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/* The rescue of John Galt */
== The rescue of John Galt ==
On November 22, John Galt made his famous three-hour speech to the world. Ragnar never learned did not learn, until after the strike was settled, the full extent of the spontaneous strike activity that John Galt's speech inspired. John Galt returned The reason: none of those spontaneous strikers tried to New York on the day afterreach Galt's Gulch. Instead, though Ragnar (and Franciscothey set up their own communities in forested or other "wilderness" regions, and Midas Mulligan) tried where even the [[United States Army]] feared to talk him out of itchallenge or even investigate them.
On or about February 22, John Galt was arrested by the American authorities. For Ragnar , the only thing worse than the supreme irony of that arrest was the fact of the arrest itself. Ragnar had spent twelve years telling John Galt not to worry about him—and now ''John Galt himself'' was in captivity, and in the danger attendant upon that condition. Dagny Taggart was somehow involved in the arrest. If Ragnar actually believed that Dagny Taggart had every betrayed John Galt to the other side, his disappointment would be short-lived. Francisco d'Anconia definitely knew the truth of the matter—that John had encouraged Dagny to ''pretend'' to have sold him out in order to protect herself. Ragnar had no shortage of recruits to rescue John Galt. Every man in the valley pledging pledged to follow him Ragnar to the ends of the earth to rescue John Galtget back the one man who had inspired them all. So Ragnar organized the Galt's Gulch Air and Land Militia. He used every available aircraft, and enrolled half the men in the valley, that being all that the planes could carry. He assigned Henry Rearden as his aide-de-camp and Francisco as his chief of intelligence.
He deployed his men first to Manhattan Island, at several stations near the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, where the authorities held Galt for questioning. He did not wish to storm the Wayne-Falkland; he was not at all confident that he could rescue John Galt before the authorities killed him out of spite. Francisco gave Dagny Taggart a direct telephone number to him, that she was to call when, as, and if she had information that John Galt was in danger of losing his life. So Ragnar gave his orders to his officers and men, and waited.
En route, they overflew New York City, just as its lights went out. Now Ragnar remembered what Galt had told him and Francisco, twelve years before: that when the lights of New York went out, they would know that their job was done.
Ragnar arrived first at the Gulch, either because he had one of the best aircraft that the Gulch had, or on account of his skill as a pilot. On that day, Kay Ludlow's cafeteria did the best breakfast business in its history.
== The return ==
