"Quick--push your button!" he said, pushing his own.
They came out of the influence of the invisibility rays, raced breathless on down the slope--gained the station platform just as the train was getting under way.
Helping the exhausted girl aboard, he mounted the steps himself, led her through the vestibule into its single passenger coach.
Dropping into a seat, they sat there panting as the train gathered speed.
By the time the decrepit but life-saving little local drew into Gila Bend they had somewhat recovered from their harrowing experience.
Marjorie was still pale, however, as Kendrick helped her from the train.
"I may recover," she said with a wan smile, "but I'll never look the same! An old saying, but I know what it means now."
He thought better of a sudden impulse to tell her she looked quite all right to him. Instead, he said grimly:
The Tucson limited would not be through for over an hour, they learned. That would give them time to hunt up the authorities and sound a warning of the ominous invader that was in the vicinity. Perhaps, by prompt military action, it might be destroyed, or at least crippled.
But first they went to the telegraph office, where Marjorie got off a message that would bring joy to her grieved family.
While standing there outside the barred window, odors of food wafting to them from a nearby lunch-room.
"Um-m!" she sniffed. "That smells good to me! I haven't tasted any earthly cooking for ages. Everything on that horrible disc was synthetic."
"Then I suggest we have ham and eggs, at once," he said. "Or would you prefer a steak?"
As they walked into the lunch-room, Kendrick told her of the banquet in his honor Cor had promised for that night.
"You certainly didn't!" she assured him, with a smile. "It would have opened with a purée of split-molecule soup, continued with an entrée of breaded electrons, and closed with an ionic café."
"I'm just as well satisfied. I was unable to attend! Humble as it is, I think this will prove to be much more wholesome food."
Night had fallen by the time they left the lunch-room. Glancing at his watch, Kendrick saw that they still had better than a half-hour before the limited was due, so they betook themselves to the police station.