There was no immediate danger; the enemy was all on the other side of the Water City now, apparently not planning to advance for the present. Mobilizing or waiting for reinforcements.
Guy and Toh listened. But Guy's attention was distracted.
A girl came fluttering down from overhead and landed on the ground quite near them, falling into a heap. Guy thought she was wounded; she lay huddled, with wings spread behind her, not attempting to rise.
Guy and Toh ran to her, bent over her. A small girl, smaller than Tama; a trail-looking httle creature, not over fifteen.
Flowing draperies lay on her white limbs; her golden hair was braided and fastened to her sides; her spreading wings were blue-feathered. She raised her white face to Guy.
"Aina!" he cried. "Why Aina" He and Toh knew her well; a girl of the Hill City. She had gone recently to the Water City to see the young man whom she was to marry.
"Guy Palisse! And Tohmy friend, Tohl Oh, where is Tama? We need her." She spoke in English; one of the score or so of the girls whom Tama had taught. She was not hurt now, merely winded from her swift flight. She stood up, panting to get her breath while they told her how the Cube had come from Earth, and that Tama was a prisoner.
Aina gasped, "I saw it land! It was beyond the Water City, where the Cold Country men were gathering. I saw it come down and join them... . Guy, you knew my -loved one ]al of the Water City? He is dead I I was with him. I tried to fly up with him. I could noti I am too small too weak" She buried her face in her hands. "He A brue caught him as he fell back into the water." Guy held her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Aina." She raised her face. "I knowthis is not the time for crying"
"No, Ainawe must think of the living." Decision came to Guy. "Aina, will you help us?" She was suddenly calm. "What can I do?"
"Are you strong enough to fly now?"
"Yes. What is it?"
"Do you know where there is a platform large enough to carry Toh and me and two or three others, if we can rescue them? Can you get a few girlsas many as the platform needs to bear itperhaps ten?"
"And have them bring it here?"
"Nowe would be seentoo many questions. Take it" Toh interrupted. "I will tell you where to take it." He named a distant point of the city. "There may not be anyone there now."
"Yes," agreed Guy. "We'll meet you there. Soon?"
"I can have it before you can get there." She spread her wings, leaped, and flapped upward past the tree branches and was gone.
Guy had no definite plan; he would make one as they went.
"Toh, we can get near the ball, creep up on it through the Water City marshes, if only the weather will stay dark."
"If we could get weapons" They were both unarmed except for small knives. Guy said, "I'll get them now from Grenfell." It occurred to him that Grenfell might stop their going.
But he realized that the scientist must be told about the landing of the ball.
"Listenthat man up there!" Toh's voice was eager.
From the balcony of the palace the Mercurian official was still haranguing the crowd. Other girls reported having seen.
the silver ball. The man on the balcony was saying that it had gone now, off over the daik mountains toward the Cold Country.
"That might be true or it might not," Guy whispered. "We must go, anyway." Toh agreed. "Listen to what he is saying! We have time to get there and back before Dr. Grenfell will need us." The speaker was announcing that the Flying Cube would soon be ready to start for the Water City, to make a survey and to follow the ball into the Cold Country. A giant ray projector was being mounted on the Cube, and defensive electronic barrage armament. Within a few hours it would be ready to start.
Guy and Toh departed at once, pushing through the gathering people along the lakeshore, they passed into the narrow city streets. By the Light Country living cycle, this was the middle of the time of sleep. None were sleeping in the Hill City this night.
Walking and running, Guy pulling Toh by the hand, they hastened through the city, ascending toward the distant heights beyond it.
As the clouds turned black the dim street lamps were lighted. There were lights in most of the houses. Toh and Guy threaded the crowds and attracted little attention. Soon they came to wider, deserted streets: A steady upward ascent out of the broad circular bowl, spread like a flat cauldron upon the inner slopes of which the city was built.
The street they followed was soon a wide ascending road, with spreading tree branches interlocking overhead; low stone houses at the sides, set in verdant gardens or patches of cultivated soil.
With the lesser gravity of Mercury, Guy could have run leaping like a faun. But he did not want to attract undue attention. He held Toh by the hand, pulling him up the steep incline of the street. The houses were soon farther apart. Less soil was here; the metallic, barren desert land began showing. The street dwindled and was lost at the summit. Ahead was a tumbled region of pointed crags and strewn bouldersan upland desert plateau stretching away into the darkness with the black sullen clouds hanging low above the encircling hills. This was the highland from which the Hill City took its name.
They reached the rim. Behind them the bowl of the city lay with winking tiny lights like myriad eyes. Ahead there was a small level space strewn with boulders.
Guy gestured. "That's where you told her?"
"Yes." They stood at the brink of a small canyon, a rift in the coppery rocks. It was some thirty feet wide and equally deep.
Guy smiled at his companion. "I can't help you over, Tob."
"No. I will climb down and across it." He started clambering laboriously down the broken side of the rift. Guy walked back, came with a rush, and leapedsailed in a flat arc with spread arms for balance and legs hunched up, and landed well across the rift, where he stood waiting for Toh. The Mercurian climbed up, panting.
"Not in sight yet, Guy?"
"Noyes, there they are." The platform came sailing from over the city. A small rectangle, fifteen feet long by half as wide. Like a small raft, built of split, porous treetrunks, lashed together with ropes of vines. It had six-foot handlessticks projecting out from its sides. At each of them a girl was flying, five on either side. The platform passed in a low circle, came down and landed on the rocks.
The two men ran to it. The platform had a low, foot-high railing surrounding it, with handles to which the riders might cling. The girl Aina was crouched there.
"We are ready, Guy. They would not let me fly. I am tired; they said I would hold them back. May I go with you? They will not mind my little extra weight." The ten girls stood, eager with questionsa flood of them buried In their native tongue at Toh. He waved them aside. The girls -were all barely maturedred-feathered and blue-feathered wings, black and gold-haired. They stopped their questioning, and stood alert and grim. Little warriors.
The thought struck Guy and made him shudder. Frail, beautiful little creatures, these flying virgins of Mercury.
For them to be embarked on deeds of violence seemed utterly unjust. Yet, with a flash of vision, Guy saw what was coming.
The girls realized it well enough. Their landfairest region of the universe to themwas threatened now by an alien race. They had had differences with their own government and had rebelled. But that was forgotten now in the greater peril.