There was a moment of blackness. But at once my senses came back. I was on the floor, with two of the Mercurians upon me. I found myself stfll clutching the ray gun. My revolver had fallen from my bootwas gone. Hands were plucking at me. A heavy shoulder pinning me, another body on my legs.
I lunged, twisted with returning strength. Above me I heard Jimmy's shouts, then Roc's. A turmoil of staggering footsteps; the thud of blows; the beat of Tama's wings; a scream. A man's scream of agony. The thick body of a Mercurian man fell on me and my antagonists as we struggled.
Then another hiss over me; Roc's weapon, I thought. I saw a gray figure lunge past me, meet the heat bolt and fall.
A hand and knife came down with a stabbing blow. I jerked away from it, fired my cylinder into a flat gray face bending down at me. The face went black, sank backward. The stench of burned flesh was around me as I heaved off restraining arms and staggered to my feet.
The room was crowded with struggling forms and clouded with vapors: the acrid gas of the bolts, the smell of charred flesh. The lights were out; the place was dim with the outside daylight. I stumbled over a body on the floor as I took a step. I saw the outlined window ovals, and the rectangle of open doorway. Tama was there, in the grip of a Mercurian. Roc and Jimmy were rushing at them. I found myself reeling against Dorrek, who still held Rowena. We were in the center of the room. I leaped upon them, struck at the giant's face, and felt another antagonist thud against me from behind. Then a stab of pain as a knife blade went into the flesh of my shoulder.
At the doorway, silhouetted against the outside light, four figures were entangled in a struggling mass: a Mercurian maii, Tama, Jimmy and Roc. They toppled at the threshold the brink of a void with a thousand-foot drop to the Water City beneath us. I saw Tama and Roc go over the brink, and Jimmy with them! The Mercurian swayed, fought for his balance. Jimmy's disappearing hand made a last clutchcaught the Mercurian's leg, and pulled him oVer.
The rectangle of doorway was empty. I struck again at Dorrek, trying to pull Rowena from him. The man behind me pounded at my head with a ray-cylinder. I crumpled to the floor as I felt my senses going.
IX SUSPENSE GUY AND TOH waited impatiently in a room of Guy's apartment in the palace at Hill City. Some twelve hours earlier, Dr. Grenfell had brought the Flying Cube to a safe landing.
But they had lost sight of the Mercurian sphere in clouds of smoke and fog, and with it their hopes of finding Tama and Rowena, Jimmy and me.
"But, Guy, what are we to do?" demanded Toh. "What does Dr. Grenfell say?"
"What can he say? We have no idea where the ball landed. Girls have been flying here to the Hill City from everywhere. You must talk to them, Toh."
"I havel Alwaysnone have seen it." Guy seized the little Mercurian youth. "Toh, I'm as eager as you-desperate. Tama, off there somewhere" He choked on his words.
They had reached the Hill City only to find chaos. News of the unexpected invasion from the Cold Country had just come, brought by girls flying from the outlying districts. The twelve hours that followed were a blurred turmoil to Guy.
The shocked, frightened government of the Light Country received Guywhom they knew welland bis friendly companions from Earth with pleasure at having them as allies. The Flying Cube, with its Earth weapons and its crew of five men in addition to Grenfell was an asset in the war.
Grenfell, as he afterward told me, was startled by this sudden crisis into declaring his Earth party as active allies and participants. His first instinct was reluctance. With scientific foresight he appreciated the new era of interplanetary relations, at the threshhold of which he now stood as a pioneer. He was upon Mercury, meeting the inhabitants of this other world as a representative of the Earth. He had planned coming merely as a friendly visitor; but it was imavoidable that he should not be in pursuit of Mercurian outlaws who had abducted an Earth girl.
Grenfell was a forceful man. Once his decision was announced, he sat with the aged, impractical rulers of the Hill City government, doing his utmost to cope with the chaos of hasty preparations for defense into which the Hill City was plunged. Earth and civilized Mercury were allied against a Mercurian barbarian nation.
News of the advancing army from the Cold Country had come to the Hill City; and then other parties of girls had flown in to tell that the Water City was being attacked.
Across all the distant copper hills refugees were straggling.
But the occupants of the Water City had been caught unawares. There had been recently, over all this section, one of the dread black storms. Whirling black clouds, so thick that the half-light of day became like the blackest of a stormy Earth night. And a sweep of winds, and torrential rain.
The invaders from the Cold Country had advanced through the storm; when it had cleared and daylight had come again, they were infesting the Water City, surrounding it on all sides, men with deadly weapons and a hundred giant insects.
So ran the reports that came to the Hill City. The men and the married women, the children, the aged of both sexes all these in the Water City would meet death. Only the flying virgins could escape.
From where Guy and Toh were, they could hear the turmoil of the palace overhead, and outside in the garden, the shouts of an excited crowd.
Guy leaped to his feet. "Those shoutswhat are they saying?" They stood listening. The cries were muffled by the palace walls and blurred by the sound of rushing water in an irrigation flume which passed nearby.
"Tohcan't you distinguish?" Guy understood the Mercurian language fairly well, but it was native to Toh. He cried suddenly, "It's something about Roc's ship!" There was a doorway from Guy's room leading into a short corridor. They hurried through it to a gate which admitted them to the open, just beyond the garden wall. The garden was thronged with milling, frightened people. There were lowering black clouds overhead: aftermath of the storm. A deep twilight hung over the small lake nearby, the high metal sides of the water flume; and behind the garden, the outlines of the palace were faintly distinguishable with dim lights now in its windows.
There were high spreading trees out here, heavy with clinging air vines and huge exotic flower blossoms. Tiny lights showed in the spreading circular city. The crowd in the garden and along the banks of the small artificial lake milled aimlessly about. Girls were flapping in and out of it. Others were perched on the high side of the flume, and in the trees.
Urged by men on the ground, they flew up to gaze over the city, and came back again. Or flew to the palace roof, demanding news from the men up there.
Occasionally dots in the sky materialized into figures of girls flying in from distant points. They dropped down into the garden, or by the lake, or upon the palace roof and were immediately set upon by the eager crowd.
Guy and Toh stood gazing. Toh ran to a nearby group of men, then came back.
"They were shouting from the roof that the silver ball was seen passing over the Water City."
"Nothing else? Did it land?"
"They don't know." There were other shouts. They stood momentarily alone.
Toh added, "They say the Water City is wrecked, but the invaders have turned backnot coming this way. Grenfell is going after them with the Flying Cube. Our army is being organized."
"Then Dr. Grenfell will want us," said Guy. "We'd better go in." They turned, but stopped again. On a little balcony of the palace a man appeared; he stood calling for silence, then began addressing the crowd. The Earthmen, with their flying ship, were going to lead an army to repel these invaders.