IV
THE GOLD-MINER
As for Van Emmon, his experience will have to be classed with Smith's.
That is to say, he soon came to feel that his agent was not what is
commonly called human. It was all too different. However, he found
himself enjoying a field of view which was a decided improvement upon
Smith's. Instead of a range which began and ended just above the
horizon, his agent possessed the power of looking almost straight ahead.
This told the geologist that his unsuspecting Sanusian was located in an
aircraft much like the other. The same tremendous noise of the engine,
the same inexplicable wing action, together with the same total lack of
the usual indications of human occupancy, all argued that the two men
had hit upon the same type of agent. In Van Emmon's case, however, he
could occasionally glimpse two loose parts of the machine, flapping and
swaying oddly from time to time within the range of the observer, and at
the front. Nothing was done about it. Van Emmon came to the same
conclusion as Smith; the operator was looking into something like a
periscope. Perhaps he himself did not do the driving.
From what the geologist could see of the country below, it was quite
certainly cultivated.
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