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→Life in the Gulch
== Life in the Gulch ==
== Life in the Gulch ==
Quentin Daniels would not leave the Gulch for several months. John Galt immediately hired him at the valley's electrostatic power plant, first as a janitor, then as an electrician, and presumably as the officer-in-charge when John Galt left the valley for the last time. When John Galt was later arrested in [[New York City]], Daniels probably participated as a member of [[Ragnar Danneskjold]]'s hastily assembled [[militia]] in the rescue operation that followed.
Quentin Daniels would not leave the Gulch for several months. John Galt immediately hired him at the valley's electrostatic power plant, first as a janitor, with the promise that he would soon become an electrician. Then Galt made Daniels a proposition he would never have expected. Every June, John Galt delivered lectures in physics to selected students in the Gulch. Tuition was ten gold dollars (half an ounce) per person. Daniels came to the Gulch without a penny to his name—but Galt gave him a time-payment plan. Daniels was the only student to whom John Galt did that favor.
Daniels would remain in John Galt's employ through the winter. Then in the springtime of 1930, when John Galt determined that "the road [was] cleared," Daniels would probably take the post of chief manufacturing engineer in the company that John Galt would form to build electrostatic motors for a variety of transportation and stationary-power applications. Among the very first products would be a line of electrostatic [[locomotive]]s.
Now Daniels understood the theory behind the electrostatic motor, and much else, in a way that he would never have understood before. By the end of June, Daniels was indeed ready to take over, not only as electrician but as maintenance-officer-in-charge. Galt arranged with the Mulligan Bank to pay him faithfully at the end of every month.
On November 5, Daniels saw John Galt again. Galt had arrived in the valley with his latest and greatest defector, [[Henry Rearden]]. Galt then announced that he would hold a special edition of his lecture course, to begin the next evening. Daniels did not hesitate to settle his tuition account and enroll for another lecture series.
Galt surprised him when, on November 16, he announced that from then on he would give lectures of ninety minutes instead of sixty, every evening, to end on November 21. The next night (November 22), Daniels learned why Galt had sped up the schedule. For three hours Galt delivered a speech to the outer world. This was the explanation he had never asked for, for why the valley existed and why John Galt had come for him in Afton on May 31.
The next day, John Galt left the valley. Daniels asked [[Ragnar Danneskjold]], who now took over as head of the Committee of Safety, for an explanation. Danneskjold offered none, and neither did Francisco d'Anconia. Three months later came word that John Galt had been arrested in [[New York City]].
Daniels was shocked, angry, and ready for action. He went at once to Ragnar Danneskjold, who subjected him to the most rigorous physical-fitness test he had ever endured. The test left him breathless, but at the end of it, Ragnar said, "You qualify," and told him that he was now enrolled in the Galt's Gulch Land Militia. He gave Daniels a written order to "report" to the Dwight Sanders airfield that evening, and a checklist of military gear. Daniels acquired the gear, locked up the house he had built, turned the keys over to [[Midas Mulligan]], and was at the airfield on time. There he boarded a plane, and shortly thereafter was in the air, headed for New York.
His first assignment was a "billet" in a garret apartment on Manhattan Island. He learned later that this was the apartment that John Galt had kept in New York. He did not explore the empty room full of ashes; he grimly guessed what that room had once held, and what had happened to it.
Several weeks later, he got orders to decamp from Manhattan and proceed ''at once'' to Central Park, where a plane was waiting for him. Like any soldier, he did not question. Minutes later, he was in the air again, bound for [[New Hampshire]] and the campus of the [[State Science Institute]] on the Connecticut River. But he did not wait there for long. [[Ellis Wyatt]] then gave a full evacuation order, and soon he was back in the air, headed west-southwest. Only then did he and his fellow [[militia]]men get the joyous briefing: John Galt was alive, well, free, and on his way back to the Gulch with them.
Daniels would remain in John Galt's employ through the winter. Then in the springtime of 1958, when John Galt determined that "the road [was] cleared," Daniels would probably take the post of chief manufacturing engineer in the company that John Galt would form to build electrostatic motors for a variety of transportation and stationary-power applications. Among the very first products would be a line of electrostatic [[locomotive]]s.
{{endspoiler}}
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