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 pa.s.sengers 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 ma.s.sed 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 ma.s.sed 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 x.x.xIII
_First a.s.sault_
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 alt.i.tude 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 antic.i.p.ated 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--encompa.s.sing 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 x.x.xIV
_Invisible a.s.sailants_
We did not locate the source of the bomb, and no others rose to a.s.sail us. The mountain defiles, so far as our lights could illuminate them, seemed deserted. We pa.s.sed 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 cl.u.s.tered.
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 lat.i.tudes 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 a.s.sailed 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 anch.o.r.ed 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-b.a.l.l.s 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.