas sprang from despair into the one chance her nearness offered.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
He caught her by the throat, demanding escape, while she stood perfectly composed beneath the cold laboratory lamps.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
Then Zumeena indicated Phyllis, unconscious on the floor, and explained that drugs had emptied her of Earth, Thomas, and marriage.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
The words broke his fury; yet Zumeena calmly invited him to kill her rather than force her submission.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
His fingers tightened, but her fearless stillness made violence useless, and Thomas slowly released her.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
Abandoning threats, he begged for pity—not for himself, but for the helpless woman whose past she had stolen.
To Venus in Five Seconds
What Zumeena Took
Zumeena's expression shifted; from her sparse garments she produced the lost cartridges, and escape became possible at its cruelest price.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
Amused by the mercy Thomas had won from her, Zumeena studied him as though newfound courage made him a rare specimen.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
“Your foolish mind fascinates me,” she said, promising the Transit Car could return them to Earth within an hour.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
Phyllis stirred, opened her blue eyes, and regarded Thomas as an unfamiliar gentleman.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
Phyllis's Mother's Ring meant nothing to her; Thomas's stricken face awakened neither tenderness nor recognition.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
When Zumeena approached, however, Phyllis showed no terror; even her memories of laboratories and threatened vivisection had lost their sting.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
Thomas felt the loss like an amputation, then mastered himself: amnesia had freed her, and he would not demand her suffering back.
To Venus in Five Seconds
A Stranger Wakes
He met Phyllis's cautious gaze gently, accepted Zumeena's offer, and prepared them for the deadly daylight road to the Venus Pyramid.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
With the rebellion’s final assault shaking Venus, Zumeena hurried Thomas and Phyllis toward the only path that remained.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
She fitted them with Dark Glasses and Cooling Headgear, then secured the metallic coverings against murderous heat.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
They stepped into daylight, where the blinding white sun burned above violet moss and colossal flowers.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
Thomas kept beside the bewildered Phyllis, shielding her as Zumeena led them across the emerald road toward the Venus Pyramid.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
They reached the Venus Pyramid through the glare; behind them, Venus City convulsed in a tower of fire.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
Domes and tunnels vanished together, and the ground rolled beneath their feet while blazing debris stained the sky.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
Zumeena watched without flinching and declared, “The Sutenraa empire is ended.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End of an Empire
With every other road destroyed, the three turned urgently toward the waiting Transit Car.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Late Lever
Reaching the Transit Car was not escape: the victorious Thotheen held its surrounding electrical field like an invisible cage.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Late Lever
Blue fire crawled over the metal fittings, every renewed pulse locking the silent mechanism while winged figures crowded the scuttles.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Late Lever
Zumeena, composed under their grasp, said, “They spared me because I seemed concerned for you; touch nothing, Thomas, until my signal.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Late Lever
Thomas set one trembling hand upon the lever, watching Zumeena rather than the threatening shapes beyond the glass.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Late Lever
Her finger moved; fear delayed him by a fraction, and he pulled after the appointed instant.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Late Lever
The Transit Car convulsed in an electrical blast, hurling Thomas against Phyllis as Zumeena fell, and darkness erased Venus before any of them could know whether the late lever had carried them home or killed them.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
The shock resolved not in death, but in wind, sunlight, and the clean, breathable air of Earth.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
Thomas awoke against the padded wall of the Transit Car, stiff and dazed after nearly twenty hours of unconsciousness.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
Beside him Phyllis stirred in her modest dress, while Zumeena rose with brick-red composure and adjusted her dark glasses.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
Thomas forced open the door and stared across a vast golden desert beneath an impossibly blue sky.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
They had landed upon the summit of the Great Pyramid, with tiny figures moving far below among the sands.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
On the car's outer boards, fresh paint proclaimed PLUMMER'S PILLS, absurdly familiar, and more convincing to Thomas than the desert itself.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Earth Beneath Them
Thomas drew one grateful breath, then watched Zumeena, uncertain whether she meant to remain, threaten them, or finally set them free.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Zumeena's Farewell
Earth’s wind swept the Great Pyramid, and Zumeena’s cool appraisal of Thomas no longer held the claim of captor over captive.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Zumeena's Farewell
“Our experiment is concluded,” she said, with an unreadable inclination of her brick-red face, “though perhaps yours is only beginning.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
Zumeena's Farewell
Thomas demanded that she restore Phyllis, but Zumeena merely turned her dark glasses toward the small woman, who watched him with courteous alarm.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Zumeena's Farewell
For once, anger could not master helplessness; he lowered his voice and asked whether Phyllis had been harmed.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Zumeena's Farewell
Zumeena answered that Phyllis was safe, stepped into the Transit Car, and, with one last enigmatic smile, vanished as silently as she had first arrived.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Zumeena's Farewell
Beneath the open sky, Thomas stood beside his living wife, facing a task no escape could solve: he must become worthy of a stranger’s freely given love.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
From the Great Pyramid, Thomas brings Phyllis into familiar London and the formidable safety of his father's home.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
Thomas's Father hears of Venus, Thotheen rebels, and instantaneous travel, then declares the whole account feverish nonsense.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
Yet his skepticism softens when he studies Phyllis, pale and bewildered, still wearing Phyllis's Mother's Ring.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
He asks no proof from her; instead, he offers shelter, respect, and the protection of the Plummer name.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
Thomas, once accustomed to having every difficulty purchased away, finds this practical mercy humbling.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
His father will even arrange a lawful London wedding, but only if Phyllis herself desires it.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
For the first time, Thomas does not argue, boast, or plead; he simply waits beside her.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The Story No One Believes
Safety and legitimacy are now theirs, but the marriage can truly begin again only through Phyllis's free choice.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
In the ordinary months that followed, Thomas gave Phyllis what danger had never taught him to give: time.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
He courted her without claiming the vanished marriage, answering every doubt honestly and asking for no gratitude.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
Slowly, she recognized the devoted man before her, not the frightened youth he remembered with shame.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
When Thomas asked again, Phyllis smiled and said, “I cannot remember loving you, but I know that I do.”
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
At their London wedding, Phyllis's Mother's Ring returned to her hand, while Thomas's Father watched with proud, practical satisfaction.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
Thomas made no grand speech; his steady gaze promised that whatever memory had erased, patience would rebuild.
To Venus in Five Seconds
Chosen Twice
Years later, their happy home proved the promise true: love had lost its map, crossed darkness, and still found its way home.
To Venus in Five Seconds
The End
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