"Immortal terror! God forbid I should ever feel it! Or you, Lady Elza. A lesson for us all, who would be so un-Godly as to seek and think we have found what only the Creator Himself can bestow!"



CHAPTER XXVI

Black Cloud of Death

I must revert now to that time in the gardens of Maida's palace at the Great City when we stood upon its roof-top, threatened below by that mob of slaans. Georg stood with the cylinder in his hand, waving it. The palm foliage was freezing. Down through the swirling snow fell the frozen bodies of the slaans who had climbed into the gigantic palm fronds. The thuds as the bodies struck the ground sounded horribly plain in the stillness. Georg was still waving his cylinder. Snow and ice were gathering everywhere. Incautiously he lowered the weapon; a brief, momentary chill—the congealing breath of the Arctic in this warm palm-laden garden—swept the horror-stricken crowd.

"Georg, have mercy!"

Maida's frightened, pleading words brought Georg to his senses. He snapped off the cylinder and dropped it behind him to the palace roof-top. He was trembling and white as he stood with his arm around Maida. Weapons so drastic as this one were seldom used. Indeed, it was law throughout both Venus and the Earth that no civilian should possess them. The power for wholesale death in his hand, and which without wholly meaning to, he had so nearly used to its full effect, had unnerved him.

Without the ray, the wind soon died. The warmer air mounting, melted the ice; the snow ceased falling. But the swath of shriveled foliage remained—a hideous scar cut into the luxuriant tropical growth.

The mob had forgotten its threats, its evil intent. Silent for a moment, it now burst into outcries. Motionless: then milling about, struggling aimlessly with itself—struggling to retreat. A panic of terror. The boats in the lagoon were retreating. The slaans along the fringe of shore began hurriedly to embark. The groups huddled at the palace steps were trying to shove the others back. In a rout they tumbled into their boats and scurried away. Maida's voice, striving to reassure them, was unheard.

And presently the scarred, trampled garden was empty and silent.

The rebellion, checked thus at its start, was quelled. Throughout the city that night—for the slaans to hear whether they would or no—the broadcast stations flung their stentorian tones to the people; a speech by Maida; her promise of better things to come for the slaans; the end of Tarrano's brief rule; a reorganization of past conditions. Maida herself had never been in control in the Central State. The luxury—the license-of the ruling class had been no fault of hers. She promised fair treatment now to the slaans. She was to marry Georg Brende, the Earth man.

Maida did marry Georg. With the many stirring events—a time when disaster and death threatened us all—so soon to follow, I shall not pause to describe the wedding. A quaint, yet magnificent spectacle. Maida in her regal robe; Georg looking every inch a ruler. Their barge of white leading the procession—a barge of white flowers, its sides lined with maidens to fend off the deluge of blossoms with which the onlookers assailed the bridal couple. The arrival at the marriage island, where on an altar the quaintly garbed holy man immersed them; and the solemn men of law united them as one.

It was a night of rejoicing throughout the Great City; and on every mirror in the Empire it was pictured for those who could not be present.

A time of rejoicing. Yet then—as always those days—my heart was heavy. Elza was held by Tarrano. We knew he had taken her to the City of Ice. There was of course, no radio communication with the Cold Country. We had tried eavesdropping upon it, but to no avail. Tarrano's close-flung barrage checked every wave we could send against it.

Time passed—a month or more. We were worried over Elza naturally. Yet the saving grace was that we knew Tarrano would treat her kindly; that for the present at least, she was in no danger.

Georg and Maida took possession of the Central State. Their rule started auspiciously, for by a series of speeches—a reorganization of money payments—the slaans seemed well satisfied. Loyal, and with a growing patriotism, an eagerness to help in the coming war with Tarrano. Georg—without actually saying so—made them believe that the only hope of everlasting life was the recovery from Tarrano of the Brende model. The model was in the City of Ice; it must be captured.

As a matter of fact, to us of the government, the Brende model was not indispensable. The greatest factor was that the threat of Tarrano's universal conquest must be forever removed. Like a rocket-bomb, this man of genius had risen from obscurity—had all but conquered the three greatest worlds of the universe.

I think that the height of Tarrano's power was reached that day on the eve of the Water Festival when he made his triumphant entry into the Great City. Venus was his at that moment; all of Venus. Mars was his; the Hairless Men—savages who had fallen readily to his wiles, had conquered the civilized, ruling Little People. And the Earth, over-run by his spies, deluged by his propaganda which, insidiously as rust will eat away a metal, was eating into the loyalty of our Earth-public—our own great Earth was in a dangerous position. The Earth Council realized it. The Almighty only could know how many of our officials, our men in trusted positions, were at heart loyal to Tarrano!

The thing was obvious. The assassination of our three rulers—leaders of the white, yellow and black races—with which Tarrano's campaign in the open had begun—those assassinations could never have taken place had not our military organization been diseased.

Facts like these were constantly coming to us now, here in the Great City. A brief time of physical inactivity. Yet underneath the calm, we realized there was a struggle going on everywhere; a struggle of sentiment, of propaganda, of public opinion.

Warfare, with modern weapons by which a man single-handed might destroy a city—is no longer a matter of men. The citizen—unarmed—united in sentiment and desire with a million of his kind—becomes the real ruler. You cannot—because you have a weapon—destroy a million of your brothers.

We realized this. And in the ultimate decision—the popular fancy almost—of our publics—lay our real success or downfall.

Tarrano in the popular mind had a tremendous hold. Dispatches from Earth made it plain that upon every street level the people were discussing him. From the Great City daily we sent bulletins of our progress toward checking—destroying—the menace of him. But bulletins also were emanating from the City of Ice. We could not stop them. Cut off at every official Earth station—and with all unofficial stations unable to receive them—nevertheless at some secret station which could not be found, they were received. And from there, circulated throughout the Earth. The air was full of them. Mysteriously, scenes showing the great Tarrano appeared upon the official news-mirrors; a speech of Tarrano's was once officially broadcasted before its source could be located and stopped.

Like a smothered fire smouldering, lacking only a breath of vital gas to explode it into flame, the sentiment for Tarrano spread about the Earth.

Public opinion is fickle. It sways instinctively—not always, but often—to the winning side. Here in Venus we knew we must defeat Tarrano. Destroy him personally and thus put an end to it all forever, since his dominion hung wholly upon the genius of his own personality.

Our spies, some of them, got to the City of Ice, and back. A few flying men were able to hover about the city, and with instruments peer down into it. We knew that Tarrano was mobilizing for a move upon the Earth, where with a war-like demonstration he hoped to be accepted, yielded to, without a severe struggle. But, within a month now, we learned he had abandoned that idea. He knew, of course, our own preparations to attack him; and he began concentrating everything upon his own defense in the City of Ice.

His last stand. We officials knew it. And we knew he felt it also. And though on Earth our public felt differently, the Little People recognized it. A stirring, wonderful time—that day when on our mirrors was pictured the revolt of the Little People against the Tarrano rule of the Hairless Men. Grim scenes of tragedy; and over the carnage, the Little People triumphed. Tarrano's rule—with all the excesses of the Hairless Men who proved themselves mere rapacious plunderers in the name of warfare—was at an end on Mars.

The effect on Earth of this Martian reversal was beneficial to us. A good omen. We on Venus, redoubled our efforts to attack successfully the City of Ice.

Mars could send us no aid, though now in full sympathy with us. The planet was daily at a greater distance from us; and the Little People, not recovered from the effects of their own bloody strife, were in no position to help us.

Nor did the Earth Council deem it wise to send men additional to those few we already had. The Earth was rapidly being left behind by the swifter flight of Venus through her orbit. The official season for the mail-flyers was closed. The opposition of the two planets was long since passed; millions of additional miles were adding to the space separating them.

And the Earth Council was not sure of its men! Any one of them might secretly be in Tarrano's service—and do us infinitely more harm if brought to Venus, than if left at home.

We seemed of solid strength in the Central State. For the first time in generations the Rhaals—the men of science from whom all the progress of civilization on Venus came—departed from their attitude of aloofness. Their work—always before industrial—now turned to the sterner demands of war.

The Rhaal City[22] lay a brief flight from us. A grave sort of people, these Rhaals. Men of square-cut, sober-colored garments; women of sober grey flowing robes—white hair coiled upon their heads. Intelligent women, dignified of demeanor; many of them learned as were the men.

[Footnote 22: An awkward, unpronounceable word which for the purposes of this narrative may be termed Industriana.]

Their city, teeming now with the preparations for war, was intensely interesting to me. We spent most of our days in it, flying back at nightfall to Maida's palace. Yet I shall not describe it, nor our preparations, our days of activity—but hasten on to the first of the extraordinary incidents impending.

It came—this first incident—through my thoughts of Elza. I was worried—more than worried, sometimes almost terrified about her. My instinct would have been to take a handful of men and dash to her rescue—which of course would have been absurd. I tried to reassure myself. Tarrano would treat her kindly. Soon, in full force, our army would descend upon the City of Ice, capture it, destroy Tarrano—rescue Elza.

Rescue Elza! Ah, there lay the difficulty which I never dared contemplate in detail. How would we rescue her? Tarrano would treat her kindly, now during his own security. But if, at the last, he saw his own defeat, his death perhaps impending—would he treat her kindly then?

I loved Elza very deeply. A new torture came from it now. Did she love me—or Tarrano? I remembered the gentleness of the man with her. His dignity, his power—his undoubted genius. And who, what was I? A mere news-gatherer. A man of no force, and little personality. A nonentity. Sometimes as in my jealousy I contemplated Elza with Tarrano now, I felt that he was everything a young girl would fancy. How could she help loving him?

At night, when sleep would not come to me, I would lie tossing, thinking of it. Did Elza love me—or Tarrano? Once I had thought she loved me. But she had never said so.

It was out of this constant thinking of Elza that the first of the incidents I have mentioned, arose. There came to me one night the feeling that Elza was near me. I awoke from half sleep to full wakefulness. In my bedroom, upon the low couch on which I lay, the aural lights of Venus spread their vivid tints. The palace was silent; I sat up, pressing my palms to my throbbing temples.

Elza was coming nearer to me!

I knew it. Not by any of my bodily senses. A knowledge, which suddenly I realized that I had. A moment, and then I was conscious of her voice! No sound; my ears heard nothing. Yet my brain was aware of familiar tones. I recognized them, as one can remember how a loved voice sounded when last it was heard.

But this was no memory. A present actuality; it rang soundless in my brain. Elza's voice. Anxious! Frightened!

At first only the confused tone of it. Then the consciousness of words. Two reiterated words:

"Danger! Jac! Danger! Jac!"

I waited no longer, but rushed to Georg and Maida—beautiful Maida in her robe of sleep with her white hair tumbling about her. Georg half awake—yet almost at once he could understand me, and explain.

Natural, instinctive telepathy! It had not occurred to me. I had never bothered to develop telepathy; and indeed with any degree of fluency—or even of surety of reception—the phenomenon is difficult to perfect. Yet, as I knew, with a loved one absent upon whom one's thoughts dwell constantly—in time of stress telepathy is occasionally automatically established.

It was so in Georg and Maida's case, back there in the Mountain Station on Earth. Telepathy was the explanation of Georg's mysterious actions as he stood there before the sending mirrors, crossed the room in confusion, and like one in a dream leaped from the window to be seized by Tarrano's spies. Maida had been abducted a moment before. Georg's brain became aware of it. Her danger, the appeal she sent to him.

So it now seemed to be from Elza to me. Georg, out of bed now beside me, urged me to greater efforts of concentration, that I might understand what message Elza was sending.

"Elza! Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"

I murmured the words to myself as with all my power, I thought them over and over, flinging out the thoughts like radio waves into the night. Mysterious vibrations! In an instant, from here—everywhere in the universe. Who knows their character? Their speed? The speed of light a laggard perhaps beside the flash of a thought! Waves of my thoughts, speeding through the night, with only one receiving station in all the universe! Would Elza's brain capture them?

"Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"

"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"

It was very clear. The words rang in my head. But always only those two. And then at last—it may have been an hour later—other words:

"Death! The black cloud of death! You can see it coming! See it coming! Death! To you Jac! To all of you in the city!"

We rushed to the casement. The broad lagoon before the palace lay like a mirror tinted red and purple. Beyond it, palms and the outlines of houses lay dark against the star-strewn sky.

But out there, over the city, in the distance a dark patch obscured the stars. We watched it breathless. A dark patch which soon took shape. A cloud! A black cloud—unnatural of aspect somehow—a rolling, low-lying black cloud. Growing larger; spreading out side-wise; sweeping toward the city on a wind which had not reached us.

"Jac! Jac dear! Danger! Death to all the city!"

Elza's words were still beating in my brain. Soundless words of terror and warning!

"Death, Jac! Death to all the city! The black cloud of death!"



CHAPTER XXVII

Tarrano the Man

"Wake up, Lady Elza."

A silence. His hand touched her white shoulder. "Wake up, Lady Elza. It is I—Tarrano."

Elza opened her eyes, struggling to confused wakefulness. The white walls of her sleeping room in Tarrano's palace of the City of Ice were stained with the dim red radiance of her night light. She opened her eyes to meet Tarrano's inscrutable face as he bent over her couch; became conscious of his low, insistent, "Wake up, Lady Elza;" and his fingers half caressing the filmy scarf that covered her shoulders.

Terror flooded Elza; that time she had always feared, had come. Yet she had the presence of mind to smile, drawing away from him and sitting up, with the fur bed-covering pulled to her chin.

"Tarrano? Why—"

He straightened, and into his expression came apology.

"I frightened you, Lady Elza? I'm sorry. I would not do that for all the worlds."

Her terror receded. The old Tarrano over whom she still held sway. She summoned a look of haughty questioning.

"You are bold, Tarrano—"

His gesture was deprecating; he seated himself on the edge of her couch. She saw now that he was fully dressed and armed with a belt of many instruments.

At this time Elza had been in the City of Ice for a considerable period. Irksome, worried days of semi-imprisonment; and through them, Tarrano's attitude toward her was unchanged. She saw little of him; he seemed very busy, though to what end, and what his activities, she could not learn.

Within the palace, half as guard, half as maid-servant, Tara was generally Elza's only companion. And then, one evening when Tara's smouldering jealousy broke forth in Tarrano's presence and Elza uttered an involuntary cry of fear, Tara was summarily removed.

Elza was left practically alone; until at length came this night when invading the privacy of her sleeping room, Tarrano awakened her. He sat now upon the edge of her couch.

"I have a confession to make to you, Lady Elza." He smiled slightly. "As you know, there is no one else in our habitable universe to whom I would speak thus frankly."

"I am honored, Tarrano. But here, at this hour of sleep—"

He waved away the words. "I have asked your pardon for that. My confession—as once before, Lady Elza, I come to you most humbly, confessing that my affairs are not going as I would like. You do not know, of course, that Mars—"

"I know nothing," she interrupted. "You have kept me from the news-mirrors, if indeed there are any here—"

"Mars revolted against me," he went on imperturbably. "The Little People are again in control. Fools! They do not realize, those governors of Mars, that their public ultimately will demand this Everlasting Life of mine—the Brende secret—"

She frowned. "No one knows better than you, Tarrano, that my father's secret does not bestow immortality. To cure disease, in a measure—"

He checked her; his smile was ironical. "You and I know that, Lady Elza. We know that on this plane we would not want everlasting life if we could have it. But the public does not know that—let us not discuss it. I was telling you—confessing to you—I have lost Mars. Temporarily, of course. Meanwhile, I have been preparing to invade the Earth." His gesture was expansive. "I have been planning, from here in the Cold Country, to send armies to your Earth."

He paused an instant. "I think now I shall wait until the next opposition—we are far from Earth now, but all in good time we shall be closer.... Strange is it not, that I should like to tell you my plans?"

She did not answer; she watched his smile fading into a look of grimness. "In the Great City, here on Venus, they are getting ready to attack me. Did you know that?"

"No," she said.

"You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?"

"Yes."

"And you hoped they were, of course?"

"Yes," she repeated.

He frowned. "You are disconcertingly frank, Lady Elza. Well, let me tell you this—it would come to nothing. The Rhaals are with them—all the resources of the Central State are to be thrown against me. Yet it will come to nothing."

Her heart leaped. Tarrano was making his last stand. Beyond the logical sense of his words, she could see it in his eyes. He knew he was making his last stand. He knew too that she was now aware of it; and that behind the confidence of his words—that was the confession he was making.

Tarrano's last stand! There seemed to her then something illogically pathetic in it all. This man of genius—so short a time ago all but the Emperor of three worlds. And now, with them slipping from his grasp, reduced to this last stronghold in the bleak fastnesses of the Cold Country, awaiting the inevitable attack upon him. Something pathetic....

"I'm sorry, Tarrano."

As though mirrored from her own expression, a wistful look had come to him. Her words drove it away.

"Sorry? There is nothing to be sorry about. Their attack will come to nothing ... yet—" He stopped short, and then as though deciding to say what he had begun, he added:

"Yet, Lady Elza, I am no fool to discard possibilities. I may be defeated." He laughed harshly. "To what depths has Tarrano fallen that he can voice such a possibility!"

He leaned toward her and into his tone came a greater earnestness than she ever heard in it before.

"Lady Elza, if they should be successful, they would not capture me—for I would die fighting. You understand that, don't you?"

She met his eyes; the gleam in them held her. Forgetful of herself, she had allowed the fur to drop from her: she sat bolt upright, the dim red light tinting the scarf that lay like gossamer around her white shoulders. His hand came out and touched her arm, slipped up to her shoulder and rested there, but she did not feel it.

"I will die fighting," he repeated. "You understand that?"

"Yes," she breathed.

"And you would be sorry?"

"Oh—"

"Would you?"

"Yes, I—"

He did not relax. His eyes burned her: but deep in them she saw that quality of wistfulness, of pleading.

"You, my Elza, they would rescue—unless I killed you."

She did not move, but within her was a shudder.

"You know I would kill you, my Elza, rather than give you up?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"I—wonder. Sometimes I think I would." Suddenly he cast aside all restraint. "Oh, my Elza—that we should have to plan such things as these! You, sitting there—you are so beautiful! Your eyes—limpid pools with terror lurking in them when I would have them misty with love! My Elza—"

The woman in her responded. A wave of color flooded her throat and face. But she drew away from him.

"My Elza! Can you not tell me that even in defeat I may be victorious? It is you more than all else that I desire."

Without warning his arms were around her, holding her fiercely to him, his face close to hers.

"Elza! With you, defeat would be victory. And with you—now—if you would but say the word—together we will surmount every obstacle.—"

He was kissing her, bending back her head, and his grip upon her shoulder was bruising the flesh. No longer Tarrano, Conqueror of the universe, just Tarrano the man. Terror surged within Elza's heart.

"Tarrano!"

"Elza dear—my Elza—"

"Tarrano!" She fought with him. "Tarrano, do you dare—I tell you—"

The frightened pleading of a woman at bay. And then abruptly he cast her off. His laugh was grim.

"What a fool I am! Tarrano the weakling!" He leaped from the couch and began pacing the room. "Tarrano the weakling! To what depths has Tarrano fallen!"

He stopped before her. "I ask your pardon, Lady Elza. This has been madness. Forget my words—all madness."

His tone was crisp. "Human weakness to which I did not realize I was so prone made me talk like a fool. Desire you above the conquest of the universe? Absurd! Lies that men whisper into women's ears! All lies!"

Was he telling the real truth now? Or was this a mood of recrimination? Bitterness that his love was scorned. Again his gaze held her, but in it now she could see nothing but a cruel inflexible purpose.

"Tarrano in defeat! That is impossible, Lady Elza. You will very shortly realize that, for I am going to show you how, single-handed, I can make it impossible. Show you with your own eyes. It was my purpose in coming to waken you—my purpose, when your beauty led me into weakness incredible.... Get up, Lady Elza."

She stared. With folded arms he stood emotionless regarding her.

"Get up, I tell you. Put on those garments you wore when we arrived. We are going travelling again."

He stood waiting; and beneath his gaze she shrank back, drawing the fur rug over her.

A smile of contempt parted his lips. "You hesitate? You think I am still a weakling? You over-rate your beauty, Lady Elza.... Make haste, I command you. We must start very soon."

She summoned her voice. "Start? Where? What are you—"

"No questions, Lady Elza. Not now. Make haste—"

He jerked from her the fur covering, flung it across the room, and with the same gesture turned away impersonally. Trembling, she rose from the couch and donned the garments he had indicated, while he stood brooding by the window, gazing through its transparent pane at the glistening frozen city which was all that remained of his empire.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Thing in the Forest

"All in good time, Lady Elza, you will know where we are."

Alone, unnoticed, they had departed from the City of Ice on a small flying platform similar to the one they had used before. The night had passed; day, with a new warmth to the sun, came again. Flying low, with Tarrano in a grim, moody silence, and Elza staring downward.

The aural lights were overhead when at the last Tarrano brought the platform to rest. A thick, luxuriant forest. Huge trees with rope-like roots and heavy vines. Others with leaves like the ears of an elephant. And the ground hidden by almost impenetrable underbrush.

They had landed in a tiny glade beside a dank marsh of water, where ferns shoulder high were embanked. It was dark, the stars and the tints of the auroral lights were barely distinguishable through the mass of foliage overhead. Elza gazed around her fearsomely. The air was heavy, oppressive. Redolent with the perfume of wild flowers and the smell of mouldering, steaming soil.

"All in good time. Lady Elza," Tarrano repeated. "You will know where we are presently; we are closer to human habitation than you would think."

Elza's heart pounded. As they were descending she had noticed a glow of light in the sky ahead. As though by intuition now, she seemed to realize that they were not far from the Great City. Her thoughts leaped to me—Jac Hallen—there in Maida's palace. Tarrano's grim, sinister purpose was as yet unknown to her. But she guessed that in it, danger impended for me—for all of us in the Great City.

"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"

Her thoughts instinctively reiterated the two words uppermost in her mind. And I think that it was just about then when they awakened me.

Leaving the vehicle, Tarrano commanded Elza to follow him; and he began picking his way through the jungle. A light was in his hand; it penetrated but a short distance. A quivering beam of yellow light; then Elza saw that upon occasion, as Tarrano's finger slid a lever, the beam narrowed, intensified to a bright lavender. And now where it struck, the vegetation withered. Blackened, sometimes burst into tiny flame, and parted thus before them as they advanced.

The jungle was silent; yet, as Elza listened, beneath the crackle of the burning twigs she could hear the tiny myriad voices of insect life. Startled voices as the heat of Tarrano's beam struck them. Rustling leaves; breaking twigs; things scurrying and sliding away, unseen in the darkness.

Once or twice a crashing—some monster disturbed in his rest plunging away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with squat, twisted legs; a thing larger than a man. A grotesque naked monstrosity almost in human form. A travesty—gruesome mockery of mankind. A face, three-eyed...

The thing lay writhing in the underbrush, mouthing, mumbling and then screaming—the shrill scream of death agony. And the horrible smell of burning flesh as Tarrano's light played upon it...

"Come away, Lady Elza. I'm sorry. I had hoped to avoid an affair such as this."

Sickened, shuddering, Elza clung close to Tarrano as he led her onward.

An hour or more; and now Elza could see in the distance the lights of the Great City.

"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"

The idea of thought-transference had come to her. With all the power of her mind she was thinking her warning to me, praying that it might reach me.

"Single-handed, Lady Elza. You shall see now how, single-handed, I make impossible any attack upon Tarrano."

In her abstraction Elza had almost forgotten herself and Tarrano; his voice reached her—his voice grim and with a gloating, sinister triumph in it. He was bending to the ground. Elza saw that they had come to an open space—an eminence rising above the forest. Underfoot was a stony soil; in places, bare black rock with an outcropping of red, like the cinnabar from which on Earth we melt the Heavy-metal.[23]

[Footnote 23: Quicksilver.]

Tarrano faced her. "Nature, my Lady Elza, is fair to my purpose. I knew I would find some such deposit as this." He turned his face to one side attentively, and darted his light—harmlessly yellow now—to where a lone tree showed its great leaves beginning to waver in a night breeze.

"Nature is with us! See there, my Elza! A wind is coming—a wind from us to—them!"

The breeze grew—a breeze blowing directly over the forest to where in the distance the lights of the Great City showed plainly. Tarrano added:

"I had thought to create the wind." He tapped his belt. "Create the wind to carry our onslaught. But you see, it is unnecessary. Nature is kind, and far more efficacious than our man-made devices."

"Jac! Danger!" She stood there in the breeze, watching Tarrano—his purpose as yet no more than guessed—praying that I might receive her warning.

Tarrano selected his spot—a tiny little cone of rock no bigger than his thumb. He beckoned Elza.

"Stand close, and watch. You shall see how from the merest spark, a conflagration may ensue."

The cylinder in his hand darted forth a needle-like shaft—a light of intense purple. It touched the tiny cone of rock, and he held it there.

"A moment. Be patient, my Elza."

The point of rock seemed presently to melt. Like a tiny volcano, at their feet, lava from it was flowing down. A little stream of melted rock, viscous, bubbling a trifle; red at the edges, white within, and with wisps of smoke curling up from it.

Elza stared with the fascination of horror, for now tiny tongues of flame were licking about. Blue tongues, licking the air, vanishing into wisps of black smoke.

Tarrano snapped off his ray. But the tongues of flame stayed alive. Spreading slowly, soundlessly, their heat now melting the ground.

A breath of the smoke touched Elza's face. Pungent, acrid. It stopped her breathing. She choked, coughed heavily to expel it.

"Come away, Lady Elza. Let us watch from a safer distance."

He led her from the hillock, up the wind to where at the edge of the forest they stood gazing.

The blue fire had spread over a distance of several feet. A sluggish, boiling, bubbling area of flame. Tongues now the height of a man. And from them, rolling upward, a heavy black cloud—deadly fumes thick, blacker than the night, spreading out, welling forward over the forest toward the Great City slumbering in its falsely peaceful security.

At last Elza knew. Stood there, cold, shuddering, thinking with all the power of her mind and being:

"Death, Jac! Death to all the City! The black cloud of death!"

Oblivious to Tarrano she stood until at last the rocky eminence was one great mass of the surging blue fire. And the black cloud, compact as a thunder-head, rolled onward.

"You can see it coming! Death Jac! Death to all the City!"

A sudden madness descended upon Elza. She felt abruptly that her warning was futile, felt an overpowering desire to run. Run somewhere—anywhere, away from the lurid sight she was facing. Or run perhaps, to the Great City; to race with that black cloud of death; to run fast and far, and burst into our palace to warn us.

Tarrano himself lost in triumphant contemplation of what he had done, for the moment was heedless of Elza's presence. With white face upon which the blue glare had settled like a mask of death, Elza turned silently from him. Forgetful of that horrible thing they had encountered—others of its kind which might be lurking about—she turned silently and plunged into the black depths of the forest.



CHAPTER XXIX

A Woman's Scream

"The black Cloud of Death!"

We stood there at the casement of the palace, gazing with a growing terror at the visible evidence of the tragedy which threatened. A black cloud off there in the distance, spreading out, rolling inexorably toward us. And then came the wind, and with it a breath of the black monster—a choking, horrible suggestion of the death rolling already over the city.

We must have been fascinated at the casement for some considerable time. Elza's thought messages had ceased. Abruptly I came to myself.

"The Black Cloud of Death!" I turned to Georg and Maida. "Alarm the city! Arouse them all! Alarm—"

Maida's face was white: she flung off Georg's arm which had been protectingly around her. "The siren—"

Terrible moments, those that followed. Confusion; panic; death!

The public siren in the tower by the lagoon entrance shrilled its warning. The danger lights blazed out. The city came to life. Lights sprang up everywhere. People—with the daze of sleep still upon them—appeared at the casements; on the roof-tops; on the canal steps they appeared, fumbling with their boats. Panic!

A pandemonium. Aircraft, such as could so hastily be mustered, swept overhead. A glare of lights everywhere. The shrill voice of the siren stilled, to make audible the broadcast warnings—stentorian tones screaming: "The Black Cloud of Death! Escape from the city! Escape to Industriana!"

Warning, advice, command! But over it all, the breath of the black cloud now lay heavy. The lights were dimmed by it. Everywhere—to every deepest recess of the city—to every inner room where to escape it many had fled—its deadly choking breath was penetrating.

Within the palace was turmoil. We had an air-vehicle on a landing-stage nearby; but Georg and Maida would not leave at once. Rulers of the Central State, as a Director might stick to his crumbling Tower, they stayed now in the Great City. Encouraging the people. Maida's voice, futilely attempting to broadcast over the uproar. Georg commanding the official air-vessels to load with refugees; himself struggling to direct the jam of boats toward the embarking stages.

We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue, though I had closed every casement. Ourselves, choking already; then gasping; and with no time or thought to procure a mask. The chemical room, from whence we might have secured apparatus to purify our air, had been abandoned before we thought to seek it out. I dashed into it, my breath held. Its casements were open; its air thick-blue with the fumes; its staff long since fled. I ran back to Georg and Maida, gasping, my lungs on fire, my head roaring.

"No use! Abandoned!"

The department of weather control where—had we been forewarned—we might have found means to divert the wind by another of our own creation—was deserted by its staff at the first alarm.

"No use! Georg—Maida—let us go!"

The mirrors all about us in the instrument room were going dark; the horrible scenes of death throughout the city which they pictured were vanishing. The public lights were going out; the broadcast voices were ceasing.

The city now was out of control. But still the lagoon outside was packed with boats—overloaded boats.... Screams of terror, choked into silence ... boats with frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find a quicker, happier death ... a woman with a babe in her arms on a housetop across the lagoon—the infant already dead; the crazed mother flinging it down into the water, herself following with a long, gasping scream...

At last Georg pulled at me—no longer could we speak—pulled at me, and with Maida between us, we fled. The air outside was worse. In the dimness, our landing stage seemed belans away. The flagged area between us and the stage—a space of square-cut metal flagging, bordering the lagoon—was littered with bodies. Dead—or dying. People even now staggering from landed boats—staggering blindly, stumbling over bodies, falling and lying always where they had fallen.

With our own senses fading, we groped our way forward. Soon we were separated. I saw Maida fall and Georg pick her up, but I was powerless to reach them.

The landing stage seemed so far away. The dead and dying beneath my feet obstructed me as I staggered over them. A woman, reeling toward me, flung her arms about my neck with an iron grip of despair. I stared into her face, purple almost with its congested blood, her mouth gaping, her blood-shot eyes bulging; and even with the terror distorting them, I saw beneath it their look of despairing appeal...

Her arms clinging to me desperately; but with a curse I flung her to the ground and reeled onward.

Without knowing it, I had come to the brink of the water's edge. The flagging seemed to drop away. I fell. Dimly I heard the splash as I struck the water; and felt a grateful cooling sense as it closed over me.

I am a strong, instinctive swimmer. I did not breathe, and when I rose to the surface, the single swift breath I took was purer than any I had had for half an hour past. My head cleared a little; swimming instinctively, and with cautious breaths, I found that I was able to go on.

I know now that by some vagary of chance—of fate if you will—I had struck a surface area where breathable air still remained. I swam, striving to plan, to think where I might be swimming. Yet it was all a phantasmagoria, with only the strength of my muscles and the instinct to preserve my life remaining to direct me. Swimming endlessly ... swimming ... taking a half-gasp of breath ... swimming ... trying to think ... or dreaming ... was it all a dream?...

When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had passed on; the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us.

Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence—the brooding silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida—Georg; they seemed like people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to the Rhaal City of Industriana. I had been trying to get there. I must get there now—join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it.

Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In a daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning, with only that one idea—to get to Industriana; and in the background of my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me. Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I wandered.

At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky. Insects—and sometimes larger beings—leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I did not notice them.

And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth—a black thicket which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh—I was transfixed by a woman's scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A crashing of the underbrush, and a woman's scream of terror. It stopped my breath, turned me cold.

Elza!



CHAPTER XXX

The Monster

I stood frozen with horror; but as my brain cleared—awake at last to full rationality and consciousness—beneath the horror came a surging joy of the knowledge that at last Elza was near me. The scream was repeated; inactive no longer, I dashed the thicket branches apart with my arms and plunged forward through the darkness.

Ahead of me the thickets opened into a sort of clearing. I saw the sky, the stars—paling stars with the first flush of dawn overpowering them. I stood at the edge of an open space in the dim, flat-grey illumination of morning twilight.

Elza! She was there, standing near a huge isolated tree; Elza, pale, trembling, a hand pressed against her mouth in terror; disheveled, her garments dirty and torn with her wanderings through the forest.

A swift glimpse as momentarily I paused; a second or two only, but the scene was impressed upon my brain as actinic light upon a photo-screen. Close by Elza, partially behind her, I saw something small, no taller than Elza's waist. A naked thing of sleek, glistening skin. The monstrosity of a human child; a bulging head, wavering upon a neck incapable of supporting it; a thick round body; twisted, misshapen limbs. A face ... human? It made my gorge rise with its gruesome suggestion of humanity. Nostrils—no nose; a mouth, lipless, but red like a curved gash with upturned corners to make the travesty of a grin; a triangle of watery eyes, goggling. Senselessly, it stood watching Elza with a dull, vacant curiosity. Not human, this thing! Yet monstrously repulsive in its hideous suggestion of an idiot child.

Elza was not facing it; my gaze instinctively followed hers to the tree. Crowning horror! The adult of this thing upon the ground hung swaying by a thick hand and arm from a low limb; hung, then dropped. Growling, mouthing as though it would try and form human words of menace, it picked itself up and shambled toward Elza.

I leaped for them. Elza seemed too terrified to run. The thing reached her, towered over her; seized her in its arms. She screamed—the agony of revolt and terror; but over her voice rose my own shout of rage, and abruptly the thing dropped her and turned to confront me. Snarling, glaring with its three hideous blood-shot eyes; waving its thick, bent arms.

I had no weapons save those with which nature had endowed me. The regret of that came as a fleeting thought; and then I crashed into the thing; my fist, passing its awkward guard, struck it full in the face. I sickened. Even in the heat of combat a nausea swept me. For no solid flesh and bone met my blow, like the shell of an egg, my fist crashed into and through its face.

Warm, sticky moisture ... a stench ...

The thing had toppled backward, with me sprawling upon its bloated bulk. It struggled, writhed ... Its arms gripped me, its huge fingers clutched my throat ... I caught a glimpse of its smashed face ... so close, I turned away ... a face of yellow-white pulp ...

My fist cracked and sank into its chest. I pounded, smashed; broke the shell of its distended body ... noisome ... the revulsion, the nausea of it all but overcame me.

At last the thing lay still; and from the wet, sticky foulness of it I rose and stood shuddering. Elza lay on the ground; but she had risen upon one elbow and I saw that she was unharmed save for the shock of terror through which she had passed—a mitigated shock with the knowledge now that I was with her, and that I too was uninjured.

The infant thing had vanished. I hastened forward.

"Elza! Elza, dear—"

Joy lighted her face.

"Jac!"

I would have lifted her up; but the consciousness of my own foulness—the yellow-white slime streaked with red which smeared my arms, splattered my clothing—gave me pause. In the growing light, beyond the clearing, I caught the silver sheen of water. Without a word I ran for it; a shimmering pool the existence of which no doubt had drawn these grewsome beings of the forest into its vicinity. To the cleansing water I ran, plunged in, purged myself of that horrible foulness which human senses could not endure.

When I returned, Elza was upon her feet. Recovered at last she flung herself into my arms. Impulsive; seeking protection as she clung to me; fear; the let-down of overwrought nerves as she stood and clung and sobbed upon my shoulder.

It was all of that; but oh! it was more than that as well. My Elza, raising her tear-stained face and kissing me. Murmuring, "Jac, I love you!" Murmuring her love: "Jac dear, you're safe! I've wanted so long to be with you again—I've been so frightened—so frightened—"

Giving me back my kisses unreserved; holding me with eager arms ... Tarrano? The memory of him came to me. How foolish my fears, my jealousy! That man of genius ... conqueror of worlds ...

But my Elza loved me!...



CHAPTER XXXI

Industriana

It must have been two days later when at last we were rescued by the Rhaal patrol and taken to Industriana. Back there in the forest I had suddenly remembered that the mate to the thing I had killed would doubtless be lurking in the vicinity. We fled. Subsisting on what food of the wilds we could find, at last we were picked up and taken to the City of Work.

The Great City had been destroyed. Wanton capital of the Central State, we learned now that it lay dead. To outward aspect, unharmed. Fair, serene, alluring as ever it lay there on its shimmering waters; but the life within it, was dead. Refugees—a quarter perhaps of the inhabitants—had escaped; hourly the search patrols were picking them up, bringing them to Industriana. Rescue parties were searching the city, to find any who might still be alive.

And out in the forest lay a great pile of ashes, still exhaling a thin wisp of its deadly breath—where Tarrano had created the Black Cloud; lost his captive Elza, but doubtless had escaped himself back to his City of Ice.

We found Georg and Maida safe at Industriana. Marvelous city! Elza had never seen it before. She sat gazing breathless as from the air on the patrol vessel, we approached it.

The land of this region was a black, rocky soil upon which vegetation would not grow. A rolling land, grimly black, metallic; with outcroppings of ore, red and white and with occasional patches of thin white sand whereon a prickly blue grass struggled for life.

Rolling hills; and then places where nature had upheaved into a turmoil. Huge naked black crags; buttes; hills with precipitous black sides of sleek metal; narrow canyons with tumultuous water flowing through them.

In such a place stood Industriana. The City of Work! Set in an area where nature lay scarred, twisted in convulsion, its buildings clung to every conceivable slope and in every position. Many-storied buildings—residences and factories indiscriminately intermingled. All built in sober, solid rectangles of the forbidding black stone.

A long steep slope from an excavated quarry deep in the ground, ran straight up to a commanding hilltop—the slope set with an orderly array of buildings clinging to it in terraces. Buildings huge, or tiny huts; all anchored in the rear to the ground, and set upon metal girders in the front. Bisecting the slope was a vertical street—a broad escalator of moving steps, one half going upward, the other down. Beside it, a series of other escalators for the traffic of moving merchandise.

Cross streets on the hill were spider bridges, clinging with thin, stiff legs. And at the summit of the hill stood a tremendous funnel belching flame and smoke into the sky.

To one side of the hill lay a bowl-like depression with a single squat building in its center—a low building of many funnels; and about it the black yawning mouths of shafts down into the ground—mines vomiting ore, broken chunks of the metallic rock coming up as though by the invisible magic of magnetism, hunting through the air in an arc to fall with a clatter into great bins above the smelter.

In another place, at the bottom of a canyon roared a surging torrent of river. A harnessed river; plunging into turbines; emerging to tumble over a cascade, its every drop caught by turning buckets spilled again at the bottom. Water pursuing its surging course downward, its power used again and again. The canyon dry at one place near the lower edge of the city, the water all electrified, resolved into piped hydrogen and oxygen. Like a tremendous clock ticking, the water, momentarily dammed back, was released in a torrent to the electrolysis vats. The hissing gases, under tremendous pressure, raised up the heavy-weighted tops of two expanding tanks. Another tick of this giant clock—the gases released, were merged again to water. The tops of the tanks lowered, each in turn, one coming down as the other went up—hundreds of tons of weight—their slow downward pull geared to scores of whirling wheels—the power shifted to dynamos scattered throughout the city.

It was the twilight of nightfall when we arrived over Industriana. A thousand funnels and chimneys belched their flame and smoke—the flame tinting the sky with a lurid yellow-green glare, the smoke hanging like a dim blue gauze through which everything seemed unreal, infernal.

From the city rose a roar—the myriad sounds of industry mingled by the magic of distance. And as we got closer, the roar resolved into its component parts; the grinding of gears; clicking of belts and chains; whirring of dynamos and motors; shrill electrical screams; the clattering of falling ore; clanking of swiftly moving merchandise, bound in metal, magnetized to monorail cars shifting it to warehouses on the nearby hills. And over it all flashed the brilliant signal lights of the merchandise traffic directors whose stentorian electrical voices broadcasting commands sounded above the city's noises.

An inferno of activity. A seeming confusion; yet the aspect of confusion was a fallacy, for beneath it lay a precision—an orderly precision as calm and exact as the mind of the Director of a Signal Tower counting off the split seconds of his beams.

An orderly precision—the brain of one man guiding and dominating everything; at his desk alone for long hours throughout the days and nights. A quiet, grey-haired gentleman; unhurried, unharassed, seemingly almost inactive; always seated at his empty desk smoking endless arrant-cylinders. The dominating business brain of Industriana.



CHAPTER XXXII

Departure

Georg and Maida were very busy in Industriana; and now Elza and I were admitted to their activities—Elza and I, with our new-found love and happiness neglected for the greater thing, the welfare of the nation upon which hinged the very safety of Venus itself; and Mars; and our own fair Earth.

Industriana, greatest commercial and manufacturing center of Venus, had been given over momentarily to the preparations for war. The Rhaals had at last turned from industry to the conquest of Tarrano. Preparations were almost completed; our armies were to start within a very few times of sleep.

I had had no experience in warfare; but the history of our Earth had told me much of it. The enlisting and training of huge armies of men; arming them; artillery; naval and air forces; commissary and supplies; a gigantic business organization to equip, move and maintain millions of fighting men.

Ancient warfare! This—our modern way—was indeed dissimilar. It was, from most aspects, simplicity itself. We had no need of men in great numbers. I found something like a single thousand of men being organized and trained. And equipped with weapons to outward aspects comparatively simple.

On all the three worlds the age of explosives of the sort history records, was long since passed. Electronic weapons—all basically the same. And I found now that it was the power for them, developed, transformed into its various characteristics and stored for individual transportation and use, which was mainly engrossing Industriana.

I had opportunity, that first night, of meeting Geno-Rhaalton—the present head of that famous Rhaalton line, for generations hereditary leaders of their race.

We found him, this Geno-Rhaalton, in a secluded, somber little office of black metallic walls, grey hangings and rug, a block of carved stone his desk, and a few of the stiff-backed stone chairs, each with its single prim cushion.

The office was beyond sight and sound of the busy city. His desk was empty, save for the array of apparatus around its edges—the clicking tabulators which recorded, sorted, analyzed and summarized for him every minute detail with which the city was engaged.

Machines of business detail. We had them, of course, in the Inter-Allied offices of Greater New York. I have seen our Divisional Director voice into a mouthpiece the demand for some statistical summary computed up to five minutes before, and covering his entire Atlantic Division. He would have it, recorded in cold print before him, within a moment.

Yet, compared to the Rhaalton efficiency, our own methods seemed antiquated indeed. This man was in touch with every transpiring detail simultaneously; yet not confused by them, for every detail was also combined into a whole—to be examined for itself if he wished. Visually as well, the entire city lay before his gaze—the walls of the office were lined with rows and tiers of small mirrors; receivers and mouthpieces connected him with everything. Sights, sounds, and even smells of the various factories were available to him—smells when his sense of smell might be necessary for the testing of some elusive gas.

Without moving his physical body his presence was in effect transported wherever throughout the city he wished to be. A man of tremendous concentration, to handle but one thing at a time; with all the power of his brain to give instant decision, and then to forget it utterly.

I found him a rather small man; smooth-shaven; grey-haired; a grave face and demeanor, with dark eyes solemn with thought, yet twinkling often when he spoke. A man of flabby muscles and gentle voice; seemingly unforceful, and with a personality likable, but hardly dominating.

Instinctively I found myself comparing him to Tarrano. Tarrano's strong, wiry body. The flash of his eye; his inscrutability, always suggesting menace; the power, the genius of his personality—the force radiating from him which no one could mistake. His intellectual power—his concentration—certainly the equal of this little leader of the Rhaals.

Tarrano the Conqueror! Tarrano—man of destiny—risen from nothing and by the sheer genius of his will throwing three worlds into chaos, at one stage combining two worlds into his self-created Empire; and menacing the third. Surely Tarrano was a greater man than this Rhaalton. I knew it; much as I hated Tarrano I was forced to admit it.

Yet as I stood there acknowledging the soft-spoken greeting of Rhaalton, I had the swift premonition that Tarrano was going down into defeat. And that this little man, without moving from his desk or raising his voice, would be the main factor in bringing it about.

And I wondered why such a thing could be. I know why now. Tarrano, with all his genius, lacked just one quality which this little man had in abundance. The milk of human kindness—humanity—a radiating force the essence of which paradoxically was the unforceful gentleness of him. The Almighty—as we each of us in our hearts must envisage our God—is just, but gentle, humane in His justness. And with all the genius in the universe—the war-like power—the weapons—the cohorts—all the wonderful armament of war—you cannot transgress the Will of the Almighty. Against all human logic of what should be victory—you will meet defeat....

The thoughts fled through my mind and vanished into the realities of the present. Rhaalton was saying:

"We will be ready within another time of sleep. Jac Hallen, you wish, I suppose, to go out with our forces?"

"Oh yes," I said.

He smiled. "The eagerness of youth for danger! And yet is very necessary—very laudable—"

He passed a hand across his forehead with a weary gesture—a gesture which seemed to me despondent. Could this be our vaunted leader? My heart sank.

He added abruptly: "We shall conquer this Tarrano—but at what cost!" His smile was wistful. "We must choose the lesser evil."

Still gently, almost sorrowfully, but with a directness and clarity of thought which amazed me, he plunged into a detailed account of what Georg was to do in command of our forces. My own part in it, already planned by him in detail. Maida's part. Elza's. The division of Rhaal maidens.

Girlhood in war! It seemed very strange. Yet the Rhaal maidens were going as a matter of course, since there were some activities for which they were more fitted than the men. With all the Rhaal maidens going, Elza and Maida would not stay behind. And though Maida—a wife—was objected to by Rhaalton, he had yielded finally to her pleading.

I will not now detail our plans or our armament. We had, in general, one thousand unmarried men, in five divisions of two hundred each. They were largely Rhaals, with the few Earth men previously sent us; fifty perhaps of the most loyal slaans; and a scattering of the other races of the Venus Central State. A few—thirty perhaps—of the Little People of Mars. In addition, another hundred men, individually in charge of the larger apparatus and the vehicles. And the division of two hundred girls.

Our journey to the Cold Country was to be made on flying platforms and vehicles of various sizes; some large to carry fifty passengers or more; others so small that only one person could be carried. These latter, the girls were to use. I call them platforms. In this size they were not, literally speaking, much more than the transporting mechanism fastened to the girl's waist.

There were also heavier vehicles carrying the larger apparatus; and several of fairly large size with food, clothing, housing equipment—supplies of all kinds for our maintenance abroad. A dozen vehicles also carrying huge skeleton towers, encircled at the top with ray projectors. A vehicle with a single room—an instrument room fully equipped by means of which Geno-Rhaalton at his desk would be in contact with our every move. And largest vehicle of all—in aspect a solid, squat affair almost of a size for inter-planetary travel—our power plant.

We started at dawn of the second morning after my own arrival in Industriana. The girls were to travel to the borders of the Cold Country on the larger vehicles, but they wished to start flying individually for the first few helans of the journey for practice. Georg, Maida, Elza and I were to travel in the instrument room.

We massed upon a broad hilltop near the city. In the grey twilight of dawn with a flush of pink in the sky where the sun in a few moments would rise, I stood in the outer doorway of the instrument vehicle. Around me was the confusion of departure. Eager young men; laughing girls, flushed with excitement. The gayety of youth going to war! Young as I was myself, I was struck with the drama, the pathos of it. What would the home-coming be?

Georg, Maida and Elza were with me. Geno-Rhaalton stepped up to us. Bare-headed. A solemn little man, heavy-hearted.

"Good-by," he said simply. "I know you will do your best."

"Jac! Look there!"

I followed Elza's startled gesture to the soft, white clouds which were massed in the sky above us. By what magic of science the thing was accomplished, I know not; but up there in the clouds a gigantic image of Tarrano was materializing! His head and shoulders. Arms folded; his face with a sardonic smile leering down at us! Lips moving. And out of the air about us came his audible, broadcasting words.

"Do your best, my friends!" Ironic mockery! "Coming to conquer Tarrano? Hasten! You are keeping Tarrano waiting most impatiently!"

The giant voice died away into silence; the huge image melted into the clouds and vanished.

Rhaalton looked at us again, expressionless. "Good-by," he repeated. "Do your best."

He turned away abruptly. And then as he walked with a despondent droop, I saw his shoulders suddenly straighten. He flung a hand into the air. The signal to start! From a tower in Industriana a puff of violet light shot up to magnify the signal.

The girls, all in their places, rose into the air. Draperies fluttering, like graceful birds they rose, circled over us in an arc; and then in a long, single line, with officers apart to one side marking them in squads of twenty, they sped into the dimness of distance.

The tower vehicles now were rising. Then the larger platform; the power plant, like a floating building sailing majestically up.

"Come, Jac."

Elza and Maida were inside the instrument room gazing through one of its windows; and Georg drew me within, closing the transparent door after us. Through the windows I could see the line of vehicles following after the girls. Then our instrument room rose quietly, soundlessly. The ground dropped slowly away, then faster; and as we swung about I saw the hilltop beneath us. Its sides were lined with waving spectators; stricken momentarily with awe at the apparition of Tarrano, they had already forgotten it; from every vantage point of Industriana they were frantically waving.

But the hilltop was empty, save for one lone figure—Geno-Rhaalton standing sorrowfully gazing after us.



CHAPTER XXXIII

First Assault

Our spies had informed us that of recent weeks there had arisen about the City of Ice a huge wall behind which Tarrano would make his stand. It was our plan to approach within range of this and establish our power plant as a base from which to direct our offensive. The trip from the Great City was not long. After a few helans our girls ceased flying individually and boarded their appointed vehicles.

In a long single line, armament platforms, the towers, our instrument room, with the power plant bringing up the rear, we sailed forward. There were in our instrument vehicle, Maida, Georg, Elza and myself, the vehicle manned by two pilots and two mechanicians—a slaan, a Mars man, and two Earth men. We were in constant communication with Geno-Rhaalton. And though he enjoined upon us all the necessity for sleeping or resting during the trip, himself sat alert at his desk, unrelaxing. The little mirror on our table showed him sitting there, watching every move we made.

We laid down to rest, but sleep was impossible. Through the panelled transparent floor, I watched the country changing as we advanced; vegetation dwindling; the soil changing to rocky barrenness at the border of the Cold Country. And then the snow-plains, the mute frozen rivers of ice, the mountains.

In the twilight of the Cold Country autumn, we sailed up to the mountains and approached to the City of Ice. Alert, all of us now, as at an altitude of a few thousand feet we circled about, marking time until the power plant had selected its base and landed to make ready for the battle.

Throughout the trip we had expected—had anticipated the possibility—of a surprise attack by Tarrano; an ambush in the open air, perhaps by some means strange to us. But the vision magnifiers, the microphones—encompassing every known range of sight and sound—showed us nothing. Especially at the mountains we had thought to meet opposition. But at first none came. It seemed somehow ominous, this lack of action from Tarrano; and when the leader of our line—a tower vehicle—rose sharply to scale the jagged peaks of the Divide, the flare of a hostile electronic bomb rising came almost as a relief. From the instrument room—forewarned an instant by the hiss of our microphones—I saw the bomb start upward. Slowly as a rocket it mounted—a blurred ball of glowing violet light, quite plain in the dim twilight. I knew that the tower platform at which it was directed would have time to throw out its insulation; I knew that the insulation would doubtless be effective—yet my heart leaped nevertheless. At my hand was a projector; but in those few seconds the tower just in advance of us in the line was quicker. Its ray darted at the violet ball; the soundless explosion threw a wave of sparks about the menaced tower, like a puff—a pricked bubble of soap-film—the violet ball was dissipated. But I saw the menaced tower rock a trifle from the shock.

Geno-Rhaalton's face in the mirror beside me was very solemn. I heard him murmuring something to the other towers, saw their light flash downward, searching the mountain defiles. And as I watched that little image of Rhaalton, I chanced to notice a mirror on Rhaalton's desk. Rhaalton himself was looking at it—a mirror which had been dark, but which now flashed on. An outlaw circuit! The mirror imaged the face of Tarrano. Tarrano grinning ironically!



CHAPTER XXXIV

Invisible Assailants

We did not locate the source of the bomb, and no others rose to assail us. The mountain defiles, so far as our lights could illuminate them, seemed deserted. We passed over the Divide, and on the plateau beyond, we landed. A region of rolling country beneath its snow and ice. The mountains came down sharply to the inner plain—a crescent of mountain range stretching off into the dimness of distance, half encircling this white plateau in the center of which stood the City of Ice. We could just see it at the horizon, the glittering spires of its Ice Palace.

Around the city, completely enveloping it, was a thick circular wall of ice twenty times the height of a man. We were too far away to see it plainly—a turreted wall doubtless armed with projectors throughout its circular length. Our finders would not show it, for it was insulated against them. It stood there grey-white, bleak and apparently deserted.

Georg said: "It's the man's accursed inactivity! Is he going to do nothing?... Our power plant has landed, Jac—there in the foothills—see it drop?" A call from Rhaalton took his attention.

We landed our entire force in the foothills of the mountains. The power plant was there; it looked like a squat industrial building set upon a ledge of ice—a shining cliff-face behind it, a precipice in front. At the foot of the precipice our other vehicles were clustered.

We were there throughout three entire times of sleep, hours strangely the same in that unaltered polar twilight. During them, with the tower platforms set in a ring about us to make an armed camp, we unloaded our apparatus, erected our power controls, prepared the individual circuits, making ready for our offensive. And still—though we, were alert for it—no move from Tarrano.

They were hours during which, with my lack of technical knowledge, I found myself often with nothing to do. Our camp was bustling with activity, but among the now idle girls and many of the young men, there was an air of gayety. They laughed, shouted, played games amid the rocks from which we had long since melted the snow. Once, in what would have been early evening had not the Sun in these latitudes held level like a burned-out ball near the horizon, Elza and I wandered from the camp to climb the cliffs nearby.

Beyond the circle of the camp's heat, the deadly cold of the region assailed us. We had not wished to equip with the individual heating, which for battle would leave us free of heavy garments; instead we swathed ourselves in furs, with the exercise of climbing to aid us in keeping warm.

It was wonderful to be again alone with Elza. Even with what was impending we were young enough to put it momentarily from our minds. Like young lovers clandestinely stealing away to a tryst, we left the camp and hand in hand, climbed up amid the crags. A few hundred feet to one side of the power house, and about the same distance above it, we sat down at last to rest.

The scene from here was picturesque in the extreme. Across the flat, shadowless snowy plain was the wall of ice with the city behind it. All in the far distance, this city wherein our enemy was entrenched; and there were no lights, no movement that we could see. In that drab twilight, it seemed almost unreal.

The plain too, was empty. A few palpably deserted huts, nothing else. Beneath us, snugly anchored there on the ledge, was our power house. No unreality here. Its aerials were mounted; its external dynamos were visibly revolving; from its windows blue shafts of light slanted out; and from it rose the low hum of active power.

Below it, spread over the slightly sloping area of foothill beneath us, lay our encampment. A ring of our tower vehicles, with their projectors mounted and ready, their colored search-beams slowly sweeping the white plain and the dead grey sky. Within their ring, the camp itself. Lighted by the blue-white tubes set upon quadrupeds at intervals; heated by strings of red-glowing wire and the red wire-balls used on Venus. The snow and ice on the ground within the camp had melted, exposing the naked rock.

A scene of blue and red lights and shifting shadows; bustling with activity—figures, tiny from this height, hurrying about. The sounds from it rose to us; the low hum and snap of the weapons being tested; the shouted commands; and sometimes, mingled with it, the laughing shout of a light-hearted girl.

Elza clung close to me. "Everything will be ready soon."

I nodded. "They're going to mount a ray up here on the cliff. Grolier was telling me, for permanent protection—to stay here with the power house when we go out to the attack."

Silent with her thoughts she did not answer me. Sidewise, I regarded her solemn little face encased in its hood of fur. And then clumsily, for our furs were heavy and awkward, I put my arm about her.

"I love you, Elza. It's worth a great deal to be here alone with you."

"Jac, what will he do?" Her gaze was to the far-off City of Ice. "It seems so—so sinister, Jac, this silence from him. This inactivity. It is not like him to be inactive."

"He's there," I said. "Rolltar the Mars man—boastful fellow, blow-hard—he was telling some of us that in his opinion Tarrano had already run away."

"Never!" she exclaimed. "This is his last stand. He'll make it here—defeat us here—"

"Elza!"

She glanced momentarily at me, smiled a queer smile, and then gazed once more over the distant plain. "I do not mean I think he'll defeat us, Jac. I mean, that is his reasoning—make his last stand here—"

"He hasn't run away," I repeated. "I told Rolltar so. We got an outlaw connection into the Ice Palace today. For a moment only, and then it was discovered and broken off. But we had the image for a moment—it chanced to show Tarrano himself. But he's isolated now. Bretan said his isolation power—around the Ice Palace and the wall anyway—is greater than any image-ray we can send against it."

My heart leaped suddenly, for I saw Elza's eyes widen, fear spring to her face; heard the sharp intake of her breath, and felt her hand grip my arm.

"Jac! There's something wrong! See there? And you hear it?"

From the instrument room I heard a vague drumming. A hiss, and then a drumming growing louder. It was not a new sound, for now I remembered I had been conscious of it for several moments past. Our encampment was awake to it! A confusion down there; people running about; a figure dashing wildly into the instrument room. And the aerials on the power house began to snap viciously.

"Jac! What is it?"

"I don't know. See there, Elza? The sub-ray lights!"

The search-beams from our towers were inordinately active. Sweeping the empty snow-plain and the empty sky. Empty? To my fevered imagination they were peopled with enemies. And then one of the towers flashed on a sub-ray—the dull infra-red for envisaging the slow rays below the power of human sight. And another tower with its faint purple beam was using the ultra-violet.

"That drumming, Elza! That's a microphone—the big one they just erected near the instrument room. There's something coming! That's the magnified sound of some distant rush of air. Very faint sound, but they must have heard it on the ear-phones long ago. That microphone must have just been connected—"

Something coming? We could see nothing.

"Let's go down, Jac! We must get back—"

"I've got infra-red glasses—" I fumbled beneath my furs. But I did not have them.

"Jac—"

"Wait, Elza."

My glasses would have been useless, for the sub and ultra beams from the towers were disclosing nothing. I could tell that by the hasty searching sweeps they made. And then from the big Wilton tower, the newly connected Zed-ray flashed on, I could hear the load of it in the deepened, throaty hum from the power house. Its dirty brown beam sprayed out over the plain; then swung to the sky, caught something, hung motionless, narrowed into great intensity. The powerful Zed-ray, capturing the visibility of dense solids only.[24]

[Footnote 24: Similar doubtless to our present-day X-ray.]

There was something up there in the sky! The Zed-ray met resistance; we could see the sparks, and hear the snap of them coming like a roar from the microphone above the drumming. Met the resistance and conquered it; gradually the snapping roar died away.

"Jac! I see something! Something there—don't you see it?"

A luminous blur became visible in the nearer sky—moving blobs of silver luminosity in the mud-brown light of the Zed-ray. A hundred or more moving silver blobs. They were taking form. The silvery phosphorescent look faded, became grey-white. Took definite shape. Waving arms and legs! Bones bereft of flesh. Human skeletons! Limbs waving rhythmically. Bony arms, with fingers clutching metal weapons. Assailants coming at us through the air, stripped by the Zed-ray of clothing, skin, flesh, organs, to the naked bone. Skeletons with skulls of empty eye-sockets and set jaw-bones to make the travesty of human faces grim with menace!



CHAPTER XXXV

Attack on the Power House

Stricken with surprise and awe, Elza and I sat there motionless. Our encampment was in a turmoil of confusion—chaos, out of which very soon order came. The skeleton figures in the air—I saw now that there were nearer two hundred than one hundred—were perhaps two thousand feet away, and at an altitude of about the cliff-ledge where Elza and I were sitting.

They swept forward, bathed in the Zed-ray with all our other search-beams darkened to give it full sway. Momentarily I saw them clearer; metallic cylinders in bony fingers, and a metal mechanism of flight encasing, yet not touching the ribs.

"Jac! Why don't our rays—"

As though to answer Elza's unfinished question, one of our towers turned a disintegrating ray upon them. A narrow pencil-point of light, barely visible in this flat daylight. It swung up into our Zed-ray, searched and clung to one of the skeleton figures. Had it penetrated, the man would have been dissipated like a puff of vapor. But it did not; and then I knew that for that distance at least, this enemy's isolation power—individual barrage—was too great.

Yet the assailed figure wavered! Our amplifier gave out his shout—half fear, half admonition. The line of skeletons swung upward. Came on, but mounted so that I saw that they were making for the summit of the cliff above us—above our power house.

Their defense—invisibility, and a mere isolation barrage so that we could not harm them with our tower rays while they kept beyond range. But what was their means of attack? Why would Tarrano....

"The power house," Elza answered; and I realized then that she had read my thoughts. The power house, if they could demolish it....

Our thoughts, questions and answers unspoken, flew fast; but the drama before us unfolded faster. With the knowledge that we could see them, these invaders cast aside a portion of their equipment to give them greater freedom. We could see the metal portions of the trappings falling like plummets. The skeleton images faded; and then as our tower withdrew the Zed-ray and our search-beams picked them up, we saw our enemies as they really were. Men clothed in a casing of cylindrical garments with the flying mechanisms strapped to their chests; some with visors and headpieces, nearly all with small weapons in their hands.

Keeping well away, they continued to mount. They were striving for the pinnacle of cliff-tops above us; but as our rays darted at them they halted, wavered; and now when nearly above the camp, they began mounting straight up.

"Jac! Look there!"

One of our tower vehicles was preparing to rise. Its ray, following the search-beams upward, was aimed at the invaders, but they were beyond its effective range. Their weapons of attack? I knew now.

"Suicides!"

Whether Elza said it, or merely thought it I do not know. One of the figures came down as though falling. A few seconds only; but though our search-beam showed it, the smaller rays for those seconds missed it. Down—until no more than five hundred feet above us it checked its fall. A giant of a man; and with his hand cylinder—in range now—he shot a bolt at our power house. It struck; I could see the flash, saw an aerial shatter before the charge went harmlessly into the body of the building. Then one of our rays caught the man; his figure crumpled; the shower of sparks as his barrage was broken, exploded like a tiny bursting bomb; and as the sparks died, there was nothing where the man had been.

A suicide; but one of our aerials was shattered. And then others came down—not many, for it was grim business and the courage of them must have failed at the last. Falling bodies; tiny bolts striking the power house; the sparks—then empty air where living men had been.

Our tower left the ground. Some of our men, with small flying platforms strapped to them, were crowding its top. Its beams preceded it—but I saw the beams breaking intermittently as the bolts struck the power house. The invaders wavered with indecision. Some of them came down to voluntary death; others strove for the cliff-top; some took flight. Our tower swept into them; one of them, injured but not annihilated, fell with a crash into the encampment.

Above Elza and me was a maze of flashing beams; futile bolts; the puffs of myriad sparks. A bolt seemed to strike quite near where we were sitting; I drew Elza back and we crouched in the hollow of a rock. A body came hurtling down, crashed to the cliff-ledge almost at our feet with the sickening thump of mangled flesh and broken bones—hung an instant to give me a momentary glimpse of a face contorted in death agony; then rolled over and fell further down the jagged cliff.

Then above us presently there was silence and the drab empty sky. Our tower was back beyond the cliff-top. Soon it appeared; apparently unharmed, it came dropping down to its former place on the ground.

The first attack was over. And off in the distance a few solitary figures were winging their way back to the City of Ice.



CHAPTER XXXVI

City of Ice Besieged

We were not greatly harmed by this surprise attack; the power house was superficially damaged, but soon repaired. That night—I call it that though the constant weak daylight made the term incongruous—activity showed in the City of Ice.

It came with a vertical spray of light rising from the ice wall which encircled the city. Spreading light beams rising from points a hundred feet apart along the wall. The beams spread fan-shape, so that within fifty feet above their source they met and merged into a thin sheet of effulgence rising into the sky. Tarrano's barrage.

It seemed then that beyond suicidal sorties of the kind we had just repulsed, Tarrano was planning to stand purely on the defensive. It was our own plan to surround the city with our towers; even those on the further side would be within range of our power house; and with the city thus beleaguered, we would attack the wall from every side at once.

We tested now this barrage Tarrano had thrown up. Sprays of its insulated area came down to protect the wall in front; and protected also the triangular spaces between the sources of the main beams. Tentatively one of our towers approached within range; but our rays only beat into the barrage with the hiss of molten metal plunged into water, and with a burst of interference sparks. Even at a horizontal thousand feet we could do nothing. Then we tried altitude. Our projectors, mounted individually on small platforms automatically controlled to fly without human pilot, went up and we strove to get them over the barrage.

At five thousand feet one went over safely. But the electronic bomb it dropped into the city was an easy mark for Tarrano's watchful defense rays. He exploded it harmlessly when it was still high above him.

After the next time of sleep we invested the city. Our towers were set in a ring about it, two thousand feet from the wall. They were mobile units, ready to sail forward or back or upward at any moment. Georg stayed in command of the instrument room. It was never placed, but sailed continuously in slow circular flight around the city above our line. The power house remained in its place, with our largest projector mounted on the cliff beside it in order to frustrate any further attacks.

They were solemn moments as we broke our encampment. The girls, far more agile in the air than men, were lightly dressed, with the supporting mechanism strapped to them. The heating units enveloped them in an invisible cloak of warm air. To their left arms a strapped cylinder gave off a fan-shape area of insulation—an almost invisible shield of protective barrage some five feet long. It showed as a faint glow of light; and in flight their left arms could swing it like a shield to protect their bodies. They had telephonic ear-pieces available; a tiny mirror fastened to their chests to face them, upon which Georg or Geno-Rhaalton could project images; a mouthpiece for talking to Georg; and a belt of offensive weapons, useful within a range of five hundred feet but no further.

Very alert and agile, twisting and turning in the air were these girls. We men were similarly equipped, but our movements in the air were heavier, clumsier. Elza and I had practiced with the others for days; and with our harmless duelling rays I had found that I could never hope to hit her while she dealt me mortal blows.

Elza, commanding a squad of twenty girls, was assigned to a portion of the line some helans from me. My own place, with a hundred men under me, was near a tower almost on the opposite side from the power house.

It was a solemn parting from Elza. I wrapped her in my arms, tried to smile. "Be very—careful, Elza."

She kissed me, clung to me; then cast me off and was gone.

With the city invested, we rested idly for another time of sleep. Occasionally we made a tentative tower attack which came to nothing. Tarrano waited; his barrage remained the same. We tried to provoke a move from him, but could not.

The snow-plain where I was stationed here was similar to the other side, save that there were no mountains. From the power house to Tarrano's wall there was a dip, so that the wall stood upon higher ground. On my side, however, the reverse was true. The wall lay in a hollow in one place, with a steady upward slope back from it to uplands behind us, as though in some better day a broad watercourse had flowed down here, now long since buried in solid ice and snow.

I mention this topography because it had a vital bearing upon what so soon was to transpire.

Rhaalton desired that Tarrano come out and attack us; but Tarrano would not. We thought perhaps that his offense was inadequate and the one move that he made strengthened that belief. From the city beside the palace, a rectangle of black metal some fifty feet square, rose slowly up. In aspect it was a square, windowless room—a room without a ceiling, open at the top. It rose to a height of five hundred feet and hung level. And from it depended dangling power cables connecting it with the ground.

It was the presence of these cables that made us feel Tarrano was offensively weak. He could not aerially transport his power; hence, for offense he could only rely upon individual batteries which, unless permanently stationed within the city, we knew would have a short range at best. We watched this thing in the air for hours. It did not move; it was soundless. What was its purpose? We could not guess.

And then at last, Geno-Rhaalton ordered us all to the attack.



CHAPTER XXXVII

Battle

I found myself in the air; with my men around me we hovered. Then Georg's command from the instrument room sounded in my ears. I gave the signal; and flying wedge-shaped, we hurled ourselves forward. It was like lying on the air, diving head foremost. The rush of wind sang past me; the ground, a hundred feet below, was a white surface flowing backward.

We were heading for the base of one of Tarrano's barrage projectors. It was mounted within the wall; but the wall itself was protected merely by a fan-shaped subsidiary beam—a weaker barrage over that small area, which by concentrated effort we hoped to break.

From a helan away on both sides of me I saw other wedges of our men coming slanting in to assail the same point; overhead a corps of girls was hovering. Our towers, three of them concentrated here, had risen to a moderate height; their rays were playing upon the threatened area; a steady fountain of sparks showed where they were striking the barrage.