Tama Princes of Mercury

"We will do what he says.'" The platform fluttered cautiously forward, landed in a little pit-like depression. The enemy line was near at hand. The barrage loomed up, a huge, glowing veil. They left the platform hidden. Tama stayed with it.

"We haven't been seen," Jimmy whispered. "You wait here.

We may come back in a rush, Tama." He gripped her slim shoulders. "I hope to God we have Rowena and Jack with IM usi "Come," whispered Roc.

He helped Jimmy for a short distance. The barrage curtain seemed almost overhead. But there was no light from it here on the rocky surface. The loose boulders were often ten or twenty feet high. Jimmy and Roc made their way cautiously forward. They were heading into the dark space between two of the projectors.

Jimmy pulled up his hood. "We'd better get lower. CrawL I can make it." They crept on. Jimmy, without thought of the pain, found he could drag his abnormally light weight swiftly forward.

Roc crept behind him. After a time, Jimmy was winded.

He paused for breath, then went on. The nearest projector was some two hundred feet to the left of him. Occasionally it was hidden by intervening crags. The other, to the right, lay obscured below a little upstanding ridge.

There was no alarm, though every moment Jimmy feared it might come. Every boulder might have a lurking guard in the blackness beside it.

Soon Jimmy figured he was within the enemy line. The barrage curtain closed in a great sweeping arc over his head. The left hand projector was a trifle behind him now; in the dim light from it he could see the dark forms of the attendants.

Ahead, the broken, ridged surface went down a gentle slope. Shapes were down therestraggling tents, the outposts of the camp. He saw a group of moving lights.

Abruptly Jimmy realized that Roc was not with him I He waited, stretched out, panting, gazing back. Roc had been .following, but he was gone now. Afraid I Desertedgone back to the girls A grin was on Jimmy's face. He rested a few moments, then dragged himself on. In Jimmy's mind there had been no thought of how he might get Rowena out of Dorrek's clutches. He told himself now that be would decide that when the time came. The first thing was to get to the Mercurian vehicle and into it.

There was a commotion ahead, men dragging a projector across the camp. Their small hand lights showed. Jimmy rolled into a little crevice between two boulders and rested until they had passed. He was well within the lines now.

Overhead he could see the green-yellow sky, and frequent lightning flares now. He heard a dim, queerly muffled thunderclap. And a wind was surging over the valley. The storm was at hand.

He saw too, that a distant section of the barrage was moving out from the camp, toward the valley wall. Three or four of the projectors were being rolled outward. It was a mile away, but the movement was obvious.

The camp showed distant activity. Dorrek was starting something. Jimmy lay with pounding heart, watching. The barrage was moving toward the cliff, in the direction of the canyon entrance where Grenfell had established his girls, and the Cube.

An enemy rocket mounted from a point on the valley floor less than a mile from Jimmy. The barrage parted to let it pass. It went in an arc upward. Through the brief blank hole in the barrage Jimmy saw it clearly; it fell on the cliff.

Burst with a puff of light, and from it came a turgid ball of smoke. Gas fumesi They clung heavily to the clifftopa little widening cloud. The wind which now was up there caught the fumes, and blew them back over the plateau.

Grenfell's projectors were sweeping the nearby rocks. The Cube fired a shot. It came screaming down, went into the barrage and burst in mid-air.

The battle had begun. A sudden activity everywhere. From the faraway clifftop, girls were rising, dropping bombs to dissipate the approaching gas fumes.

Jimmy came to himself to realize that whatever he could do must be done now. He crept on forward. He had forgotten Dorrek's brues, the gruesome giant insects. With a shudder that turned him cold, he saw one slithering across the camp with a man driving it.

They did not see him. Other men passed; he rolled into a tiny hollow and lay breathless as their feet and legs showed almost overhead. Legs garbed in a woolly brown fur. He waited a moment or two after they were gone, raised himself up on his hands to gaze cautiously out of the hollow.

From the nearby darkness two fur-robed figures were advancing! Jimmy ducked back, fumbling for his knife; he could not risk a ray flash which would give the alarm.

But he was too late! A giant man came with a leap upon bimi Tama crouched in the ravine with the platform and the fourteen other girls. Ten minutes passed. Every instant she feared to hear the sound of alarm within the enemy camp.

It was a mad, desperate attempt. She was sorry she had not tried harder to restrain Jimmy.

A dark form showed at the brink of the ravine. These girls were not armed, except Tama, who carried a knife and a ray cylinder. The little projector was in her hand; but before she could level it, a soft warning voice came from the arriving figure.

"Tamal" It was Roc. He slid down into the ravine, greeting Tama in their native language.

"All is well, Tama." His black hood dangled to his shoulders, exposing his pale face. In his hand he held his cylinder. He fronted Tama and the girls, with his back to the gully side.

"But where is Jimmy Turk?" Tama lowered her weapon.

"What happened, Roc? Why did you return?"

"He goes on in." Roc laughed, harsh as the grind of a file rasping on steel. "I let him go. Why not? They will catch him, of course. Kill him... . Look there!"' His swift gesture made Tama and most of the other girls turn around. There was nothing to see. Tama felt Roc leap upon her. His hands tore away her cylinder, jerked her knife from her belt, and flung her to the platform.

"Quiet, all of youl" His weapon swept the girls, menacing. His voice hissed at them. "If you do not want me to kill your Tama, do as I tell you. Take your places at the handles. We are going up. Lie still, you By the god of light, I'm in no mood to fool with you, Tama." He shoved her to the forward end of the platform. "If you try to fly off, my beam will kill you. I mean it."

"Rod Are your senses gone?"

"No. "I've just got them... . Grazia, start us up. To any of you who dares to leave your placeit is death! I mean iti" The white, frightened girls lifted the platform. Roc crouched ia its stern, facing forward. Tama huddled tense, watching him. His weapon was leveled. It swept the girls, came back upon her.

"To the nearest difftop, Grazia. Low at firstdown, you fooll Do you want us to be seen? The barrage turned on us shrivel us to ashes?" They skimmed low over the valley, back toward the cliff.

Tama, facing the rear, could see the enemy lines over Roc's crouching form. The barrage, on its distant side, was moving outward. Activity in the enemy camp. Was Jimmy caught? She feared so. She saw the rocket mount to the cliff. Saw Grenfell answer with a shot.

Roc chuckled. "Out of it, just in time." The girls were flying in frightened disorder. He warned them. They flew more evenly. The platform ascended, reached the plateau at a point some two miles from Grenfell's upper camp. It passed above the cliff at an altitude of a few hundred feet; sailed back over the dark empty reaches of the upper plain. It flew swiftly; the panic-stricken girls were menaced by Roc's weapon and his grim threats.

The lights and sounds of the battle faded into the distance. Ahead lay the black desolate vastnesses of the mountains, with the bursting storm upon them. The sky was lurid now with shafts of red and yellow light splitting the cloud funnels. Rain was falling, tossed by a crazy wind.

Roc had not moved from his crouching place in the platform stem. The red lightning flares painted his livid face, the Satanic peak of hair on his forehead, his blazing dark eyes.

Tama said abruptly out of the silence, "Are you mad, Roc? Where are you taking us?" Roc laughed again, but calmly now, and shifted his tense position. But he was still alert with his weapon.

"Back home. The Cave City, where you will be safe, m the Cold Country until this fighting is over, Tama. Dorrek will win, I hope. These fool meddling Earthmen1 wish them all to their hell. And I have youthat is all I want."

"But I thought" Her protest sounded so futile. She checked it. And then her heart leaped into her throat. Over Roc's shoulder, in the lurid darkness behind them, it seemed that she saw a following shape. She forced herself to speak, to hold Rocs attention, to keep him from turning to gaze back.

"But, Roc, I thought-"

"You thought I was going to plunge into a battle? Get killed! Or have you tell me you love that accursed Earthman, Guy Palisse."

"I never said I loved him. Roc."

"Do you?"

"Or do I love you? Is this the way to make me love you? Trickery once more. Traitor, again." The blob behind them was coming closer. Overtaking them.

Another flying platform.

"Perhaps it is the way to make you love me," Roc retorted.

"We shall see. I do not want you to be killed. I'm taking you to safety."

"Or is it for yourself you most fear?" she demanded. "You are despicable. Roc. A traitor. A lying little coward" The girls at the handles showed a sudden confusion. They had seen the pursing platform; two or three of them were looking backward.

It attracted Roc's attention. He turned; and Tama would have leaped upon him but he was too quick for her.

"Back! Sit quietl You, Graziaa faster strokel" But the girls, although they pretended to do their best, were faltering. Roc did not dare turn his head again; he moved forward, almost upon Tama, with the cylinder leveled at her breast. He called to the girls: "Faster! Do you want me to kill her?" The other platform was now barely a hundred feet behind them, and coming at far greater speed. It suddenly began ascending, to pass over them. The wind had momentarily lulled, but now it came up again as a roaring blast. The platform swayed, lurched as the girls fought to hold it.

The wind tore at his words and hurled them away. A crimson flare in the sky illumined the other platform clearly.

Two men 'were upon it. Triumph swept Tama. It was Guy and Toh! They were close behind, rising to a fifty foot higher level. Tama could presently see only the black insulated bottom of the platform, the winged shapes of its girls around it, and a face projecting beyond its forward edge.

The face of her brother Toh, staring down.

Roc was crouching on one knee.

"Faster!" Grazia, flying close at Tama's side, had looked -up and seen Toh, and had caught a signal from his hand over the edge of the platform. Guy was leaning over the side, trying to aim down at Roc. Both platforms were lurching; he could not make sure of any aim.

Grazia suddenly left her handle and with folded wings dropped into the void. It distracted Roc, as she had intended.

He leaned sideways, his weapon spat its small deadly beam.

But it missed Grazia's falling body; her wings opened; she flew away and vanished.

The lower platform wavered dangerously, all its girls in a panic of confusion. And then Toh leaped over the forward edge of the upper platform. He came hurtling down the fiftyfoot space with a knife in his outstretched hand.

Roc forgot Tama. He turned his cylinder upward and fired.

Toll's body crashed upon Roc. loh's knife stabbed in one convulsive blow.

On the swaying platform under Tama's homfled gaze, the bodies of the two men lay writhing in last agonies,, and then were still.

XV TRAPPED ROWENA AND I illight have escaped from the silver ball that time when Muta smuggled the brown-furred garments to us.

She was ready to distract the attention of the guards. But the alarm came. Grenfell's Cube was sighted, sailing high over the valley. Dorrek's encampment sprang into confusion.

He rushed in to us.

"You stay here with Rowena. We move the ball-not safe here." Rowena had barely time to hide our robes in her bed covering. Muta stood against the wall. Dorrek whirled around and was gone.

Our futile plans! Escape was impossible now. Men were clattering everywere in the small vehicle's interior. The guards still held their position at the foot of the ladder. And other men were constantly upon it. The upper-tier rooms near us were occupiedmen in the control rooms, which had hastily been unsealed. The lower door was closed. The ball lifted; the thrum of its rocket-stream ejectors sounded amid the turmoil of footsteps and voices.

I had thought that the battle was bursting around us; but almost at once I saw that it was not. Rowena and I stood at the small window oval. She had loosened the ropes which hampered her. But Dorrek had not noticed or had not cared.

Muta came like a shadow and stood behind us. The ball had been resting within a hundred feet of the valley's precipitous wall. Our window had faced that way; and all the main encampment was behind us, out in the open valley. As we lifted now, we had a wider vista. The ball sailed outward from the cliff, then backed into the center of the valley some three miles from the nearest cliff and came to rest again on the rocks.

We were now in the center of the encampment. I saw its turmoil of alarm. Men were dragging projectors with cables slithering after them like giant snakes. Brues were being harnessed to small carts loaded with storage batteries.

Mound-shaped tents were set up in straggling array on the rocky floor, and illumined by tiny lights, strung from metal poles. And houses which had been built of gathered loose stones crudely piled in tiers, with skins and fabric cloth stretched for a roof, dotted the valley floor.

Many of the giant projectors were ready. Dorrek had at least half expected this alarm. Within ten minutes after he had sighted the Cube, his great circular barrage was springing up around him. The flare of their upstanding beams, the hiss of them, was what I had mistaken for an attack.

The camp occupied a mile-wide circle, and within half an hour the barrage was complete around it. From our secondtier window we presently saw: tiny distant lights which marked the coming of Grenfell's force.

Dorrek's barrage was constantly being strengthenedreserve protectors dragged to the circular line, reserve batteries for renewal. There seemed hordes of fur-clad men. Hand weapons were being distributed. A hundred brues went past, lashed by their drivers, slithering off toward a section of the barrage. Still no attack came from Grenfell.

Here in the ball I stood alert, waiting for an opportunity to get away with Rowena. But always there seemed too many men moving around this upper tier and the incline.

But once out into the confusion of the camp, clad like these other furred men, our chances might be better now than before.

"Soon, Rowena," I whispered. "If this upper corridor is cleared, even for a moment" Muta held stolidly to her decision to help us.

"I watch at the door." She stood there, motionless.

At last she signaled, "Now!" But a dozen men came trampling up from below, rummaging in the room adjoining us. I saw the flare and heard the scream of Grenfell's test shot, and then the bursting of a bomb overhead. The conflict was beginning. We must escape, now if ever.

There seemed renewed activity in a distant section of the camp. Men marching in that direction. Groups of the giant insectsand all the reserve projectors, and mechanisms for the launching of rockets and bombswere being taken now to one segment of the barrage line. Was Dorrek preparing an offensive move off there? It seemed so.

The little upper corridor was momentarily vacant. I joined Muta.

"We will try it now?" She nodded. "Yes. I go down." There were only two guards at the foot of the incline. Muta started down to them. I hastened back to Rowena.

"The robeshurry, dear." We donned the robes, pulled the hoods over our heads, close against our faces. Our stature, if closely remarked, was a danger. Rowena was taller than most of these men.

And I had no counterpart save Dorrek.

We crept to the ladder. Muta had drawn the guards aside.

My heart was pounding with the sudden fear that now, at the last, the inscrutable Mercurian woman would betray us. But she did not. She was talking with low, passionate words to the two guards. What she said, we never knew.

They saw us, perhaps, as we slipped past but she held their attention.

We reached the lower doorway. Men were nearby, working at some apparatus. We walked, stooping. The doorway was open.

A six-foot ladder descended into the dim activity of the camp. I was upon it, with Rowena behind me. The dark forms of men were outside. They would see us; but men had been passing in and out of the vehicle constantlyin our brown fur robes we would not attract particular notice.

A cylinder weapon was in my hand. But I realized that a shot would bring the camp upon us. I stuffed the cylinder back into the pocket of the robe and unclasped a long knife blade.

"Jack! Hurryl Someone's coming behind us!" I had paused in the doorway, making sure of what was below. I tensed to jump down, but the dark moving form of a brue was disclosed. I could not chance passing near it, to have it sense me as an enemy.

"Rowenathis wayl" I pushed her back through the doorway. The room inside was dim. Footsteps were upon us I We shrank against the wall, but we could be seen.

"Stoop down low," I whispered.

A pile of apparatus lay by the doorway. We bent over it, pretending to be working. The voices of men in the adjoining room were audible.

"Jackcan't we get out?" Rowena whispered.

"A brue outside. I didn't darejust a minute!"

"Someone is comingi" I saw Rowena's white hand, and gripped it. I felt then, with horrible premonition, that in another moment we would be challenged. We could not answerneither of us could speak Mercurian. For a brief instant I held Rowena's hand.

With freedom abead of us, all my thoughts had gone to the future. The worldour blessed Earthso wonderful a place, with Rowena. Was this to be the end of our life together, trapped here in this dark room, in the depths of the mountains of a strange planet? The footsteps were upon us. The brue had stopped almost at the foot of the entrance ladder.

"Rowenaleap over iti We'll have to chance it!" Run openly, with our great Earth strides through the camp? Or stay here ten seconds longer and be discovered.

It flashed upon me that the choice I must make held all the difference between life and death.

I suddenly drew Rowena back from the doorway.

What destiny held me? In that second of decision, what benign fate made me choose rightly? What vagary of that mysterious thing we call the mind guided my uncertain muscles? Life is a queer business) The brue reared itself on the ladder. Half a dozen men appeared behind the startled giant insect. It sensed us, no doubt. The men lashed at it; one jabbed with a pronged pole, and sullenly it slithered back to the ground, and the men drove it away.

In the room, the approaching footsteps brought a heavy shape directly toward us. It was Mutal She touched me. "You go now! I want never see you again!" I could well subscribe to that. Rowena bent down.

"Muta," she whispered, "thank you for this. I wish you happiness." No one was near the ladder. We descended it. I caught a glimpse of the face of the Cold Country woman as she stood watching us go.

We moved slowly into the dim activity of the camp. I had carefully decided which way to head. We half circled the outside of the vehicle, threaded our way between two dark tent shelters and made off over the rocks toward the distant barrage line.

"Carefully, Rowena." I walked beside her, whispering.

"Hold your balance." For the slight gravity and our tense impatience made it difficult to keep from running. "If were challenged, stand perfectly still. I'll do what I can." The barrage line seemed horribly far ahead of us across a dark, rocky expanse. But this was the least occupied, least active section of the encampment. All the movement was the other way.

Soon we were past the thickest cluster of the tents. We.

came to an almost unoccupied spread of boulder-strewn floor.

"Now, faster!" We took longer, freer steps. Soon we were running, pausing momentarily to look around. A line of brues showed in advance of us. We waited to let it go by. Overhead the storm was bursting into greater violence. Whirlpools of a crazy wind plucked at vs. And the rain was beginning.

The barrage line came nearer. I headed toward the space between two of the giant projectors. The attendants at them showed clearly, dark shapes of three or four men at each.

"Jack, look!" Behind us, far across the camp, the opposite segment of the barrage was moving outward. Dorrek was beginning an offensive. We saw the gas bomb mount and break upon the clifftop. A shot from the Cube came screaming down and burst against the barrage. Girls over the cliffs were dropping bombs to neutralize and dissipate the gas fumes.

We ran. A man driving a brue crossed in front of us.

We waited, crouching in the crevice of an overhanging rock. Started again. We were not far from the barrage line soon we would have the two projectors behind us. The rocky surface here was broken with numerous little gullies and hollows. We jumped most of them, sailing in huge fantastic leaps.

"Waiti" I drew Rowena down barely in time to avoid discovery.

Four men passed close to us. Again we started. A small hollow lay immediately before us. And as we approached, a black figure rose from it. He saw usi It was too late to drop out of sight. I expected a shot. With a leap I was over the brink of the little pit.

The black figure struck at me with a knife, but I avoided the blow and saw a white face.

"Jimmy!" He was lying here with his broken leg, trying desperately to crawl across the enemy camp to rescue us. There was moisture in Rowena's eyes, a catch in her voice as she joined us in the pit. We rested a moment, whispered to each other.

We were triumphant. We would soon be out of this. Tama was nearby, with a flying platform.

"All right, now," Jimmy murmured. "How glad I am you're not in the sphere! It's been holding up this fight." He was trembling with eagerness and triumph. "Fearful handicap for Grenfellcome onwe've got to get outget back to Grenfell. Things are starting off there already." We crawled forward, but we did not get far. The camp, in advance of us and to the sides, burst into a sudden chaos.

Bombs were dropping from overhead. One of them exploded within the camp. Outside the barrage, girls were attacking.

"Heckl" muttered Jimmy. "We can't get out now." I gathered him in my arms. He was incredibly light, as though I were holding a child. I ran. With Rowena beside me.

But it was useless. A light flare came down from overhead and struck the ground near us. For a second Or two the rocks were painted white with the dazzling glare. I stumbled and fell. Jimmy kept his wits; he reached and drew Rowena down with us.

We lay in a cluster of boulders against which we huddled for shelter. And over us, with amazing suddenness, the battle raged in full fury.

We were trapped. The storm and the conflict were both at their height. How long we three lay there I have no idea. I could not guess the progress of the battle; I only knew that every moment a more lurid inferno showed around us.

Rowena suddenly whispered, "Where is Jimmy?" I realized that she and I were alonel Jimmy had crawled away from us! XVI BATTLE FURY GBEMFELL, during all this time, found himself in an increasing dilemma. He knew that once he ordered these flying virgins to the attack, the conflict would be sharp and brief.

But Grenfell had no intention of precipitating such a crisis.

Dorreks forces were bottled; by exhaustion of his food supplies he could be overcome. And there was the question of electronic power. It seemed probable that Dorrek could not maintain this huge barrage for many hours. Inevitably his batteries would be exhausted.

In a day-cycle Commander Arton would be coming up the canyon with the reinforcements, a thousand young men, upon whom Grenfell preferred the brunt of the conflict to fall. An attack now by the flying girls would be too deadlythe losses too great.

But Grenfell finally sent the two largest platforms to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Each carried a giant projector. The rays spat down, and crossed the barrage curtain with a hissing turmoil of sparks.

Coming back, one of the platforms abruptly disobeyed orders. Four men manned its long-range ray; thirty girls flew it. Instead of returning to Grenf ell's camp on the cliff,,it droppped low into the valley and hurled itself at one of the base projectors of the barrage. The projector bent its ray down, but missed. The platform went like a speeding projectile, its beam darting before it. Then Dorrek's ray caught it and clung. From the deck of the Cube the shuddering Grenfell saw the bodies of the thirty girls wither and fall.

For an instant the insulated platform held together. It was, barely a hundred feet from the barrage base. Its ray spluttered and vanished. The platform tilted, and crashed to the rocks, the black figures of its men little falling dots against the barrage light.

A group of girls made a similar attack. From the darkness of the valley floor they hurled themselves at an opening between the barrage projectors.

Flying in a group, they skimmed the surface. They safely passed the barrage line, rose inside over the enemy camp.

For a minute perhaps they dropped their bombs. The flares were visible to Grenfell through the curtain. How many of Dorrek's men and insects were killed was never known.

The beams from the hand weapons of the girls were flashing down. They flew holding their shields to protect their bodies and wings as well as they could. Mounting, they crossed perhaps a third of the camp, leaving a trail of destruction beneath them. But one by one the enemy rays caught them and brought them down.

That was enough for Grenfell. Three hundred of the girls were still in the cliff camp near the Cube. He ordered them to keep out of the air, and sent two of the emergency platforms to fly to the lower camp and order the four hundred girls, the projectors and flying platforms there to come up here and join him. Dorrek's activities were at this upper end, and if he tried to escape through the lower canyon he would encounter Arton's army.

Grenfell sought Tama, but she was missing. He could not locate Jimmy Turk, Guy, Toh, or Roc.

The storm was increasing in fury. Grenfell moved the Cube forward and began firing directly down. But the shots were always intercepted. The Cube was unwieldy when flying for short distances close to the ground. But twice Grenfell manipulated it around the valley; and once it fired down from four miles overhead.

He wanted to hit the base projectors, but he could not.

One or two of the shots entered the camp. This he did not altogether want. It was a horrible handicap, tor Grenfell did not want a shot of his to strike the Mercurian ball in which Rowena and I had been imprisoned.

Rain was presently falling. The crazy wind had steadied.

The red lightning flares and thunder cracks were almost continuous. Dorrek's mounting bombs fell upon the cliff. The wind brought the gas fumes. Grenfell closed up the Cube, firing down into the turmoil through its -deck port.

He ordered the girls farther back and a hundred of them into the air to dissipate the fumes with neutralizing bombs.

It was then, with Tama and Guy missing, that events got beyond Grenfell's control. Dorrek's barrage advanced again until it reached the base of the cliff. Grenfell thought Dorrek's move was to command the canyonto enable his men to escape back toward the Cold Country. He planned to let them go; the deep, narrow gorge was twenty miles long in this direction; the escaping men and brues could easily be assailed later. Grenfell was watching the silver ball where.

it still lay in the center of the valley. He was convinced that Dorrek and his leaders were aboard it; if he should ascend to get away, the Cube was ready for the chase.

But the enemy did not escape. Brues began crawling up the perpendicular cliff in the segment which the barrage now commanded. A hundred of the giant insects were on top of the cliff before Grenfell was aware of it. And to each of them three or four men had clung. They spread out over the upper plateau.

Lurking men among the rocks, dark, slithering insectsspreading out, advancing upon Grenf ell's camp. The fume bombs and rockets stopped coming. But the insects with their human burden mounted the cliff wall steadily.

Grenfell ordered his girls and platforms into the air. They flew low, seeking out the crawling enemy. The upper plateau in all that vicinity was dotted with the tiny lights of the girls, flashing down upon the gruesome insects. Brief combatsalways with the brue left writhing in death agony.

Dorrek's men were harder to find. Once upon the clifftop, they had ordered the insects forward, left them, and vanished.

Presently no more came up. The move puzzled Grenfell.

Then abruptly they attacked the Cubel Grenfell was standing with his men on D-Face deck. The lower door was open. There was a flurry of girls flying nearby. Grenfell saw, in a red lightning puff, fifty or more furred figures of men running forward among the crags near at hand.

With short hand rays darting before them, they rushed at the Cube's doorway.

The infuriated, reckless girls buried themselves down like frenzied birds. Doubtless none of the men would have lived to reach the doorway. But it startled Grenfell, as Dorrek probably intended. The Cube hastily rose; and as it lifted, a projector, of longer range than any of Dorrek's others, shot at it from the barrage line.

The beam caught the mounting Cube. There was a horrible moment when Grenfell thought that the hull plates would melt. The interior heated, stifling; choking fumes of fusing metal; a rain of smoke and fire and snapping, sizzling sparks outside.

Then it was over. The Cube's hull, protected to resist the cold of interplanetary space and the friction heat of atmospheric passage, withstood the brief, intense blast. The Cube rose beyond range, and came again into the lurid, storm-filled night.

Grenfell had flung on all power. He checked it now. Baker. Gibbons and the othersand the Hill City officials who were heregathered in a startled, frightened group on the deck. The Cube seemed not greatly banned, but it had been a close call.

From a height of some twenty thousand feet Grenfell gazed down and saw that all the girls had flung themselves into the conflict! Darting at the barrage in a score of places, they dropped down into it like plummets.

Two platforms with men and bombs came from the plateau in a long dive toward a triangular opening between the projectors. Both got through, into the camp, raking it for an instant before they fell in little bursts of flame. Those horrible little bursts of flame I They were everywhere. Tiny puffs. Each of them a human life gone. And the barrage line . held.

To Grenfell, cold with horror, it seemed an eternity; yet he had no more than time to order Ranee to lower the Cube. Another minuteor five at the mostthose reckless frenzied girls would all have sacrificed themselves.

Grenfell stood breathless. And suddenly he saw a distant segment of the barrage go down. A single projector went dark, leaving a great hole above it. But why? The girls had not done it; there had been no attack there.

Abruptly the dark projector flashed on again. Grenfell gasped at an incredible sight.

. When she could find no trace of Jimmy, Rowena was alarmed.

"He's gone. Jack! Jimmy Turk has gonel"

"But he was with us a moment ago. Rowena, he" I leaped to my feet, standing in the bottom of the little hollow within the enemy camp, with the battle raging around us. Then I saw him; he was crawling on the ground a hundred feet away, his broken leg dragging after him. In three or four leaps I was with him.

"What are you doing?" I flung myself down with him.

"What in-"

"Let me alone! Lie near the ground. You'll be safe in that hollow." He tried to pull away from me; but when I held him he told me his plan. Possible, at least.

"Look, Jack, we're near it. Only three men there. We can end this war at once." The area here was comparatively quiet.

"Look, Jackhow close" I had not realized how near we were to one of the barrage projectors. Jimmy had crawled to a little rise of ground.

Ahead, not over a hundred feet from us, the projector stood on the rocks with its vertical spreading beam above ita three-foot metallic cone, mounted on a low wheeled carriage.

Three men stood on the small low platform; their figures showed dark against the radiance. There was momentarily nothing between us and those men. And their attention was outward, not back toward us, behind them in the camp.

It was black here save for the lightning flares. I bounded back to Rowena. She flattened herself down in the hollow against the rocks, as I directed, but turned her white face up to me. A lightning flash painted it with a flush of red.

I was again with Jimmy. The men at the projector still had not seen us. A hundred feet to go....

"I'll carry you," I whispered, "until we get within range."

"No! Might see us. Takes a little longer, but I can make good speed." In a lull of all the screaming sounds of the turmoil, we could hear the steady hum and hiss of this projector as we got closer to it.

"Jack, I'll give the word and well fire together." Our hand cylinders had a short range; we did not know bow far, but certainly twenty feet. We got almost that close, still undiscovered. I was aware of an increased turmoil outside the barrage. But not at this particular segment.

The men on the projector platform turned to look back across the camp. But their gaze was in the air toward the rising Cube with the high-powered ray leaping up and striking it.

We crawled a little farther. One of the men was looking our way. Then his attention seemed diverted. We went on again. We were doubtless plainly visible now.

A rush for itJimmy went like a maimed crab on his hands and one leg.

"Jack-nowl" Our little blue-green beams flashed. Two of the men went down. The other leaped over the platform edge. His shot went wide of us. He vanished. I ran for the projector, with Jimmy scuttling after me. From behind the platform the figure appeared. My shot exploded his weapon, but his insulated suit withstood it. My leap carried me into him. We fell, and rolled under the platform. He was a thickset man but frail. He lay inert under my blows.

I rose from under the projector carriage. Jimmy had reached it, and pulled himself to the platform; he fumbled with the mechanism. By chance he turned it off. He was cursing, panting, as I jumped up beside him.

"Blamed thingcan't" He pushed me away and tilled the projector down. "Got it! Now, Jack!" He flashed on the giant beam to horizontal. Not outward inward I A single slow, sideways oscillation, swept in one brief instant' the full width of the camp with a swath of destruction and death! For an instantthere was the gruesome sizzle and crackle of withering, blasting heat. The whole barrage, as the central controlling mechanism must have been struck, went black. Jimmy's beam vanished with it. Darkness everywhere.

Then only the mounting yellow flames of the burning camp was left, the wrecked, half-fused silver ball lying broker in its center; and over the chaos the flying girls darted with harmless little search-beams now to see what might be left alive.

We found Rowena safe in the little gully over which the blast had swept. Tama and Guy returned with the bodies of Toh and Roc on their flying platform, only in time to see the strangely abrupt, terrible end to the conflict.

It was hours before the storm had passed and we were ready to return to Hill City. A few prisoners were taken, not many. They found Dorrek's body lying in the wreckage of his vehicle. And Muta's body, with her hands clasped about his neck.

With the wounded crowding the Cube, we started back.

The return of the victorious army I There is no greater misnomer than to call any returning army victorious. The Cube was jammed with a gruesome burden: The maimed; the living who, most of them, would rather have died. The platforms were heavy with wingless girls. Every cart in Arton's army was laden for the return; the young men tenderly carried stretchers.

Tama and Guy were married in the Hill City. New laws were proposed regarding the clipping and mutilation of the virgins' wings. They had saved their nation, these fearless, recklessonce rebelliousvirgins. They had put aside their grievance against the men for the greater cause.

There was as yet no enactment of the law to say that Tama could be married with wings unclipped, yet she was.

And every man who saw the strange little ceremony raised his voice to cheer. Jimmy stood there beside them. And Tama turned and kissed him in Earth fashion before them alL Rowena, Jimmy and I are back on Earth now. Guy and Tama came with us for a brief visit. As Grenfell foresaw, a new era is at hand: the era of interplanetary travel. New worlds, but not to conquer.

A few moments ago, Rowena, Jimmy and I witnessed what to us at least was the most emotion-stirring sight of our lives.

The first broadcasted televised scene of Tama flying. It was why she made this second visit to the Earthto show herselfto cement the friendship of the two worlds.

Here in my study we gathered before my mirror-grid. It showed the narrow vista of a woodland scene. From over the distant green trees, with the fleecy sky behind her, Tama came flying. Waving black hair and blue-white draperies; white limbs poised; vivid crimson wings outstretched.

Guy was standing in the foreground. She came soaring like a graceful bird and landed upon tiptoe with back-flapping wings. She stood smiling, bowing, and kissing her hands to her vast unseen audience. And then turning, she ran and flung herself into Guy's waiting arms.