"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.