Dagny belly-lands her plane. Her injuries aren’t severe, but she does lose consciousness. As she awakens, she looks up at the face of a man kneeling by her side—a face that shows no sign of pain or fear or guilt. The man is John Galt. He is the object of both of Dagny’s quests, because he is both the motor’s inventor and the destroyer who is draining the brains of the world.
Dagny discovers that all the great minds who retired and vanished from society now live and work in this remote Colorado valley. Ellis Wyatt is here, as are the other Colorado industrialists. Ken Danagger has joined them. The great banker Midas Mulligan owns the valley, and the philosopher Hugh Akston and composer Richard Halley reside here also. Dagny learns, not surprisingly, that Francisco d’Anconia is another thinker who has come here to be free from the looters’ oppressive code.
Galt’s motor powers the valley’s electrical appliances. It also powers a ray screen that shields the valley from view, which is why it remains undiscovered by the outside world. Galt takes Dagny to a building that houses the generator, where she reads his oath inscribed above the door: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
At dinner that night, in the home of Midas Mulligan, Galt quietly tells Dagny the purpose of the valley’s residents: They are on strike. The men of the mind refuse to support the looters’ system, which consists of involuntary obligations and enforced servitude.
