The Fire People

by Ray Cummings

(Narrative continued by Alan Newland.)

With hardly more than a perceptible tremor our strange vehicle came to rest upon the surface of Mercury. For a moment Miela and I stood regarding each other silently. Then she left her station at the levers of the mechanism and placed her hands gently on my shoulders. "You are welcome, my husband, here to my world."

I kissed her glowing, earnest face. We had reached our journey's end. My work was about to begin—upon my own efforts now depended the salvation of that great world I had left behind. What difficulties, what dangers, would I have to face, here among the people of this strange planet? I thrilled with awe at the thought of it; and I prayed God then to hold me firm and steadfast to my purpose.

Miela must have divined my thoughts, for she said simply: "You will have great power here, Alan; and it is in my heart that you will succeed."

We slid back one of the heavy metallic curtains and looked out through the thick glass of the window. It was daylight—a diffused daylight like that of a cloudy midday on my own earth. An utterly barren waste met my gaze. We seemed to have landed in a narrow valley. Huge cliffs rose on both sides to a height of a thousand feet or more.

These cliffs, as well as the floor of the valley itself, shone with a brilliant glare, even in the half light of the sunless day. They were not covered with soil, but seemed rather to be almost entirely metallic, copper in color. The whole visible landscape was devoid of any sign of vegetation, nor was there a single living thing in sight.

I shuddered at the inhospitable bleakness of it.

"Where are we, Miela?"

She smiled at my tone. It was my first sight of Mercury except vague, distant glimpses of its surface through the mist coming down.

"You do not like my world?"

She was standing close beside me, and at her smiling words raised one of her glorious red wings and spread it behind me as though for protection. Then, becoming serious once more, she answered my question.

"We are fortunate, Alan. It is the Valley of the Sun, in the Light Country. I know it well. We are very close to the Great City."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'll leave it all to you, little wife. Shall we start at once?"

Her hand pressed mine.

"I shall lead you now," she said. "But afterward—you it will be who leads me—who leads us all."

She crossed to the door fastenings. As she loosed them I remember I heard a slight hissing sound. Before I could reach her she slid back the door. A great wave of air rushed in upon us, sweeping us back against the wall. I clutched at something for support, but the sweep of wind stopped almost at once.

I had stumbled to my knees. "Miela!" I cried in terror.

She was beside me in an instant, wide‑eyed with fear, which even then I could see was fear only for me.

I struggled to my feet. My head was roaring. All the blood in my body seemed rushing to my face.

After a moment I felt better. Miela pulled me to a seat.

"I did not think, Alan. The pressure of the air is different here from your world. It was so wrong of me, for I knew. It was so when I landed there on your earth."

I had never thought to ask her that, nor had she ever spoken of it to me. She went on now to tell me how, when first she had opened the door on that little Florida island, all the air about her seemed rushing away. She had felt then as one feels transported quickly to the rarified atmosphere of a great height.

Here the reverse had occurred. We had brought with us, and maintained, an air density such as that near sea level on earth. But here on Mercury the air was far denser, and its pressure had rushed in upon us instantly the door was opened. Miela had been affected to a much less extent than I, and in consequence recovered far more quickly.

The feeling, after the first nausea, the pressure and pain in my ears and the roaring in my head, had passed away. A sense of heaviness, an inability to breathe with accustomed freedom, remained with me for days.

We sat quiet for some minutes, and then left the vehicle. Miela was dressed now as I had first seen her on the Florida bayou. As we stepped upon the ground she suddenly tore the veil from her breast, spread her wings, and, with a laugh of sheer delight, flew rapidly up into the air. I stood watching her, my heart beating fast. Up—up she went into the gray haze of the sky. Then I could see her spread her great wings, motionless, a giant bird soaring over the valley.

A few moments more, and she was again beside me, alighting on the tip of one toe with perfect poise and grace almost within reach of my hand.

I do not quite know what feelings possessed me at that moment. Perhaps it was a sense of loss as I saw this woman I loved fly away into the air while I remained chained to the ground. I cannot tell. But when she came back, dropping gently down beside me, ethereal and beautiful as an angel from heaven itself, a sudden rush of love swept over me.

I crushed her to me, glorying in the strength of my arms and the frailness of her tender little body.

When I released her she looked up into my eyes archly.

"You do not like me to fly? Your wife is free—and, oh, Alan, it is so good—so good to be back here again where I can fly."

She laughed at my expression.

"You are a man, too—like all the men of my world. That is the feeling you came here to conquer, Alan—so that the women here may all keep their wings—and be free."

I think I was just a little ashamed of myself for a moment. But I knew my feeling had been only human. I did want her to fly, to keep those beautiful wings. And in that moment they came to represent not only her freedom, but my trust in her, my very love itself.

I stroked their sleek red feathers gently with my hand.

"I shall never feel that way again, Miela," I said earnestly.

She laughed once more and kissed me, and the look in her eyes told me she understood.

The landscape, from this wider viewpoint, seemed even more bleak and desolate than before. The valley was perhaps half a mile broad, and wound away upward into a bald range of mountains in the distance.

The ground under my feet was like a richly metallic ore. In places it was wholly metal, smooth and shining like burnished copper. Below us the valley broadened slightly, falling into what I judged must be open country where lay the city of our destination.

For some minutes I stood appalled at the scene. I had often been in the deserts of America, but never have I felt so great a sense of desolation. Always before it had been the lack of water that made the land so arid; and always the scene seemed to hold promise of latent fertility, as though only moisture were needed to make it spring into fruition.

Nothing of the kind was evident here. There was, indeed, no lack of water. I could see a storm cloud gathering in the distance. The air I was breathing seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil, not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, a peculiarly oppressive, moist heat.

I had been prepared for this by Miela. I was bareheaded, since there never was to be direct sunlight. My feet were clad in low shoes with rubber soles. I wore socks. For the rest, I had on simply one of my old pairs of short, white running pants and a sleeveless running shirt. With the exception of the shoes it was exactly the costume I had worn in the races at college.

I had been standing motionless, hardly more than a step from the car in which we had landed. Suddenly, in the midst of my meditations on the strange scene about me, Miela said: "Go there, Alan."

She was smiling and pointing to a little rise of ground near by. I looked at her blankly.

"Jump, Alan," she added.

The spot to which she pointed was perhaps forty feet away. I knew what she meant, and, stepping back a few paces, came running forward and leaped into the air. I cleared the intervening space with no more effort than I could have jumped less than half that distance on earth.

Miela flew over beside me.

"You see, Alan, my husband, it is not so bad, perhaps, that I can fly."

She was smiling whimsically, but I could see her eyes were full of pride.

"There is no other man on Mercury who could do that, Alan," she added.

I tried successive leaps then, always with the same result. I calculated that here the pull of gravity must be something less than one‑half that on the earth. It was far more than father had believed.

Miela watched my antics, laughing and clapping her hands with delight. I found I tired very quickly—that is, I was winded. This I attributed to the greater density of the air I was breathing.

In five minutes I was back at Miela's side, panting heavily.

"If I can—ever get so I breathe right—" I said.

She nodded. "A very little time, I think."

I sat down for a moment to recover my breath. Miela explained then that we were some ten miles from the fertile country surrounding the city in which her mother lived, and about fifteen miles from the outskirts of the city itself. I give these distances as they would be measured on earth. We decided to start at once. We took nothing with us. The journey would be a short one, and we could easily return at some future time for what we had left behind. We needed no food for so short a trip, and plenty of water was at hand.

Only one thing Miela would not part with—the single memento she had brought from earth to her mother. She refused to let me touch it, but insisted on carrying it herself, guarding it jealously.

It was Beth's little ivory hand mirror!

We started off. Miela had wound the filmy scarf about her shoulders again with a pretty little gesture.

"I need not use wings, Alan, when I am with you. We shall go together, you and I—on the ground."

And then, as I started off vigorously, she added plaintively from behind me: "If—if you will go slow, my husband, or will wait for me."

I altered my pace to suit hers. I had quite recovered my breath now, and for the moment felt that I could carry her much faster than she could walk. I did gather her into my arms once, and ran forward briskly, while she laughed and struggled with me to be put down. She seemed no more than a little child in my arms; but, as before, the heavy air so oppressed me that in a few moments I was glad enough to set her again upon her feet.

The valley broadened steadily as we advanced. For several miles the look of the ground remained unchanged. I wondered what curious sort of metal this might be—so like copper in appearance. I doubted if it were copper, since even in this hot, moist air it seemed to have no property of oxidation.

I asked Miela about it, and she gave me its Mercutian name at once; but of course that helped me not a bit. She added that outcroppings of it, almost in the pure state, like the great deposits of native copper I had seen on earth, occurred in many parts of Mercury.

I remembered then Bob Trevor's mention of it as the metal of the apparatus used by the invaders of Wyoming.

We went on three or four miles without encountering a single sign of life. No insects stirred underfoot; no birds flew overhead. We might have been—by the look of it—alone on a dead planet.

"Is none of your mountain country inhabited, Miela?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Only on the plains do people live. There is very little of good land in the Light Country, and so many people. That it is which has caused much trouble in the past. It is for that, many times, the Twilight People have made war upon us."

I found myself constantly able to breathe more easily. Our progress down the valley seemed now irritatingly slow, for I felt I could walk or run three times faster than Miela. Finally I suggested to her that she fly, keeping near me; and that I would make the best speed forward I could. She stared at me quizzically. Then, seeing I was quite sincere, she flung her little arms up about my neck and pulled me down to kiss her.

"Oh, Alan—the very best husband in all the universe, you are. None other could there be—like you."

She had just taken off her scarf again when suddenly I noticed a little speck in the sky ahead. It might have been a tiny bird, flying toward us from the plains below.

"Miela—look!"

She followed the direction of my hand. The speck grew rapidly larger.

"A girl, Alan," she said after a moment. "Let us wait."

We stood silent, watching. It was indeed a girl, flying over the valley some two or three hundred feet above the ground. As she came closer I saw her wings were blue, not red like Miela's. She came directly toward us.

Suddenly Miela gave a little cry.

"Anina! Anina!"

Without a word to me she spread her wings and flew up to meet the oncoming girl.

I stood in awe as I watched them. They met almost above me, and I could see them hovering with clasped hands while they touched cheeks in affectionate greeting. Then, releasing each other, they flew rapidly away together—smaller and smaller, until a turn in the valley hid them entirely from my sight.

I sat down abruptly. A lump was in my throat, a dismal lonesomeness in my heart. I knew Miela would return in a moment—that she had met some friend or relative—yet I could not suppress the vague feeling of sorrow and the knowledge of my own incapacity that swept over me.

For the first time then I wanted wings—wanted them myself—that I might join this wife I loved in her glorious freedom of the air. And I realized, too, for the first time, how that condition Miela so deplored on Mercury had come to pass. I could understand now very easily how it was that married women were deprived by their husbands of these wings which they themselves were denied by the Creator.

Hardly more than ten minutes had passed before I saw the two girls again flying toward me. They alighted a short distance away, and approached me, hand in hand.

The girl with Miela, I could see now, was somewhat shorter, even slighter of build, and two or three years younger. Her face held the same delicate, wistful beauty. The two girls strongly resembled one another in feature. The newcomer was dressed in similar fashion to Miela—sandals on her feet, and silken trousers of a silvery white, fastened at the ankles with golden cords.

Her wings, as I have said, were blue—a delight light blue that, as I afterward noticed, matched her eyes. Her hair was the color of spun gold; she wore it in two long, thick braids over her shoulders and fastened at the waist and knee. She was, in very truth, the most ethereal human being I had ever beheld. And—next to Miela—the most beautiful.

Miela pulled her forward, and she came on, blushing with the sweet shyness of a child. She was winding her silken silver scarf about her breast hastily, as best she could with her free hand.

"My sister, Anina—Alan," said Miela simply.

The girl stood undecided; then, evidently obeying Miela's swift words of instruction, she stood up on tiptoe, put her arms about my neck, and kissed me full on the lips.

Miela laughed gayly.

"You must love her very much, Alan. And she—your little sister—will love you, too. She is very sweet."

Then her face sobered suddenly.

"Tao has returned, Alan. And he has sent messengers to our city. They are appealing to our people to join Tao in his great conquest. They say Tao has here with him, on Mercury, a captive earth‑man, with wonderful strength of body, who will help in the destruction of his own world!"

---

[ CHAPTER XIII.
THE CAPTIVE EARTH‑MAN.]

As we came out of the valley I had my first view of the Great City. It occupied a huge, mound‑shaped circular mountain which rose alone out of the wide plain that spread before me. As far as I could see extended a rich muddy soil partially covered with water. A road led out of the valley, stretching across these wet fields toward the base of the mountain. It was built on an embankment some eight or ten feet high, of the red, metallic ore of the mountains.

All along the base of this embankment, with their roots in the water, graceful trees like palms curved upward over the road. The landscape was dotted with these and other tropical trees; the scene was, indeed, essentially tropical.

I wondered at the continued absence of sight of human beings. The fields were quite evidently under cultivation. A rise of ground off to the left was ridged with terraces. As we passed on along the road I saw a rude form of plow standing where it had been left in a field which evidently was producing rice or something akin to it. Yet there was not a person in sight. Only ahead in the sky I could see a little cluster of black dots that Miela said was a group of females hovering about the summit of the Great City.

"It is the time of sleep now, Alan," she said, in answer to my question.

I had not thought of that. It was broad daylight, but here on Mercury there was no day or night, but always the same half light, as of a cloudy day.

The mountain on which the city was built was dotted thickly with palms, and as we approached I made out the houses of the city, set amid the trees, with broad streets converging at the top. As we came still closer I saw that the summit of the mountain was laid out like some beautiful tropical garden, with a broad, low‑lying palace in its center.

When we were still a mile or so away from the outskirts of the city Miela spoke in her soft native tongue to Anina. The girl smiled at me in parting, and, unwinding the veil from about her breast, flew into the air.

We stood watching her as she winged her way onward toward the sleeping city. When she had dwindled to a tiny speck I sighed unconsciously and turned away; and again Miela smiled at me with comprehension.

We started forward, Miela chattering now like a little child. She seemed eager to tell me all about the new world of hers I was entering, and there was indeed so much to tell she was often at a loss what to describe first.

She named the cereal which constituted the only crop to which these marsh lands were suitable. From her description I made out it was similar to rice, only of a somewhat larger grain. It formed, she said, the staple article of food of the nation.

As we approached the base of the Great City mountain the ground began gradually rising. The drainage thus afforded made it constantly drier as we advanced. It assumed now more the character of a heavy loam.

Still farther on we began passing occasional houses—the outskirts of the city itself. They were square, single‑story, ugly little buildings, built of reddish stone and clay, flat‑roofed, and raised a foot or two off the ground on stone pilings. They had large rectangular windows, most of them open, a few with lattice shades. The doorways stood open without sign of a door; access to the ground was obtained by a narrow board incline.

Interspersed with these stone houses I saw many single‑room shacks, loosely built of narrow boards from the palm trees, and thatched with straw. In these, Miela explained, lived poorer people, who worked in the rice fields for the small land owners.

We reached the base of the mountain proper, and I found myself in a broad street with houses on both sides. This street seemed to run directly to the summit of the mountain, sloping upward at a sharp angle. We turned into it and began our climb into the sleeping city. It was laid out regularly, all its principal streets running from the base of the mountain upward to its summit, where they converged in a large open space in which the castle I have already mentioned was situated. The cross‑streets formed concentric rings about the mountain, at intervals of perhaps five hundred feet down its sides—small circles near the top, lengthening until at the base the distance around was, I should judge, ten miles or more.

We climbed upward nearly to the summit; then Miela turned into one of the cross‑streets. I had found the climb tremendously tiring, though Miela seemed not to notice it unduly, and I was glad enough when we reached this street which girdled the mountain almost at the same level. We had gone only a short distance along it, however, when Miela paused before a house set somewhat back from the road on a terrace.

"My home," she said, and her voice trembled a little with emotion. "Our home it shall be now, Alan, with Lua and Anina, our mother and sister."

A low, bushy hedge separated the street from a garden that surrounded the house. The building was of stone, two stories in height. It was covered with a thick vine bearing a profusion of vivid red flowers. On its flat roof were tiny palm trees, a pergola with trellised vines, and still more flowers, most of them of the same brilliant red. The whole was surrounded by a waist‑high parapet.

One corner of the roof was covered with thatch—a little nest where one might be sheltered from the rain, and in which I could see a bed of palm fiber. At one side of the house a tremendous cluster of bamboo curved upward and over the roof. A path of chopped coconut husks led from the street to a short flight of steps in the terrace at the front entrance.

We passed along this path and entered through the open doorway directly into what I judged was the living room of the dwelling. It was some thirty feet long and half as broad, with a high ceiling and stone floor. Its three windows fronted the garden we had just left; in its farther wall a low archway led into an adjoining room. The furniture consisted only of two or three small tables and several low, wide couches, all of bamboo.

A woman and the girl Anina rose as we entered. Anina ran toward us eagerly; the elder woman stood, quietly waiting. She was about forty years of age, as tall as Miela, but heavier of build. She was dressed in loose silk trousers, gathered at waist and ankle; and a wide sash that covered her breast. Her hair was iron gray, cut short at the base of the neck. From her shoulders I saw hanging a cloak that entirely covered her wings.

As she turned toward us I saw a serious, dignified, wholly patrician face, with large, kindly dark eyes, a high, intellectual forehead, and a firm yet sensitive mouth. She was the type of woman one would instinctively mark for leader.

Miela ran forward to greet her mother, falling upon her knees and touching her forehead to the elder woman's sandaled feet. As she rose I could see there were tears in the eyes of them both. Then Miela presented me. I stood for an instant, confused, not knowing quite what I should do.

Miela laughed her gay little laugh.

"Bow low, Alan—as I did—to our mother."

I knelt to her respectfully, and she put her hands lightly upon my head, speaking low words of greeting. Then, as I stood up again, I met her eyes and smiled an answer to the gentle smile on her lips. From that moment I felt almost as though she were my own mother, and I am sure she took me then into her heart as her son.

The introduction over, I turned toward one of the windows, leaving Miela to talk with her mother. Anina followed me, standing timidly by my side, with her big, curious eyes looking up into my face.

"You're a sweet, dear little sister," I said, "and I am going to love you very much."

I put my arm about her shoulders, and she smiled as though she understood me, yielding to my embrace with the ready friendship of a child. For some moments we stood together, looking out of the window and talking to each other with words that were quite unintelligible to us both. Then Miela suddenly called me.

"We shall eat now, Alan," she said, "for you are hungry, I know. And above there is water, that we may wash." Her face clouded as she went on: "Our mother has told me a little that has happened. It is very serious, Alan, as you shall hear. Tao, with his great news of your wonderful world, is very fast winning over our men to his cause. A revolt, there may be, here in our own city—a revolution against our government, our king. We can only look to you now, my husband, to save our country from Tao as well as your own."

The situation as I found it in the Light Country was, as Miela said, alarmingly serious. During the two years Tao had been in the Twilight Country, preparing for his attack upon the earth, his project had caused little stir among the Light Country people.

Its women were, at first, perturbed at this wanton attack upon the humanity of another world, but since the earth was such an unknown quantity, and the fact of its being inhabited at all was problematical, interest in the affair soon lagged. The government of the Light Country concerned itself not at all.

But now, upon Tao's return, the news of his venture, as told by the emissaries he sent to the Light Country, struck its people like a bombshell. These emissaries—all men—had come to the Great City, and, finding their presence tolerated by the authorities, had immediately started haranguing the people.

The men were inclined to listen, and many of them openly declared their sympathy with Tao. These, however, were for the most part of the poorer, more ignorant classes, or those more adventurous, less scrupulous individuals to whom the prospect of sudden riches appealed.

"Why doesn't your government just throw Tao's men out if they're causing so much trouble?" I asked. "They never should have been allowed in the country at all."

Miela smiled sadly. "That is so, my husband. That should have been done; but now it is too late. Our men would protect them now, declaring their right to stay here and speak. There might be bloodshed among our people, and that must not be."

"Are they armed?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No one is armed with the light‑ray. To carry it is a crime punishable by death, for the light is too destructive."

"But Tao has it?"

"Tao has it, indeed, but he is not so great a monster that he would use it against us."

I was not so sure of that, and I said so. "You don't mean to tell me, Miela, that your government has allowed Tao to prepare all this destructive armament without itself arming?"

Again she shook her head. "We have been preparing, too, and all our young men can be called if occasion comes. But that must never be. It would be too terrible."

---

Miela and I occupied, that first night on Mercury, a broad wooden bed built low to the floor, with a mattress of palm fiber. At first I could not sleep, but lay thinking over the many things she had told me. The light in the room, too, was strange. Lattice covered the windows, but it was like trying to sleep at midday; and the heat and heaviness of the air oppressed me. I dropped off finally, to be awakened by Miela's voice calling me to breakfast.

We sat down to the morning meal at a low table set with shining plates and goblets of copper, or whatever the metal was, and napery of silk. The rice formed our main article of food, with sugar, milk, and a beverage not unlike coffee. There was also a meat like beef, although more highly flavored, and a number of sickish sweet fruits of a kind entirely new to me, which I could do no more than taste.

We were served by a little maid whose darker skin and heavier features proclaimed her of another race—a native of the Fire Country, Miela told me. She was dressed in a brown tunic of heavy silk, reaching from waist to knee. Her thick black hair was cut to her shoulders.

On her left arm above the elbow was welded a broad band of copper inscribed with a mark to identify Lua as her owner, for she was a slave. Her torso was bare, except for a cloak like Lua's which hung from her shoulders in the back to cover her wings. By this I knew she could not fly.

It was not until some time afterward that I learned the reason for this covering of the clipped wings. The wing joints were severed just above the waist line. The feathers on the remaining upper portions were clipped, but through disuse these feathers gradually dropped out entirely.

The flesh and muscle underneath was repulsive in appearance—for which reason it was always kept covered. Lua showed me her wings once—mere shrunken stumps of what had once been her most glorious possession. I did not wonder then that the women were ready to fight, almost, rather than part with them.

Difficulties of language made our conversation during the meal somewhat halting, although Miela acted as interpreter. Lua and Anina both expressed their immediate determination to learn English, and, with the same persistence that Miela had shown, they set aside nearly everything else to accomplish it.

We decided that we should see the king and arrange our future course of action. Whatever was to be done should be done at once—that we all agreed—for Tao's men were steadily gaining favor with a portion of the people, and we had no means of knowing what they would attempt to do.

"What will your people think of me?" I suddenly asked Miela.

"We have sent our king word that you are here," she answered, "and we have asked that he send a guard to take you to the castle this morning."

"A guard?"

She smiled. "It is better that the people see you first as a man of importance. You will go to the king under guard. Few will notice you. Then will he, our ruler, arrange that you are shown to the people as a great man—one who has come here to help us—one who is trusted and respected by our king. You see, my husband, the difference?"

I did, indeed, though I wondered a little how I should justify this exalted position which was being thrust upon me. After breakfast Lua and Anina busied themselves about the house, while Miela and I went to the rooftop to wait for the king's summons. From here I had my first really good view of the city at close range.

Miela's home sat upon a terrace, leveled off on the steep hillside; all the houses in the vicinity were similarly situated. Behind us the mountain rose steeply; in front it dropped away, affording an extended view of the level, palm‑dotted country below.

The slope of hillside rising abruptly behind us held another house just above the level of the rooftop we were on. As I sat there looking idly about I thought I saw a figure lurking near this higher building. I called Miela's attention to it—the obscure figure of a man standing against a huge palm trunk.

As we watched the figure stepped into plainer view. I saw then it was a man, evidently looking down at us. I stood up. There was no one else in sight except a woman on the roof of the other house holding an infant.

Something about the man's figure seemed vaguely familiar; my heart leaped suddenly.

"Miela," I whispered, "surely that—that is no one of your world."

Her hand clutched my arm tightly as the man stepped forward again and waved at us. I crossed the rooftop, Miela following. At my sudden motion the man hesitated, then seemed about to run. I hardly know what thoughts impelled me, but suddenly I shouted: "Wait!"

At the sound of my voice he whirled around, stopped dead an instant, and then, with an answering call, came running down the hillside.

"The earth‑man!" cried Miela. "The earth‑man of Tao it must be."

We hurried down through the house and arrived at its back entrance. Coming toward us at a run across the garden was the man—unmistakably one of my own world.

My hurried glance showed me he was younger than I—a short, stocky, red‑headed chap, dressed in dirty white duck trousers and a torn white linen shirt.

He came on at full speed.

"Hello!" I called.

He stopped abruptly. For an instant we stared at each other; then he grinned broadly.

"Well, I don't know who you are," he ejaculated, "but I want to say it certainly does me good to see you."

---

[ CHAPTER XIV.
THE RULER OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY.]

However pleased the newcomer was to see me, I had no difficulty in assuring him with equal truth that my feelings matched his. The first surprise of the meeting over, we took him to the living room, where Lua greeted him with dignified courtesy, and we all gathered around to hear his story.

He was, I saw now, not more than twenty years old, rather short—perhaps five feet six or seven inches—and powerfully built, with a shock of tousled red hair and a handsome, rough‑hewn face essentially masculine.

He seemed to be an extraordinarily good‑humored chap, with the ready wit of an Irishman. I liked him at once—I think we all did.

He began, characteristically, near the end rather than the beginning of the events I knew he must have to tell us.

"I got away," he chuckled, grinning more broadly than ever. "But where I was going to, search me. And who the deuce are you, if you don't mind my asking? How did you ever get to this God‑forsaken place?"

I smiled. "You tell us about yourself first; then I'll tell you about myself. You are the earth‑man we've been hearing about, aren't you—the man Tao captured in Wyoming and brought here with him?"

"They caught me in Wyoming all right. Who's Tao?"

"He's the leader of them all."

"Oh. Well, they brought me here, as you say, and I guess they've had me about all over this little earth since. They stuck me in a boat, and Lord knows how far we went. We got here last night, and when my guard went to sleep I beat it." He scratched his head lugubriously. "Though what good I thought it was going to do me I don't know. That's about all, I guess. Who the deuce are you?"

I laughed.

"Wait a minute—don't go so fast. Start at the beginning. What's your name?"

"Oliver Mercer."

His face grew suddenly grave. "My brother was killed up there in Wyoming—that's how I happened to go there in the first place."

"Mercer!" I exclaimed.

He started. "Yes—why? You don't think you know me, by any chance, do you?"

"No, but I knew your brother—that is, I know Bob Trevor, who was with him when he was killed. He's one of my best friends."

The young fellow extended his hand. "A friend of Bob Trevor's—away off here! Don't it get you, just?"

Miela interrupted us here to translate to her mother and Anina what he said.

Mercer went on: "The assumption is, you people here are not working with this gang of crooks I got away from—this Tao? Am I right in thinking so?"

"You're certainly right, that far," I laughed.

I felt, more than I can say, a great sense of relief, a lessening of the tension, the unconscious strain I had been under, at this swift, jovial conversation with another human of my own kind.

"Yes, you're right on that. This Tao and I are not exactly on the same side. I'll tell you all about it in a minute."

"Then, we're working together?"

"Yes."

"Well, all I'm working for is to get back home where I came from."

"You won't be when you hear all I've got to say."

He started at that; then, with sudden change of thought, his eyes turned to Anina. The girl blushed under his admiring gaze.

"Say, she's a little beauty, isn't she? Who is she?"

"She's my sister," I said, smiling.

For once he was too dumfounded to reply.

Miela had finished her translation now, and, as she turned back to us, spoke in English for the first time during the conversation.

"Do you know why it is they brought you here from the Twilight Country?" she asked Mercer.

This gave him another shock. "Why, I—no. That is—say, how do you happen to talk English? Is it one of your languages here, by any chance?"

Miela laughed gayly.

"Only we three, in all this world, speak English. I know it because—"

I interrupted her.

"Suppose I tell him our whole story, Miela? Then—"

"That's certainly what I want to hear," said Mercer emphatically. "And especially why it is that I'm not supposed to want to get back to where I belong."

My explanation must have lasted nearly an hour, punctuated by many questions and exclamations of wonder from young Mercer. I told him the whole affair in detail, and ended with a statement of exactly how matters stood now on Mercury.

"Do you want to hurry back home to earth now?" I finished.

"Duck out of this? I should say not. Why, we've got a million things to do here."

His eyes turned again toward Anina.

"And, say—about letting those girls keep their wings. I'm strong for that. Let's be sure and fix that up before we leave."

It was not more than half an hour later when the king's guards arrived to conduct us to the castle. Meanwhile young Mercer had discovered he was hungry and thirsty. As soon as he had finished eating we started off—he and I, with Lua and Miela. The guards led us away as though we were prisoners, forming a hollow square—there were some thirty of them—with us in the center. We attracted little attention from passersby; the few who stopped to stare at us, or who attempted to follow, were briskly ordered away.

Occasionally a few girls would hover overhead, but when the guards shouted up at them they flew away obediently.

The king's castle was constructed of metal and stone—a long, low, rambling structure, flanked by two spires or minarets, giving it somewhat an Oriental appearance. Each of these minarets was girdled, halfway up, by a narrow balcony.

The first room into which we passed was small, seemingly an antechamber. From it, announced by two other guards who stood at the entrance, we entered directly into the main hall of the building. At one end of it there was a raised platform. On this, seated about a large table, were some ten or twelve dignitaries—the king's advisers. They were, I saw, all aged men, with beardless, seamed faces, long snowy‑white hair to their shoulders, and dressed in flowing silk robes.

The king was a man of seventy‑odd, kindly faced, gentle in demeanor. He bore himself with the dignity of a born ruler, and yet his very kindliness of aspect and the doddering gravity of his aged councilors, seemed to explain at once most of the trouble that now confronted him.

We stood beside this table—they courteously made way for Lua to sit among them—and all its occupants immediately turned to face us.

Our audience lasted perhaps an hour and a half altogether. I need not go into details. I was right in assuming that the king desired to help us prevent Tao from his attempted conquest of the earth. This was so, but only in so far as his actions would not jeopardize the peace of his own nation. He sadly admitted his error in allowing Tao's emissaries into the Light Country. But now they were there, he did not see how to get them out.

His people were daily listening to them more eagerly; and, what was worse, the police guards themselves seemed rather more in sympathy with them than otherwise. A slight disturbance had occurred in the streets the day before, and the guards had stood apathetically by, taking no part. Above all else, the king stoutly protested, he would have no bloodshed in his country if he could prevent it.

In the neighboring towns of the Light Country—the nearest of which was some forty miles away from the Great City—the situation was almost the same. Reports brought by young women flying between the cities said that to many Tao also had sent emissaries who were fast winning converts to his cause.

"Do all these people who believe in Tao expect to go to our earth when it is conquered?" I asked Miela. "How can they—so many of them—hope to benefit in that way? Aren't they satisfied here?"

Miela smiled sadly.

"No people can ever be satisfied—all of them. That you must know, my husband. They have many grievances against our ruler. Many things they want which he cannot give. Tao may promise these things—and if they believe his promise it is very bad."

"He might come over here and try to make himself king," Mercer said suddenly. "If it's like that maybe he could do it, too, with this grand earth‑conquest getting ready. Tell the king that—see what he says."

"He says that he realizes and fears it," Miela answered. "But he thinks that first Tao will go to your earth, and he may never come back. So much may happen—"

"So he's just going to wait," I explained. "Well, we're not just going to wait. Ask the king what our status is."

"Ask him about me," Mercer put in. "Are those Tao men going to grab me the minute I show my face on the street, or will he protect me?"

Miela translated this to the king, adding something of her own to which he evidently agreed.

"It is as I thought," she said. "He believes he can present you to the people as men of earth who are our guests, and that they will accept you in friendly spirit, most of them."

The king spoke to one of his advisers, who abruptly left the room.

"He will call the people now," Miela went on, "and will speak to them from the tower—all who can leave their tasks to come. You will stand there with him. He will ask that we of the Light Country allow you to remain here in peace among us. And this captive earth man of Tao's"—she laid her hand lightly on Mercer's shoulder—"he will ask, too, that he be given sanctuary among us. Our people still are kindly—most of them—and they will see the justice of what he asks."

I suggested then that Miela tell the king that we had determined, if we could, to frustrate Tao in his plans; and showed her how to point out to him that such an outcome would, if successful, make his throne secure and insure peace for his nation.

He asked me bluntly what it was I thought I could do. The vague beginnings of a plan were forming in my mind. "Tell him, Miela, I think we can rid the Light Country of Tao's emissaries—send them back—without causing any disturbances among the people. Ask him if that would not be a good thing."

The king nodded gravely as this was translated.

"He asks you how?" Miela said next.

"Tell him, Miela, that there are some things that might happen of which he would be very glad, but which it might be better he did not know. You understand. Make him see that we will be responsible for this—that he needn't have anything to do with it or know anything about it. Then, if we do anything wrong against your laws, he will be perfectly safe in stopping and punishing us."

Miela nodded, and began swiftly telling this to the king. As she spoke I saw his eyes twinkle and a swift little series of nods from the aged men about the table made me know that I had carried my point. During the latter part of this talk I had noticed the growing murmur of voices outside the castle. The old man who had left the room at the king's order came back.

"The people now are gathering," Miela said. "In a moment we shall go up into the tower."

The king's councilors now rose and withdrew, and a few moments later the king, without formality, led the four of us through the castle and up into the tower.

We climbed a little stone staircase in the tower and came into a circular room some sixty feet above the ground. A small doorway from this room gave access to the narrow balcony which girdled the tower. The sounds of the gathering crowd came up plainly from the gardens below. We waited for a time, and then, at a sign from the king, stepped together upon the balcony.

The gardens below were full of people—gathered among the palms and moving about for points of vantage from which to obtain a view of the balcony. Most of them were men and older women. The girls were, nearly all of them, in the air, flying about the tower and hovering near the balcony, staring at us curiously. The women were, for the most part, dressed as I have described Lua.

The men wore knee‑length trousers of fabric or leather, and sometimes a shirt or leather jacket, although a difference of costume that made evident the rank of the wearer was noticeable in both sexes. All were bareheaded, with the exception of the king's guards, who were thus plainly distinguishable, standing idly about among the crowd.

As we stepped out into view of the people a louder murmur arose, mingled with a ripple of applause. Three or four girls, hovering only a few feet in front of us, clapped their hands and laughed. The king placed Mercer and me on either side of him, and, standing with his hands on our shoulders, leaned over the balcony rail and began to speak.

A silence fell over the crowd; they listened quietly, but with none of that respect and awe with which a people usually faces its king.

Miela whispered to me. "He is telling them about your earth, and that you came here to visit us in friendly spirit."

There were some murmurs of dissent as the king proceeded, and once some bolder individual shouted up a question, at which a wave of laughter arose. As it died away, and the crowd appeared to listen to the king's next words, a stone suddenly came whirling up from below, narrowly missing the king's head. A sudden hush fell over the people at this hostile act; then a tumult of shouting broke loose, and a commotion off to one side showed where the offender was standing.

Mercer wheeled toward me, his face white with anger.

"Who did that—did you see him? Which one was it?"

The king began to speak, as if nothing had occurred, and an instant later several more stones whistled past us. The commotion in the crowd grew more violent, but it was evident that a great majority of the people were against this demonstration.

"It is better we go inside," Miela said quietly.

The king was shouting down to his guards now, but they stood apathetically by, taking no part.

Another stone hurtled past us, striking the tower and falling at our feet. The king abruptly ceased his shouting and left the balcony. As he passed me and I glanced into his frightened face I felt a sudden sense of pity for this gentle, kindly old man, so well‑meaning, but so utterly ineffective as a ruler.

I was about to pull Miela back into the room when a girl flew up to the balcony railing. As she balanced herself upon it I saw it was Anina. She said something to Miela, who turned swiftly to me.

"She is right, my husband. We must not leave the matter like this. They can have no confidence in you—our women most of all—if you do not do something now. A sign of your strength now would make them respect you—perhaps one of those who threw the stones you could punish."

I knew she was right. Most of the crowd was with us. If we retreated now, those against us would grow bolder—our appearance on the street might at any time be dangerous. But if now we proved ourselves superior in strength, the popular sentiment in our favor would be just that much stronger. At least, that is the way it seemed to me.

I did not need to ask Mercer's opinion, for at Miela's words he immediately said: "That's my idea. Just give me a chance at them."

He leaned over the balcony. "How are we going to get down there? It's too far to drop."

Miela spoke to Anina, and they both flew away. In a moment they were back with two other girls. All four clung to the outside of the balcony railing, and formed a cross with their joined hands. Into this little seat of their arms I clambered. My weight was too great for them to have lifted me up, but they fluttered safely with me to the ground, landing in a heap among the people, who had cleared a space to receive us. As soon as I was upon my feet the girls flew back for Mercer, and in a moment more he was beside me.

"If we only knew who threw those stones," I said.

I stood erect, and my greater height enabled me to see over the heads of the people easily.

Miela laid her hand on my arm.

"One of them I know. His name is Baar, a bad character. He has caused much trouble in the past."

She then told me hastily that she and Anina would fly up and seek him out. Mercer and I were to follow them through the crowd on the ground.

The throng was pushing close about us now, although those nearest us tried to keep away as best they could. Miela and Anina flew up over our heads, and, side by side, Mercer and I started off. The people struggled back before our advance, striving to make a path for us. At times the press of those behind made it impossible for them to give us room. We did not hesitate, but shoved our way forward, elbowing them away roughly.

Suddenly, some twenty feet ahead of us, I saw Miela and Anina come to the ground, and in a moment more we were with them again.

The crowd was less dense here, and about us there was a considerable open space, Miela pointed out a man leaning against the trunk of a palm tree near by and glaring at us malevolently.

"That is he," she said quietly. "A very bad man—this Baar—whom many would like to see punished."

Mercer jumped forward, but I swept him back with my arm.

"Leave him to me," I said. "You stand here by the girls. If I need you, I'll shout."

The man by the tree was a squat little individual, some five feet three or four inches tall, and extraordinarily broad. He was bareheaded, with black hair falling to his shoulders. He was naked to the waist, exposing a powerful torso. His single garment was the usual knee‑length trousers. I thought I had never seen so evil a face as his, as he stood there, holding his ground before my slow advance, and leering at me. His cheek bones were high, his jowls heavy, his little eyes set wide apart. His nose was flat, as though it had once been broken.

I went straight up to him, and he did not move. There were certainly three hundred people watching us as I stood there facing him.

"You threw a stone at your king," I said to him sternly, although I knew perfectly well he could not understand my words. "You shall be punished."

I reached out suddenly and struck him in the face as smartly as I could with the flat of my hand. He gave a roar of surprise and pain, and as soon as he could recover from my blow lunged at me with a snarl of rage.

As he came I turned and darted swiftly away. I heard a shout of surprise from Mercer. "It's all right," he called. "Wait."

I ran about twenty feet, then turned and waited. The man came on, head down, charging like a mad bull. When he was close upon me I gathered my muscles and sprang clear over his head, landing well behind him.

He stopped and looked around confusedly, evidently not quite sure at first what had become of me.

Mercer gave a shout of glee, and, to my great satisfaction, I heard it taken up by the crowd, mingled with murmurs of surprise and awe.

I stood quiet, and again my opponent charged me. I eluded him easily, and then for fully ten minutes I taunted and baited him this way, as a skillful toreador taunts his bull. The crowd now seemed to enjoy the affair hugely.

Finally I darted behind my adversary and, catching him by the shoulders, tripped him and laid him on his back on the ground A great roar of laughter went up from the onlookers.

The man was on his feet again in an instant, breathing heavily, for indeed he had nearly winded himself by his exertions. I ran over to Mercer.

"Go on," I said; "show them what you can do."

The commotion of this contest had drawn many other spectators about us now, but they kept a space clear, pushing back hurriedly before our sudden rushes. At my words Mercer darted forward eagerly. His first move was to leap some twenty feet across the open space. This smaller opponent seemed to give the Mercutian new courage.

He shouted exultantly and dashed at Mercer, who stood quietly waiting for him at the edge of the crowd.

Mercer's ideas evidently were different from mine, for as his adversary came within reach he stepped nimbly aside and hit him a vicious blow in the face. The man toppled over backward and lay still.

I ran over to where Mercer was bending over his fallen foe. As I came up he straightened and grinned at me. "Oh, shucks," he said disgustedly. "You can't fight up here—it's too easy."

---

[ CHAPTER XV.
THE MOUNTAIN CONCLAVE.]

"It is reasonable," Miela said thoughtfully. "And that our women will help as you say—of that I am sure."

We were gathered in the living room after the evening meal, and I had given them my ideas of how we should start meeting the situation that confronted us. We had had no more trouble that day. After the encounter in the king's garden Mercer and I had followed the two girls swiftly home. We were not molested in the streets, although the people crowded about us wherever we went.

"Why did none of Baar's friends come to his rescue up there in the garden?" I asked Miela. "Surely there must have been many of them about."

"They were afraid, perhaps," she answered. "And they knew the people were against them. There might have been serious trouble; for that is not their way—to fight in the open."

Her face became very grave. "We must be very careful, my husband, that they, or Tao's men do not come here to harm you while you sleep."

"Why do you suppose they ever happened to bring me here in the first place?" Mercer wanted to know. "That's what I can't figure out."

"They knew not that Alan was here," said Miela. "I think they wanted to show you to our people as their captive—one of the earth‑men."

Mercer chuckled.

"They didn't know what a good runner I was, or they'd never have taken a chance like that."

I told Miela then my plan for enlisting the sympathy of the women of the Light Country and for securing the active coöperation of the girls in ridding us of the disturbing presence of these Tao emissaries.

We planned that whatever we did should be in secret, so far as possible. Mercer and I talked together, while Miela consulted with Lua at length.

I explained to Mercer that Tao might at any time send an expedition to invade the Light Country.

"How about that car we came from earth in?" he suggested. "He could sail over in that, couldn't he—if he should want to come over here?"

I knew that was not feasible. In the outer realms of space the balancing attractions of the different heavenly bodies made it easy enough to head in any specified direction; but for travel over a planet's surface it was quite impractical. Its rise and fall could be perfectly governed; but when it was directed laterally the case was very different. Just where it would go could not be determined with enough exactness.

Miela turned back to us from her consultation with Lua.

"In the mountains, high up and far beyond the Valley of the Sun," she said, "lies a secret place known only to our women. Our mother says that she and I and Anina can spread the news among our virgins to gather there to‑morrow at the time of sleep. Only to those we know we can trust will we speak—and they will have no men to whom to tell our plans. To‑morrow they will gather up there in the clouds, among the crags, unseen by prying eyes. And you and our—our friend Ollie"—she smiled as she used the nickname by which he had asked her to call him—"you two we will take there by the method you have told us. We will arrange, up there in secret, what it is we are to do to help our world and yours."

This, in effect, was our immediate plan of procedure. Nearly all the next day Mercer and I stayed about the house, while the three women went through the city quietly, calling forth all those they could reach to our conclave in the mountains.

They returned some time after midday. Miela came first, alighting with a swift, triumphant swoop upon the roof where Mercer and I were sitting.

One glance at her face told me she had been successful.

"They will come, my husband," she announced. "And they are ready and eager, all of them, to do what they can."

Anina and Lua brought the same news. When we were all together again Mercer and I took them to the garden behind the house and showed them what we had done while they were away.

It was my plan to have the girls carry Mercer and me through the air with them. For that purpose we had built a platform of bamboo, which now lay ready in the garden.

Miela clapped her hands at sight of it. "That is perfect, my husband. No difficulty will there be in taking you with us now."

The platform was six feet wide by ten long. It rested upon a frame with two poles of bamboo some forty feet in length running lengthwise along its edges. These two poles thus projected in front and back of the platform fifteen feet each way. Running under them crosswise at intervals were other, shorter bamboo lengths which projected out the sides a few feet to form handles. There were ten of them on a side at intervals of four feet.

I found it difficult to realize the difference between night and day, since here on Mercury the light never changed. I longed now for that darkness of our own earth which would make it so much easier for us to conceal our movements. Miela relieved my mind on that score, however, by explaining that at nearly the same hour almost every one in the city fell asleep. The physical desire for sleep was, I learned, much stronger with the Mercutians than with us; and only by the drinking of a certain medicinal beverage could they ward it off.

It was after the evening meal, at a time which might have corresponded to an hour or so before midnight, that the selected eighteen girls began to arrive. Miela brought them into the living room with us until they were all together.

It was a curious gathering—this bevy of Mercutian maidens. They all seemed between the ages of sixteen and twenty‑three—fragile, dainty little wisps of femininity, yet having a strength in their highly developed wing muscles that was truly surprising.

They were dressed in the characteristic costume I have described, with only a slight divergence of color or ornamentation. They were of only two types—jet black tresses, black eyes, and red‑feathered wings like Miela; or the less vivid, more ethereal Anina—blue‑eyed, golden‑haired, with wing feathers of light blue.

When they had all arrived we went into the garden behind the house. In a moment more Mercer and I were seated side by side on the little bamboo platform. Miela and Anina took the center positions so that they would be near us. The other girls ranged themselves along the sides, each grasping one of the handles.

In another moment we were in the air. My first sensation was one of a sudden rushing forward and upward. The frail little craft swayed under me alarmingly, but I soon grew used to that. The flapping of those many pairs of huge wings so close was very loud; the wind of our swift forward flight whistled past my ears. Looking down over the side of the platform, between the bodies of two of the girls, I could see the city silently dropping away beneath us. Above there was nothing but the same dead gray sky, black in front, with occasional vivid lightning flashes and the rumble of distant thunder.

Underneath the storm cloud, far ahead, the jagged tops of a range of mountains projected above the horizon. As I watched they seemed slowly creeping up and forward as the horizon rolled back to meet them.

For half an hour or so we sped onward through the air. We were over the mountains now. Great jagged, naked peaks of shining metal towered above us, with that broken, utterly desolate country beneath. We swept continually upward, for the mountains rose steadily in broad serrated ranks before us.

Occasionally we would speed up a narrow defile, with the broken, tumbling cliffs rising abruptly over our heads, only to come out above a level plateau or across a cañon a thousand feet deep or more.

The storm broke upon us. We entered a cloud that wrapped us in its wet mist and hid the mountains from our sight. The darkness of twilight settled down, lighted by flashes of lightning darting almost over our heads. The sharp cracks of thunder so close threatened to split my eardrums.

The wind increased in violence. The little platform trembled and swayed. I could see the girls struggling to hold it firm. At times we would drop abruptly straight down a hundred or two hundred feet, with a great fluttering of wings; but all the time I knew we were rising sharply.

Mercer and I clung tightly to the platform. We did not speak, and I think both of us were frightened. Certainly we were awed by the experience. After a time—I have no idea how long—we passed through the storm and came again into the open air with the same gray sky above us.

We were several thousand feet up now, flying over what seemed to be a tumbling mass of small volcanic craters. In front of us rose a sheer cliff wall, extending to the right and left to the horizon. We passed over its rim, and I saw that it curved slightly inward, forming the circumference of a huge circle.

The inner floor was hardly more than a thousand feet down, and seemed fairly level. We continued on, arriving finally over the mouth of a little circular pit. This formed an inner valley, half a mile across and with sheer side walls some five hundred feet high. As we swung down into it I noticed above the horizon behind us a number of tiny black dots in the sky—other girls flying out from the city to our meeting.

I have never beheld so wild, so completely desolate a scene. The ground here was that same shining mass of virgin metal, tumbled about and broken up in hopeless confusion.

Great rugged bowlders lay strewn about; tiny caverns yawned; fissures opened up their unknown depths; sharp‑pointed crags reared their heads like spires left standing amid the ruins of some huge cathedral. There was, indeed, hardly a level spot of ground in sight.

I wondered with vague alarm where we should land, for nowhere could I see sufficient space, even for our small platform. We were following closely the line of cliff wall when suddenly we swooped sharply downward and to the right with incredible speed. My heart leaped when, for an instant, I thought something had gone wrong. Then the forward end of the platform tilted abruptly upward; there was a sudden, momentary fluttering of wings, a scrambling as the girls' feet touched the ground, and we settled back and came to rest with hardly more than a slight jar.

Miela stood up, rubbing her arms, which must have ached from her efforts.

"We are here, Alan—safely, as we planned."

We had landed on a little rocky niche that seemed to be in front of the opening of a small cave mouth in the precipitous cliffside. I stood up unsteadily, for I was cramped and stiff, and the solid earth seemed swaying beneath me. I was standing on what was hardly more that a narrow shelf, not over fifteen feet wide and some thirty feet above the base of the cliff.

Mercer was beside me, looking about him with obvious awe.

"What a place!" he ejaculated.

We stepped cautiously to the brink of the ledge and peered over. Underneath us, with the vertical wall of the cliff running directly down into it, spread a small pool of some heavy, viscous fluid, inky black, and with iridescent colors floating upon its surface. It bubbled and boiled lazily, and we could feel its heat on our faces plainly.

Beyond the pool, not more than a hundred yards across, lay a mass of ragged bowlders piled together in inextricable confusion; beyond these a chasm with steam rising from it, whose bottom I could not see—a crack as though the ground had suddenly cooled and split apart. Across the entire surface of this little cliff‑bound circular valley it was the same, as though here a tortured nature had undergone some terrible agony in the birth of this world.

The scene, which indeed had something infernal about it, would have been extraordinary enough by itself; but what made it even more so was the fact that several hundred girls were perched among these crags, sitting idle, or standing up and flapping their wings like giant birds, and more were momentarily swooping in from above. I had, for an instant, the feeling that I was Dante, surveying the lower regions, and that here was a host of angels from heaven invading them.

During the next hour fully a thousand girls arrived. There were perhaps fifteen hundred altogether, and only a few stragglers were hastily flying in when we decided to wait no longer.

Miela flew out around the little valley, calling them to come closer. They came flying toward us and crowded upon the nearer crags just beyond the pool, clutching the precipitous sides, and scrambling for a foothold wherever they could. A hundred or more found place on the ledge with us, or above or below it wherever a slight footing could be found on the wall of the cliff.

When they were all settled, and the scrambling and flapping of wings had ceased, Miela stood up and addressed them. A solemn, almost sinister hush lay over the valley, and her voice carried far. She spoke hardly above the ordinary tone, earnestly, and occasionally with considerable emphasis, as though to drive home some important point.

For nearly half an hour she spoke without a break, then she called me to her side and put one of her wings caressingly about my shoulders. I did not know what she said, but a great wave of handclapping and flapping of wings answered her. She turned to me with glowing face.

"I have told them about your wonderful earth, and Tao's evil plans; and just now I said that you were my husband—and I, a wife, can still fly as well as they. That is a very wonderful thing, Alan. No woman ever, in this world, has been so blessed as I. They realize that—and they respect me and love you for it."

She did not wait for me to speak, but again addressed the assembled girls. When she paused a chorus of shouts answered her. Many of the girls in their enthusiasm lost their uncertain footholds and fluttered about, seeking others. For a moment there was confusion.

"I have told them briefly what we are to do," Miela explained. "First, to rid the Great City of Tao's men, sending them back to the Twilight Country; and do this in all our other cities where they are making trouble. Then, when our nation is free from this danger, we will plan how to deal with Tao direct, for he must not again go to your earth.

"And when all that is done I have said you will do your best to make our men believe as you do, so that never again will our women marry only to lose all that makes their virginity so glorious."

---

[ CHAPTER XVI.
THE FIRE PLANET.]

I think I should explain now a little about the physical conformation of Mercury—the "lay of the land," so to speak—in order that the events I am about to describe may be more readily understood. It has already been made clear by Bob Trevor, I believe, that Mercury revolves on its axis only once during the time of its revolution around the sun. Thus, just as a similar condition always makes our moon present very nearly the same face to us, so Mercury presents always the same portion of its surface to the sun.

It will be understood, therefore, that, theoretically, there must be on Mercury but one spot where the sun always is directly overhead. It could not be seen, however, owing to the dense clouds. This spot approximates the center of the region known as the Fire Country.

So far as I could learn, it was here that human life on the planet began. Certainly it was the first region where civilization reached any height. When Columbus was discovering America great cities flourished in the Fire Country—cities of untold wealth and beauty, now fallen into ruins like the great cities of our own Aztec and Inca civilizations.

The Fire Country was then like the equatorial regions of earth—a dense, tropic jungle, hotter than most temperatures we have to bear, but still, by reason of its thick enveloping atmosphere of clouds, capable of supporting life in comparative comfort. Its inhabitants were dark‑skinned, but rather more like our Indians than Negroid races.

Then, several centuries ago—the exact time is uncertain, for no written records are kept on Mercury—came the Great Storms. Their cause was unknown—some widespread atmospheric disturbance. These storms temporarily parted the clouds in many places, allowing the direct rays of the sun to fall upon the planet's surface. The resulting temperature destroyed all life, withered all vegetation, with its scorching blast. The inhabitants of the Fire Country were killed by hundreds of thousands, their cities deserted, their land laid a desert waste.

These storms, which it appears began suddenly, have returned periodically ever since, making the region practically uninhabitable. Its surviving races, pushed outward toward the more temperate zone, were living, at this time I am describing, in a much lower state of civilization than the people of the Light Country—a civilization of comparative savagery. In the Light Country they were held as slaves.

This region—thus very aptly known as the Fire Country—embraces a circular area directly underneath the sun. So far as I could learn, it extended outward roughly to those points where—if it had been visible—the sun would have appeared some halfway between zenith and horizon.

Lying outside the circle, in a larger, concentric ring, is the zone known as the Light Country. Entirely free from the equatorial storms, no direct rays of sunlight have ever penetrated its protecting cloud blanket. Here exists the highest state of civilization on the planet.

Beyond the Light Country, in another concentric ring, lies the Twilight Country. It forms a belt about the planet, beginning roughly at those points at which the sun would appear only a short distance above the horizon, and extending back to where the sun would be below the horizon. In this region, as its name implies, there is never more than twilight. It is lightest at the borders of the Light Country, and fades into night at its other side.

Still farther, beyond the twilight zone, lies the region of perpetual night and cold—the Dark Country. This area embraces the rest of the planet, comprising something less than half of its entire surface. Here is eternal night—a night of Stygian darkness, unlighted even by the stars, since the same atmosphere makes them invisible.

The Dark Country, so far as it has been explored—which is very little—is a rocky waste and a sea of solid ice that never melts. Near the borders of the Twilight Country a few people like our Eskimos exist—savages with huge white faces, and great, staring eyes. There are a few fur‑bearing animals and birds, but except for this fringe of life the Dark Country is thought to be uninhabited, its terrible cold making life in any form impossible.

So much, in general, for the main geographical features of Mercury. The Great City stands about halfway between the borders of the Fire Country and the edge of the twilight zone. This level marshland, the barren, metallic mountains, and a sort of semitropic jungle, partly inundated by water, comprise nearly all the area of the Light Country.

From the Great City, through the watery jungle, extends a system of little winding bayous—a perfect maze of them, with hundreds of intercommunicating branches—which it would be almost impossible to traverse without losing all sense of direction.

Beyond these bayous, into which their sluggish currents flow, lies the Narrow Sea. On its farther shore begins the Twilight Country, much of it a barren, semifrigid waste, with a little level, tillable land, vast rocky mountain ranges, and a few forests.

In spite of its inhospitable character the Twilight Country is fairly densely populated; and, I realized when I got into it, civilized life is exceedingly difficult to maintain there. I understood then why the Twilight People were so envious of land in the Light Country; and, in truth, I could not blame them for that, or for looking toward our earth with longing.

But just as the Light Country People had defended their borders with implacable determination, so was I determined that they should not invade my world, either. And I was ready to stake my life and even the lives of those I loved here on Mercury in the attempt to prevent them.

---

[ CHAPTER XVII.
THE FIGHT AT THE BAYOU.]

Miela proceeded to explain our plan in detail to these fifteen hundred enthusiastic allies. It was my idea to build several platforms similar to this one on which Mercer and I had been carried up here into the mountains, only somewhat larger. We then proposed to seize these emissaries of Tao—there were not more than eight or ten of them altogether in the Great City—capturing them at night, without alarm, if possible, and transporting them summarily into the Twilight Country. My theory was that if they were to disappear thus mysteriously the people of the Great City would have no particular cause to make trouble afterward, and we hoped that the affair would soon be forgotten.

Miela thought it practical for us to carry them in this way across the Narrow Sea. The Lone City, from which Tao was operating, was located near the edge of the sea, and if we gave them food they would be enabled to reach it in safety in a day or two. The girls agreed enthusiastically with this plan, and we selected a number to carry it out.

Meanwhile we planned also to organize a system of aärial patrols, and detailed some two hundred of the girls, who in varying shifts were to fly back and forth along the borders of the sea over its Light Country shore, to make sure that Tao did not attempt to make a crossing by water.

"Can't they fly over as well as we can?" Mercer objected. "Their women fly, too, don't they?"

The women of the Twilight Country did fly, but for two reasons we did not fear an attack from them in the air. First, Miela doubted that the women would concern themselves in the affair; they were stupid and apathetic—fit only for child‑bearing. The men might, of course, force them to the attempt, but even in that event, Miela explained, it would result in little; for generations of comparative inactivity and the colder climate had made them inclined to stoutness. Their wing muscles were weak and flabby, and with their greater weight of body they flew very badly.

"Suppose Tao should come over?" I suggested to Miela. "I don't believe he will—but if he should, how could we stop him?"

"By water he would come," she answered. "In boats—small they are, I think, those he has. We could not stop him, for the light‑ray he would bring. But our women, flying over the ocean, would see him coming, and tell our king. More we could not do now."

"You mean this patrol would give the government the warning it won't obtain for itself? There would be war then? The people would arm to resist invasion?"

Miela smiled sadly.

"There would be war, Alan. But our government—our people—do not look for it. They are like the peeta bird, that hides its head under its wing when it is threatened."

The time of sleep was now nearly over, and we thought it best that the girls should fly back at once, so that their arrival at the city would cause as little comment as possible.

Mercer and I seated ourselves on the platform as before; the twenty girls grasped its handles, raising it until they were all upon their feet; then, at a signal, we left the ground. The trip back seemed shorter than coming up. The girls all left the valley together, flying up helter‑skelter, and circling about us as we flew steadily onward.

Near the Great City the girls spread out, so as to approach it from different directions and thus attract less attention, although the time of sleep was not yet over and we knew that few would be stirring about the city.

When we reached home we greeted Lua, and dismissed the girls, arranging that they were to come back again that evening—fifty of them this time—to carry the larger platform we were to build. We then had breakfast, and after telling Lua the result of the meeting—at which she was greatly pleased—we went immediately to bed, for we were worn out.

It was about noon, I suppose, when we awoke. Mercer and I spent the afternoon building the platform on which to carry Tao's men—a framework with fifty handles instead of twenty. Miela and Anina disappeared for the whole afternoon. I did not know what they were doing at the time; later I found out Anina was devoting it to learning English.

During the evening meal we planned it all. Tao's men were living in a house near the edge of the city—the house Tao had occupied before he was banished to the Twilight Country. It had no other occupants at this time.

We had learned where they kept their boats in one of the bayous near by, and in it we intended to take them to the sea, where we would meet the girls, who would then fly with them to the Twilight Country. But we could not figure out how to capture them without alarming the city. We were sure they were unarmed; they had been carefully searched by the authorities when they entered the country. But they were ten to our two.

Mercer voiced the problem most emphatically.

"Ten men in a house," he declared. "Maybe we can catch them all asleep. But even if they are, how are we going to get them out? There'd be a row, and we don't want any noise. Besides, there's always this confounded daylight here. If we tied them up somebody might see us when we got outside. How do we get them out of that house without any rumpus, and down to that boat? That's what I don't see."

"I—do—that," said Anina suddenly.

She had spoken in English, and we looked at her in amazement. She lisped the words in her soft, sweet voice, haltingly, like a little child. Then she turned to Miela and poured out a torrent of her native language. Mercer stared at her in undisguised admiration.

As Miela explained it, Anina proposed that she go into Tao's house alone, and decoy his men down to the boat where we could capture them.

"But how will she get them there?" I exclaimed. "What will she tell them?"

"She says she can make them think she is one of those few of our women who sympathize with their cause," Miela explained. "And she will say that the earth‑man who escaped from them she has seen lurking about their boat; perhaps he plans to steal it. She will go there with them, and they can recapture him."

"They might not all go," said Mercer. "We want to get them all."

"It is Anina's thought that they will all go, for they fear this earth‑man much—and all would go to make sure of him."

I could not feel it was right for us to let Anina do so daring a thing, and Mercer agreed with me heartily. But Anina insisted, with a fire in her eyes and flushed cheeks that contrasted strangely with her usually gentle demeanor.

In the end Mercer and I gave in, for we could think of no better plan, and Miela was confident Anina would not be harmed.

It was about what would correspond with ten o'clock in the evening on earth when the girls began to arrive. We waited until all fifty of them had come in. Miela named a place on the shore of the sea known to them all. They were to take the platform—starting in about two hours, when the city would be quiet—and there they would wait for us to join them in the boat.

We four started out together, but soon Anina left us to make her way to Tao's house alone. Mercer, Miela and I then hurried as fast as we could through the city down to the marshlands, and to the secluded spot on the bayou's bank where the boat was lying.

The bayou here was about a hundred feet wide, a winding, brackish stream, lined on both sides with trees whose roots were in the water and whose branches at times nearly met overhead. Its banks were a tangled mass of tree roots, huge ferns, palmettos and some tall upstanding kind of water grass. Half submerged logs jutted out into the sluggish current, making it in places seem almost impassable.

A narrow metal boat—a very long and very narrow motor boat with a thatched shelter like a small cabin over part of its length—lay fastened to a tree near at hand. I noticed at once some mechanism over its stern.

We had come up quietly to make sure no one was about. Now we hid ourselves close to the boat and waited with apprehension in our hearts for the arrival of Anina with Tao's men.

Half an hour, perhaps, went by. The silence in this secluded spot hung heavy about us. A fish broke the glassy surface of the water; a lizard scurried along the ground; a bird flitted past. Then, setting our hearts pounding, came the soft snapping of underbrush that we knew was the cautious tread of some one approaching. I was half reclining under a fallen tree, with a clump of palmettos about me. I parted their fronds carefully before my face. A few yards away a man was standing motionless, staring past me and apparently listening intently.

He moved forward after a moment. I feared he was coming almost upon us, but he turned aside, bending low down as he crept slowly forward. Sounds in the underbrush reached me now from other directions, and I knew that the men had spread apart and were stalking the boat, expecting Mercer to be in or near it.

Had they all come down here? I wondered. And where was Anina? I looked down at Miela warningly as I felt her move slightly.

"We'll wait till they're all near the boat," I whispered to Mercer.

I saw Anina a moment later soaring over the bayou just above the tree‑tops. I sighed with relief, for it was a signal to us that everything was all right. We continued to wait until the men had all come into view. They went at the boat with a sudden rush. Several of them climbed into it, With shouts to the others.

With a significant glance to Mercer I leaped suddenly to my feet. I was perhaps twenty feet from the boat, and the space between us was fairly clear. A single bound landed me beside it, almost among four of the men who were standing there in a group. Before they had time to face me I was upon them.

I scattered them like nine‑pins, and two of them went down under my blows. The other two flung themselves upon me. I stumbled over some inequality of the ground, and we all three fell prone. This was the first time I had come actually to hand grips with any of the Mercutians.

I felt now not only their lack of strength, but a curious frailness about their bodies—a seeming absence of solidity that their stocky appearance belied. These two men were like half‑grown boys in my hands. I was back on my feet in a moment, leaving one of them lying motionless. The other rose to his knees, his face white with pain and terror.

I left him there and looked about me. Miela was fluttering around near by, as I had instructed her—just off the ground and with the whole scene under her eyes. It was she on whom I depended for warning should any of the quarry attempt to escape us.

At the edge of the water another man was lying, whom I assumed Mercer had felled. There was a great commotion from the boat. I ran toward it. A man was standing beside it—an old man with snow‑white hair. He stood still, seeming confused and in doubt what to do. As I neared him he turned clumsily to avoid me. I passed him by and bounded over the boat's gunwale, landing in its bottom. The first thing I saw was Mercer struggling to his feet with four of the Mercutians hanging on him. One had a grip on his throat from behind; another clutched him about the knees.

The two others let go of him when they heard me land in the boat. One had evidently had enough, for he dived overboard. The other waited warily for my onslaught. As I got within reach I hit at his face, but my blow went wild. He hit me full in the chest, but it was the blow of a child.

At that instant I heard Mercer give a choking cry, and out of the corner of my eye saw him go down again. I could waste no more time upon this single antagonist. The man had his hands at my throat now. I seized him about the waist and carried him to the gunwale. He clung to me as a rat might cling to a terrier, but I shook him off and dumped him in the water.

I turned to Mercer just as he was struggling to his feet again, and in a moment more between us we had felled his two assailants. Mercer's face was very white, and I saw blood streaming from a wound on his head; but he grinned as he faced me.

"Have we—got 'em—all?" he gasped. He dashed the blood away from his eyes with the flat of his hand. "I fell—damn it—right at the start, and hit my head. Where are they all? Have we got 'em?"

Miela alighted in the boat beside us.

"Two are running," she said. "They are together. Hasten."

We jumped out of the boat. Miela flew up, and we followed her guidance through the dense woods. We could make much better speed, I knew, than the Mercutians. "We'll get them all, Ollie," I shouted at Mercer. "They're not far ahead. See up there—Miela's evidently over them now."

We came up to them after a few hundred yards. It was the old man, and one of those whom I had first encountered. They did not wait for us to attack them, but stopped stock still, flinging their arms wide in token of surrender.

Miela came down among us, and we went back to where we had lain hidden in the palmettos. There we had left a number of short lengths of rope. While we were tying the arms of these two prisoners behind them and fettering their ankles so they could not run Anina joined us.

"Two—in water," she cried; and then added something to Miela.

"Two were in the water. Now they are in the woods, running. Anina will show you."

Miela stood guard in the boat over our first two prisoners, while Mercer and I rounded up the others. It was half an hour or more before we had them all trussed up, but none of the ten escaped. We were a long time reviving two of those we had injured, but finally we had them all lying or sitting in the boat.

Mercer's head had stopped bleeding. He washed it, and I found his injury no more than an ugly scalp wound.

"I fell and cut it on something," he explained lugubriously. "Couldn't see for the blood in my eyes. But we got 'em, didn't we?"

Under Miela's direction Mercer and I shoved the boat out into the stream. I need not go into details regarding the propelling mechanism of this craft. Miela explained it hastily to me as we got under way. It used a form of the light‑ray from a sort of strange battery. The intense heat of the ray generated a great pressure of superheated steam in a thick metal cylinder underneath the keel.

This steam escaped through a nozzle under water at the stern of the boat, and its thrust against the water propelled the boat forward. The boat was constructed to draw very little water, and when going fast its bow planed upward until only the stern of the hull touched the surface. It was steered by a rudder not much different from some of those types we are familiar with on earth. When we got out into open water I found the boat was capable of great speed. This I attributed not so much to the efficacy of its propelling force as to the lightness of the boat itself. It was built of some metal that I may perhaps compare with aluminium, only this was far stronger and lighter. The boat was, in fact, a mere shell, extraordinarily buoyant.

Miela sat in the stern, steering and operating the mechanism. I sat with her. Mercer was farther forward, beside Anina, talking to her earnestly. Our prisoners lay huddled in various attitudes—frightened, all of them, and obviously in no condition to give us further trouble. They were, I saw now, not ruffians by any means, but rather men of superior intelligence, selected by Tao evidently as those best fitted for spreading his propaganda among the people of the Great City.

We made slow progress down the bayou. Some of its turns were so sharp and so overhung with trees, and obstructed by fallen logs, we could hardly get through. During the latter part of the trip the bayou broadened rapidly, dividing into many channels like a delta.

We came out into the open sea finally—a broad, empty expanse, with a mirrorlike surface. The curvature of the planet was even more apparent now; it seemed almost as though the water should be sliding back downhill over the horizon.

We turned to the left as we came out of the delta, and for the first time Miela put the boat to the limit of its speed. The best comparison I can make, I think, to this rapid, noiseless, smooth progress, is that of sailing on an iceboat.

We sped along some five or ten miles, keeping close inland. I saw some of the small thatched shacks along here, though not many. For a while the shore remained that same palm‑lined, half‑inundated marshland. Then gradually it began to change, and we came upon a broad beach of white sand.

We landed here, and found the girls with the platform waiting for us. Miela took Anina and one or two of the older girls aside, and gave them last instructions.

"What do I do—just dump them on the other shore?" Mercer asked me.

"That's about it. I don't know the lay of the land over there. Anina does. You do what she tells you."

"You bet I will," he agreed enthusiastically. "Some kid—that little girl. We get along fine. She understands everything I say to her already. I'll have her talking English like a streak by the time you see her again."

We had removed the cords from our prisoners' ankles. I motioned them to get out of the boat. We crowded Tao's men on the platform. They were surprised, and some of them alarmed, when they saw how we proposed to transport them over the water. Miela silenced their protests, and soon we had them all seated on the platform, with Mercer at the rear end facing them.

The fifty girls grasped the platform handles. Another moment and they were in the air, with Mercer waving good‑by to us vigorously.

Miela and I, left alone, watched them silently as they dwindled to a speck in the haze of the sky.

We were about to start back when we saw a girl coming toward us, flying low over the water. One of those we had directed to patrol the coast, Miela said when she came closer. She saw us, and came down on the beach.

The two girls spoke together hurriedly.

"Tao's men in the Water City have caused great disturbance, Alan," Miela said to me.

"Where's the Water City?"

"Near the Great City—across the marshlands. We must get back. And when Anina and our friend Ollie have returned we must go to the Water City. It is very bad there, she said."

Our trip back to the Great City was without unusual incident. We followed the main route at the best speed we could make.

"We shall tell our king, of course, about this disturbance," said Miela. "Perhaps he will think there is something he can do. But I fear greatly that unless he appeals directly to the people, and they are with him—"

"He's an old man," I said, "and all his councilors are old. They're not fit to rule at such a time as this. Suppose he were to die—what would happen? Who would be king then?"

"A little prince there is—a mere child. And there is our queen—a younger woman, only married to our king these few years. His first queen died."

I questioned Miela concerning her government. It was, I soon learned, an autocracy in theory. But of later years the king's advanced age, and his equally old councilors whom he refused to change, had resulted in a vacillating policy of administration, which now, I could see plainly, left the government little or no real power.

Only by constantly pandering to the wishes of the people could the king hold his throne. The supreme command was held by the king and his aged councilors. At stated intervals the more prominent men of each city met and enacted laws. The cities were each ruled by a governor in similar fashion, paying tribute to the central government somewhat after our old feudal system; but for practical purposes they acted as separate nations. They were united merely by the bonds of their common need of defense against the Twilight People, and of intermarriage, which was frequent, since the virgins, flying about, often found mates in cities other than their own.

There were courts in each city, not much more than rude tribunals, and jails in which the offenders were held. The police I have already mentioned. They, like the king's guards, were inclined in an emergency to do, not so much what they were ordered, as what they thought the people wished.

It was all very extraordinary, but like many another makeshift government it served, after a fashion.

Hiding the boat in another bayou, we took our way home on foot. That is to say, I ran, and Miela followed me, alternately flying and walking. We made our best speed this way, and very soon were back at home in the Great City.

We crossed the garden and entered the front door, expecting to find Lua in the living room, but she was not there. The house was quiet.

"She would wait up, she told me," Miela said, and, raising her voice, called her mother's name.

There was no answer, although now I remember I thought I heard a footfall upstairs.

We went up to Lua's room hurriedly. It was empty, and our loud cries of anxiety throughout the house evoked no response. We entered our own bedroom, and before I could make a move to defend myself I was seized tightly by both elbows from behind.

At the same instant an arm hooked around my neck under my chin and jerked my head backward, and another pair of arms clutched me around the knees. I struggled vainly to free myself, shouting to Miela to run.

But there were too many holding me. A moment more and my arms were tied behind me and a rope was about my legs. I was pushed into a chair, and as I sat down I saw Miela standing quietly near by, with two Mercutians holding her by the arms and shoulders.

The man who had pushed me to the seat bent down and struck me across the cheek with the flat of his hand. His grinning, malevolent face was only a few inches from mine. I saw that it was Baar!

---

[ CHAPTER XVIII.
REVOLUTION.]

There seemed to be five of our captors, all of them as evil‑looking men as I think I have ever seen. They rummaged about the room, evidently in search for weapons they thought I might have secreted. Then they ordered me to stand up, and without more ado led Miela and me from the house.

This was once when I was glad of the interminable daylight. I hoped we might find some early risers about the streets, for I thought certainly the time of sleep must now be nearly over. But no one was in sight as we left the garden. We turned the first corner and headed toward the base of the mountain.

"To Baar's house they are taking us, I think. It is on the marshland below." Miela spoke without fear of our captors understanding the English words. We took advantage of this until after a moment we were roughly ordered to be quiet.

Lua, we thought, must have been taken away before we arrived; we would find her at Baar's house when we arrived there. We had come down to the level marshlands now, the outskirts of the city, and were passing along a path between occasional shacks. Before us, standing alone in a rice paddy, I saw a larger, more pretentious house—a wooden structure on stilts, with a thatched roof, which Miela said was where Baar lived.

We went in single file up its board incline, and entered a squalid room with matting on the floor, a rude charcoal brazier at one side, and the remains of a previous meal lying on a table.

Two women were in the room as we entered. I took these to be Baar's wife and a servant. Two naked little children lay on the floor, one of them crying lustily.

Baar glanced around as he came in, and with what I took to be an oath ordered the children removed from the room. The slave woman—I could see she was a slave by the band upon her arm—picked them up. Evidently she did not move fast enough to suit Baar's temper, for as she straightened up the man cuffed her upon the head. She stumbled to one side against Baar's wife, who was standing there, and the other woman, with a sharp imprecation, struck her full in the breast.

Neither of them saw the look she gave as she shuffled away, carrying the infants; but I did. It was a look of the most intense hatred, born and nourished, I realized, by long ill‑treatment.

Miela and I were now bound securely hand and foot, and Miela's wings were lashed to her body. Thus rendered entirely helpless, we were laid together in a corner.

From the talk that followed Miela gathered that Baar and his men were expecting the arrival of others. He roughly ordered his wife—a woman of the Twilight Country, obviously—to clear away the remains of their last meal and bring other food. She obeyed submissively.

This, the first of the Twilight Country People I had seen, was a thick‑set woman of perhaps thirty‑five, although she might have been older, for her black hair, which fell in an unkempt mass to her waist, was beginning to gray. She wore a single garment, a pair of silken trousers, drab with dirt. Her clipped wings were covered in the usual way.

I could see now why Miela had said these Twilight women could not fly, for this woman's torso was fat and flabby. Her skin was curiously pale—a dead, unpleasant white. Her face was broad, heavy and unintelligent. Her eyes were large and protruded slightly.

Baar and his men ate breakfast, paying no further attention to Miela and me. Suddenly Miela spoke in a frightened whisper. "They are going now in a moment to the castle. The king they will kill!"

It was evidently a widespread plot we now overheard. Baar's followers had for some time been talking quietly with the lower classes, and, finding they could count on their support, planned now to murder the king. Then with the queen and the little prince held as hostages, they expected that the men of science, threatened also with a revolt of the peons, would release the light‑ray.

The light‑ray once in his control, Baar could make himself king. It seemed an absurd hope, but such was the plan they were now discussing. And what was far worse, I could see no way by which I could prevent the attempt.

"They are going to the castle—now—to murder the king?" I whispered, incredulous.

"Yes," Miela answered. "So they plan. Now—in a moment—before the time of sleep is over."

"Isn't he guarded? Can they get in the castle without arousing others?"

"There are the guards—a few. But Baar has promised them great wealth, and they will stand aside and let him pass. So it is arranged."

The arrival of several other men interrupted our whispered conversation. Baar, his meal over, consulted with them hurriedly. He then instructed his wife to watch us, and after a moment they all left the house.

The woman, who was now the only occupant of the room with us, shuffled about, clearing away the meal. I tried desperately to work my hands loose; I even tried with my teeth to gnaw Miela's bonds, but without success. Every moment counted, if we were to do anything to save the king. I wondered again where Lua was—perhaps in another part of the house here, bound as we were.

"Miela," I whispered, "ask for food. Tell her we have had nothing for many hours. Perhaps she will loosen our bonds a little to let us eat. We may be able to do something then."

The woman answered Miela's pleading by setting us up side by side, with our backs against the wall. She placed food before us, and then, with a knife, cut the cords that bound our arms.

My heart leaped exultantly; but, instead of leaving us and going on with her work, she sat down just out of reach, holding the knife in her hand and watching us narrowly.

"We must eat, Miela," I said, using as casual a tone as I could and pointing to the food smilingly. "Eat, and pretend not to notice her. Perhaps I can get to my feet."

We ate the food she had given us. I tensed the muscles of my legs, and believed that, bound as I was, I might be able to leap forward and reach the woman. It was almost hopeless to attempt it, for I realized she would meet my body with the dagger point.

We were still eating, and I was thinking over this plan, when the slave woman appeared silently in a doorway across the room, behind the woman who faced us. Something in her attitude made me look away again casually and go on with my eating.

Miela had evidently not noticed her.

The slave woman came slowly toward us. A moment later she hurled herself upon Baar's wife from behind. At the same instant I threw myself forward, falling prone, but within reach of the seated woman. I gripped her with my hands, fumbling to catch her wrists, but before I could succeed she toppled forward and fell partly over me.

I heard Miela give a cry of fright. I struggled free and raised myself up to a half‑sitting position. Baar's wife lay beside me dead, with the slave woman's knife buried to the hilt in her back.

Reaching over, I took the knife from the dead woman's fingers, and with it cut the cords that bound my ankles. I sprang to my feet. The slave had retreated and stood shrinking against the side of the room, terrified at what she had done. I paid no more attention to her for the moment, but hastened to release Miela.

We searched the house hurriedly, calling to Lua; but she did not answer, nor could we find her. When we returned the slave woman was still standing where we had left her, staring with horrified eyes at the body of her mistress.

"Tell her what she did was right," I said. "She may have saved the king. Tell her to go to your house and wait for us."

The woman nodded eagerly when Miela told her what to do, and fell on her knees before us.

"She says she will serve us always. She has been very badly treated, Alan."

We sent the woman away, and with a last hasty glance around hurriedly left the house alone with its single dead occupant. A large wooden mortar and pestle, used for pounding rice, stood in the kitchen. I carried the pestle away with me; it was nearly five feet long and quite heavy—an excellent weapon.

We hastened up through the city—Miela half walking, half flying, and I carrying this bludgeon and running with twelve‑foot strides. But it was now hardly more than three‑quarters of an hour since we had passed this way before, and there were still few people about to see us. Baar and his men had started some twenty minutes before us, I figured, and we must reach the castle before them.

I made extraordinary progress over the level country. But I could not run uphill for long, and soon had to slow down to a walk. Miela kept closer to me now. We approached the castle grounds.

"Where will the guards be, Miela? We must avoid them if we can. They might try to stop us."

Miela did not know where they would be; but under the circumstances, as Baar had told his men, she believed the guards would disappear from the vicinity. This conjecture proved to be correct. The guards, not wishing to be concerned in the affair at all, had simply disappeared. We saw nothing of Baar and his men on the way up the mountain, although I had hoped we might overtake them.

As we passed hurriedly through the palm gardens surrounding the castle I saw its huge front doors were closed.

"Miela, we can't get in that way. A side entrance—or some other way—"

"I know," she said. "There is a smaller door below, and others on the side."

We hastened on. Suddenly I gripped Miela by the arm.

"What's that—over there—see, beyond the grove?"

There seemed to be furtive figures lurking among the palms.

"Those cannot be Baar's men, Miela—there are too many. What can it—"

We had reached a little doorway under the front terrace. There was no time to investigate these advancing figures. Baar and his men might already be inside the castle.

I slid through the doorway, every muscle tense. Miela had brought the knife from Baar's shack, and with it clenched in her hand was close beside me. I wanted to make her stay outside, where she could fly away if danger threatened, but she pleaded to follow me, and I let her come. I needed her, since I had no idea of the interior arrangements of the building.

We passed along a dim hallway and up a narrow flight of stone steps. Not a sound came to us; the interior of the castle was silent as a tomb. At the top of the steps we came almost directly into the inner patio of the building. Across a bed of tall flowers, nodding gently in a little morning breeze that swept down from above, I saw the head and shoulders of a man standing in the center of the courtyard; the lower part of his body was hidden by the flowers. I tried to duck out of sight, but he had seen me.

He was not over forty feet away. I stepped back, believing I could reach him in a single leap; but Miela held me.

"Not you, Alan. He would cry out. The noise would bring others." She raised her knife, and her eyes blazed into mine. "Never have I thought to kill a human. But now I—a woman—must kill. Stand quiet, Alan."

She flew swiftly up and poised over the man. He had started toward us. Evidently he was, so far, as anxious for silence as we, for he made no sound. I saw now he was one of those who had come to Baar's shack. His naked shoulders, his thick neck, and bullet head were all that showed above the flower stems as he plowed his way through them directly toward me; but the hand he swung aloft to aid his progress held a knife.

He glanced up at Miela, poised in the air above him, and saw the weapon in her hand. At this new enemy he stopped, confused.

Miela swooped down at him, and he struck at her with his knife; but she avoided it with an incredibly swift turn, and a second later had passed him and was crossing the courtyard.

Round and round she flew, her great wings flapping audibly, a giant bird circling its prey. The man turned continually to face her. Several times she swooped toward him, and as swiftly avoided his blow. From every side she threatened. The man stood now bewildered, striking wild in a frenzy, as one strikes at a darting wasp. At last, with an agonized cry, he turned and ran. Instantly she dropped upon him; there was a flash of her white arm; the man's body crumpled and lay still among the flowers.

Miela was back beside me. Her breast was heaving; her eyes were full of tears; she trembled.

"A terrible thing, Alan, my husband, for a woman to do; but it had to be."

I pressed her hand with silent understanding.

"Come, Alan," she said. "They will have heard his cry. The others—we must meet them, too."

"We must get to the king. I—"

A vibrant scream rang out from the silence of the house—a man's voice, shrill with agony—then suddenly stilled.

"Good God, Miela! The king—where is he? Take me there."

She pulled me back through the doorway. A man scurried past. I leaped at him and struck him a glancing blow with the heavy wooden pestle. He stumbled to his knees. Without thought of giving quarter, I hit him again before he could rise. He sank back, senseless or dead.

Miela was ahead of me, and I ran after her along a hallway. The sound of scurrying footsteps sounded from overhead; a woman screamed.

A broad, curving stairway fronted us. I passed Miela halfway up, and, reaching the top, ran full into another man who darted from a doorway close by. The impact of my heavier body flung him backward to the floor. I leaped over him with a shout of warning to Miela, and ran on into the room.

A man was standing stock still in its center. It was Baar. He flung his knife at me as I appeared, but it went wild. Two other men were coming toward me from opposite sides of the room. I swung the bludgeon about me viciously, keeping them away. Suddenly Baar shouted a command, and before I could reach any one of them they had scurried away like rats.

A low bed with a huge canopy of silk stood against the wall. A woman knelt on the floor beside it, and against her knees huddled a little half‑grown boy.

I heard Miela's voice shouting in her own language. The sound of men running came from below. Then Miela's half‑hysterical laughter, and then the words: "They are running away, Alan—all of them. I have been calling you to bring me the light‑ray. And they are running away."

I turned to the bed, pushing its curtains aside, and then hurriedly closing them again with a shudder.

Miela was beside me.

"The king is dead, Miela. No—you must not look."

Her eyes widened; her hand went to her breast.

"There is one who needs you." I pointed to the woman on the floor.

She was staring at us, unseeing, one arm flung about the child protectingly, holding him partially under one of her long, sleek red wings. The fingers of her other hand clutched convulsively at the bed coverings; she was moaning softly with a grief and terror all the more intense because it was restrained.

"There is one who needs you, Miela," I repeated. "Comfort her—for we have come too late."

The castle now was in thorough confusion. Several waiting maids rushed into the room, stared at their mistress and the little prince, and, seeing what had happened, stood silently wringing their hands in fright, or fled aimlessly through the halls. One of the king's councilors had come in, stopping, bewildered, at the scene that met him.

"Tell him what has occurred, Miela," I said.

There came now faintly to my ears from outside the castle sounds of a gathering crowd—murmurs and vague muffled shouts. The cries grew louder. A rain of missiles struck the castle; a stone came through a near‑by window, falling almost at my feet. All at once I remembered the lurking figures we had seen among the palms in the garden.

"Miela!" I cried. "Hear that, outside! A crowd is gathering. The men we saw—out there! People whom Baar has—Miela, ask him, for God's sake, to tell us how we can get weapons. Where are the other councilors? Send for them. We must do something—now, at once. This is revolution, Miela—don't you understand? Revolution!"

I felt so impotent. Here in this crisis I could talk to no one but Miela—could issue no direct commands—could understand the words of no one but her.

Suddenly, from over our heads, a great, solemn deep‑throated bell began tolling.

"What is that? What does that mean?"

A girl rushed into the room.

"It is the bell of danger," said Miela quickly. "The girls are ringing it to arouse the city. Up here then will the people hurry to find out what it is that threatens."

"They're outside now," I retorted. "Order all the king's councilors here at once. Find out if any guards are about the place. Send them here. Where is the head of the city's police? Send him here to me! Tell him to call out all his men."

What was I saying? I had forgotten the one vital thing!

"Miela! The light‑ray! These men of science who guard it, where are they? Send for their leader. Get him here to me at once—we must have the ray!"

Miela stood very quietly beside me. Her face was white; her eyes blazed, but she seemed calm and unfrightened.

"He will come," she said, "and armed with the ray. The bell will bring him. Your other commands I will see are obeyed."

The old councilor, who had been standing by, dazed, came slowly forward at Miela's call. The king's councilor! And all the others were like him. The king was dead, and here was the little prince huddled in his mother's arm! Realization had been slow in coming, but now it broke upon me like a great light.

I flung the bludgeon away from me, and stood erect.

"Miela," I cried, "tell him—tell them all—their king is dead. It is I who command now. There is no one else—and I have the power. Tell them that. It is I, the man from earth, who commands!"

---

[ CHAPTER XIX.
THE NEW RULER.]

The solemn bell continued pealing out its knell; the shouts and tumult outside were growing louder. Miela spoke hurriedly to the old man, then turned to leave the room.

"Your commands shall be obeyed, my husband," she said quietly.

I felt again that sudden sense of helplessness as I saw her leave.

"Be careful, Miela. Order every one in the castle to the roof. Here! Tell the queen before you go. Send every one up there with me. The mob may come in. We'll make our stand up there."

I understood Baar's plot better now. He had gathered his mob of peons to surround the castle and make a demonstration in his favor. Then, with the king dead and the queen and her little son held by him and his men—their lives as forfeits—he hoped to be able to treat with the men of science who controlled the light‑ray, and who, I did not doubt, represented the better element among the people.

It seemed a mad plan at best; and now that it had gone wrong, I wondered what Baar would attempt to do. Evidently he and his henchmen had all left the castle, fearing the light‑ray, which Miela pretended I held. They were outside now, among the mob, I assumed. Would the mob attempt to enter?

Miela hurried away to send every one inside the building to its roof. The queen, following Miela's commands unquestioningly, took the little prince by the hand and, signing to me to follow, led me upstairs.

There was only one stairway leading to the roof, I found with satisfaction, and it was narrow—an excellent place for defense. The roof was broad and flat, flanked at the ends by two towers which rose considerably above it.

It was a frightened little group who gathered about me—the queen and her son, two of the king's councilors, and perhaps half a dozen young girls whom I took to be the queen's attendants. Others came up each moment.

I sat the queen down on a little white stone bench in the center of the garden, and bowed before her respectfully. Then I smiled upon them all. I think they were reassured and trusted me, and I found my commands were obeyed without question.

The queen was a woman of perhaps thirty‑five—tall and slender, with black hair and eyes. She was dressed in a single garment of heavy white silk, a dress that fell ungathered at the waist from above her breast under the arms to her ankles. It was, I judged, her sleeping robe. Her hair hung in two long braids over her shoulders; her feet were incased in sandals.

She was unquestionably a beautiful woman. I remember my vague surprise, as I saw her, with her son by her side, and her long sleek wings unmutilated. And then I saw that her wings were fastened together in two places by little metal chains. She, then, like other married women, was not permitted to fly, although the beauty of her wings was unspoiled.

I sent two of the old men to stand by the head of the stairs. Miela had given me her knife, and I handed it now to one of them, trying to make him understand that he was to bar the passage of any one who should not be allowed up. He shuddered, but he took the knife and stood where I indicated.

The crowd in the garden below had seen us on the roof now, and the tumult of shouts was doubled. I went to the parapet and looked over.

The garden was full of a struggling, confused mass of people. Those nearest the castle were mostly peons. I noticed men and a few women armed with various implements of agriculture, and any sort of rude weapon they could obtain. They were standing about in little groups or rushing excitedly to and fro in aimless, uncommanded activity.

Many of them held stones in their hands, which occasionally they cast at the building. It was one of those mobs that gather ready for trouble, is swayed in almost any direction by any chance leadership, and most frequently accomplishes nothing.

I felt a sudden sense of relief. The garden was rapidly filling up with men and women of the more intelligent classes, who mingled with the others, learned what had occurred—for I did not doubt but that the knowledge of the king's death had spread about—and then stood waiting to see what would happen.

The air was full of excited girls flying over the castle. A few alighted for a moment on the roof, but I did not fear them. Where was Baar? I could not hope to distinguish him among the crowd, but still I saw no sign of his leadership. Had he seen the failure of his plan and, fearing the results of his regicide, fled the vicinity? I hoped so fervently.

As I showed myself at the parapet a great shout arose. Some of the men—I knew at once it was those who had heard I possessed the light‑ray—scattered in terror at my appearance. I determined then, if no issue were raised that would demand my using this supposed weapon, I could continue to command the situation.

I stood there a moment looking down. At the edge of the crowd I saw a few figures whom I took to be members of the city's police. They were standing idle, taking no part in what was going on. There seemed nothing I could do until Miela returned. If only I could speak to the crowd! I wondered if I dared descend among them and disperse the mob of peons. I went to the head of the stairway. Three or four of the king's councilors were standing there.

There was no one on the stairs; evidently every one living in the castle was now on its roof—some thirty of them altogether. The crowd outside quite evidently had no present intention of entering the building. The mob of peons Baar had gathered were greatly in the minority now, and I felt that matters were steadily improving. I wondered where Miela was, and then while I was standing there I saw her coming up the stairs, a man following close behind her.

I think I have never been so glad to see any one as I was to see her at this moment. Her face was grave; her demeanor calm, as before.

"He is here," she said as she came to the head of the stairs. "This is Fuero, Alan, leader of the men of science, who have the ray."

As he came out onto the roof I saw this man was easily the most dominant personality I had so far encountered on Mercury. He was tall for his race, although several inches shorter than I, a man of sixty, perhaps, with iron‑gray hair falling long about his ears.

He wore sandals and a pair of the usual knee‑length, wide‑cut trousers. But what distinguished him in his dress was a broad panel of heavy silk, hanging from neck to knee, both in back and front, with an opening at the top through which his head was thrust. This silken panel was some eighteen inches wide, light gray in color, and richly embroidered in gold in various designs. It hung free, except for a slight fastening at the waist line. Beneath it the man's naked torso—and his bare arms—showed powerfully muscled.

His face was smooth shaven, with strong, regular features. I noticed, too, there was a slight cleft in his square chin. His forehead was high, his blue eyes kindly, yet with a searching, piercing quality about them.

It was not so much the man's general appearance as his bearing that made me realize he was a forceful character. There was about him unmistakable poise. I knew at once he felt his power, his authority. That he would use it wisely I could not doubt.

He stood regarding me gravely—an appraising regard under which I felt myself flushing a little. Miela spoke to him swiftly, and he inclined his head to me by way of introduction, his glance meanwhile taking in the scene on the roof.

With Miela as interpreter we held a hurried conversation. I learned then that Fuero and his associates had many years before organized a society for the development of the light‑ray in its various forms. They had soon realized in their experiments its diabolical power of destruction, and had taken oath then that they would not use it, or allow it to be used, except under the most critical circumstances of the nation's welfare.

Realizing, too, the power it gave them as individuals, they had sworn to remain men of science only, taking no part in public affairs, remaining rigidly aloof from all national affairs. Most of their work concerned the development of the light‑ray for industrial purposes. In these forms it developed heat, but had very little power of projection.

All this Miela told me in a few brief sentences.

"How did Tao get the ray?" I demanded.

"Some members of the society proved false," she answered. "When Tao was banished to the Twilight Country they deserted their brothers and joined him. There were others with him of scientific mind, and these soon learned how to make it, too."

Fuero was still regarding me appraisingly. I felt suddenly very young, very inadequate as I stood there facing him. But I met his gaze squarely, and all at once he smiled.

"He says, 'Let us speak to the people,'" said Miela.

We went to the parapet. Only a few moments had elapsed since I had stood there before. The situation below was unchanged, except that the crowd had grown denser.

A sudden hush fell as they saw us. Fuero turned to me and spoke quietly; his eyes seemed searching out my thoughts.

"He asks you, my husband, if you will take oath before your God to do what is right for our people. He wishes to trust you now in this crisis, for there is no one else, and he believes in you."

"I will, Miela," I said solemnly. "Before God I swear it."

The man gazed steadily into my eyes another instant, then abruptly he thrust a small metal cylinder into my hand. I thrilled as my fingers closed around it. He seemed to hesitate, then he turned and, slowly crossing the rooftop, looking neither to right nor left, he descended the stairs out of our sight.

He had done what he thought was best, and, having done it, had withdrawn immediately from further participation in the affair.

It may have been the absence of his dominant personality, or the grasp of my hand about this little metal cylinder, but now I felt a renewed sense of responsibility, and with it a feeling of power that swept aside all doubts and all fears. Now I could command, could guide and control, the destiny of this nation, and could, thank God, save my own world.

"Miela," I said, "tell the queen her son shall be king. I am about to proclaim him king before the people, and I, as regent, will rule. Tell her that, and bring him here now to me."

The queen made no answer, save a slight inclination of her head. But I saw that she had recovered composure. She pushed her son gently away from her, and I strode forward to meet him.

"Tell him, Miela, he is a man now, and must have no fear, for he is the greatest man in all this land."

I patted his shoulder as he stood beside me, and he looked up into my face and smiled bravely.

The top of the parapet was flat and broad. I raised the little boy up and stood him upon it. Instantly another tumult of shouts arose.

I looked down and saw the figure of Fuero as he stalked unheeding across the garden, the people respectfully opening up a path before his advance.

Approval and derision seemed mingled in the cries that greeted the appearance of the little prince.

"Quiet them if you can, Miela," I said. "Speak to them."

I steadied the boy with my hand, and he stood there unafraid, a sturdy, manly little figure.

Miela raised her voice and began speaking. The shouts partially ceased, then suddenly a stone struck the parapet almost in front of us.

A sudden rage possessed me. I fumbled at the cylinder I held. It was very much like a little hand flashlight, and seemed to have a knob at my thumb. Miela stopped speaking and turned to me.

"There—press that, Alan. Careful! Aim it there! See! Over there against those palms."

I held the thing up and pointed it toward the huge royal palms, aiming at their graceful fronds high over the heads of the people. My hand pressed the knob; the little cylinder seemed to thrill in my grasp. A tiny beam of light shot out‑quite plainly visible—a green, shading into red. It struck the palm branches, and silently yet rapidly, as though they were under some giant blow‑torch, they shriveled, crackled, and burst into flame.

Miela's fingers bit into my arm. "Enough, Alan! Stop!"

My thumb yielded to the upward pressure of the tiny knob against it, and abruptly the light vanished. A narrow swath had been cut through the palms—a furrow of death plowed by the pressure of my thumb against a bit of metal!

The crowd had frozen into the immobility of terror. Now, as the dreaded ray vanished as suddenly as it had sprung forth, they turned with cries of fright to escape. No one had been hurt. I shuddered as I realized now that many girls had been in the air, and through no thought or skill of mine had they escaped.

"Speak to them, Alan," Miela cried. "There must be no panic. Here must they stay and listen to what you have to say. Speak to them; stop them now."

I handed her the cylinder, lest the diabolical thing spit forth again its fire from my unskillful fingers, and leaped to the top of the parapet.

"Stop!" I shouted at the top of my voice. "Stop—all of you! At once!"

I waved my arms violently: I knew my words meant nothing, but my voice carried far. The excitement continued. But a few stopped and stared at me; then others, and gradually there was less confusion.

Miela turned and shouted something to the girls on the rooftop. Instantly they spread their wings and flew, down, circling close over the heads of the people.

"Wait, Alan. A moment now and there will be quiet. The girls are telling them not to fear, but to wait and listen to what you have to say."

Miela stood now upon the parapet top, with the little prince between us. She had concealed the tiny metal cylinder in her belt; her open palms were flung out before her, and her wings, spread and flapping slowly, raised her on tiptoe. Every line of her graceful body was tense; her attitude bespoke power, dominance, authority. And then she began to talk in a voice vibrant with emotion. Once she laid her hand lightly upon the curly head of the little boy, and a tremulous, uncertain cheer answered her from below.

"I have told them of the king's death, Alan," she said a moment later, "and that here is their little king standing before them; And now, of you—what shall I say?"

"Tell them that until the king is older, I—the man from earth—shall rule them as regent. Tell them if they obey me all will be well, for I shall rule them wisely."

I stood while Miela translated this amid dead silence from the crowd. As she finished I raised myself to full height and stared down at them threateningly.

"But if there is trouble—if any one defies my authority—then, Miela, tell them I shall use the light‑ray, for I shall brook no interference."

The silence from below continued.

I spread my hands out before me and smiled.

"But there will be no trouble. I am with the Light Country, heart and soul. Its interests are my interests, for I have married one of its women, and now I too am one of its people.

"Tao shall be overthrown—tell them that, Miela. The Twilight People never again shall threaten our cities. If more land is wanted by our people of the Light Country, tell them they shall have it. All the land they desire shall be theirs. For when Tao is vanquished I shall build great cars such as he is building, and all who wish may go to my earth peacefully, and we will make them welcome as I have been made welcome here."

A cheer arose as Miela translated this; and now for the first time I heard no cries of dissent.

"Say to them again I shall rule them wisely. Say I shall look to them—all of them, rich and poor alike—for help in what we have to do. All must help me, for I am only one, and I need them all. When this work we have to do is over, when our nation is freed forever from this menace from across the sea, tell them that then I will give my every thought to the details of their welfare. All that they wish—if it lays in my power—shall be done."

A girl alighted for an instant on the parapet near me; another, darted downward in her flight, evidently to avoid the disrespect of passing directly in front of me. The thought flashed through my mind that I might mention the virgins and promise them reversal of the law they so abhorred, but I felt it would be impolitic to raise that question at such a time as this.

"Tell them now to leave the grounds, quietly," I concluded. "When I wish them again they will be sent for. All that I do will be known through public proclamation."

I lifted the little prince in my arms, and then, with the cheers of the people ringing in my ears, jumped backward with him to the roof below.

Thus, by swift moving circumstances which could not have been foreseen, was I made ruler of the Light Country. The crowd dispersed quietly. We sent the queen and her waiting maids back to her apartments, the aged councilors to theirs, and soon Miela and I were alone in one of the castle rooms.

Now that the nervous excitement under which I had been laboring was over, I felt utterly exhausted. I dropped wearily into a seat, and Miela sat on the floor at my feet with her arms on my knees.

I stroked her glossy black hair idly.

"I'm tired, girl. I'm all in. Aren't you?"

We had not slept since the afternoon before, and so much had happened since.

Suddenly I remembered Lua.

"Miela—your mother. We must find her." I started to my feet, then sat down again.

There was no use of my rushing away on some aimless search over a city like this.

"Where is the head of the city's police, Miela?"

"I have sent for him. He should be here now to see you."

"I must have him search the city. Lua must be found. The castle guards—we must appoint others, Miela. I must have a council, too—not doddering old men, but others that we shall select. Who collects the taxes? Where is the money? Who handles it?"

The questions piled upon me faster than I could voice them, and all the while my tired brain and weary, aching body called only for rest—for sleep.

I thought of Mercer and Anina. They should be back by now.

"We must send home and have them told we are here, Miela. And that slave woman of Baar's—she will be there, too. She must be sent here to us also."

We had decided to live in the castle.

"When Mercer and Anina return, we must arrange to go to the Water City. The disturbance there must be quelled. All the cities must be told of our actions here. I must visit them all, Miela."

My voice seemed trailing off as though I were talking to myself. A thousand problems rushed in confusion through my mind. I felt I was talking almost incoherently. A knock on the door of our room brought me to myself.

A young girl stood respectfully on the threshold. Miela listened to what she had to say, questioned her swiftly, and then turned to me. Her face had gone suddenly white.

"The girls have returned from over the sea, Alan. This is one of them. But Anina and our friend Ollie have stayed there."

"Stayed there?" I cried. "Why?"

"They set free Tao's men as we planned. They were on their way back when the earth‑man suddenly bid Anina return. Something was wrong, he said. This girl does not understand what. But they went back. And Anina and Ollie they left there, standing on the shore together. We are to go over to the same place to‑night, if we can, and get them. That is all the girl knows."

The girl withdrew after a moment.

Mercer and Anina left in the Twilight Country! Miela and I stared at each other blankly.

---

[ CHAPTER XX.
IN THE TWILIGHT COUNTRY.]

Mercer sat on the rear end of the platform and waved good‑by vigorously as he was carried swiftly up and out over the water. Under him was a pile of blankets and a coat, and beside him a box of baked dough‑like bread—the food he was to turn over to Tao's emissaries when he set them free.

Anina flew at his side, at intervals smiling up at him reassuringly. Before him on the platform his captives huddled. Although all of them were trussed up securely, he menacingly kept his little wooden revolver pointed at them from the level of his knee.

He chuckled as he thought of the fight at the bayou. Everything was working out all right; it was surprising what one could do with his physical strength here on Mercury.

The girls had carried the platform up some five hundred feet above the sea. Mercer turned and looked back. The shore had already dropped almost to the rim of the close‑encircling horizon. He leaned over toward Anina, resting one hand on the bamboo handle she was holding. "How long will it take us to get there, Anina?"

He knew the girl would understand his words, but he did not realize she had little basis for comparing time in his language.

"Long time," she answered, smiling. "But we go quickly now."

He sat back again and waited. It seemed like hours—it was hours probably, three or four—and still they swept onward straight as an arrow.

After another interminable interval Anina raised one hand and pointed ahead.

"Twilight Country—there," she said.

Mercer saw, coming up over the horizon, the dim outlines of a rocky land sparsely covered with trees. It spread out rapidly before him as he watched, fascinated. It seemed a desolate land, a line of low, barren hills off to one side, and a forest of stunted, naked‑looking trees in front. The platform swept on over the shore line, a rocky beach on which the calm sea rolled up in tiny white lines of breakers. Then in a great curve the girls circled to one side.

"Where are we going?" Mercer asked.

"A trail—near us somewhere. A trail to the Lone City. There we land."

Mercer saw the trail in a moment. It came out of the woods and struck the shore by a little bight where boats could land. The girls swooped downward, and in a moment more the platform was lying motionless on the beach.

Mercer looked around. It was light enough to see objects in the immediate foreground—a gray twilight. The forest came almost to the water's edge. He saw now the trees might have been firs, but with small, twisted trunks, few branches except near the top, and very few leaves. They seemed somehow very naked and starved—indeed, it surprised him that they could grow at all in such a rocky waste. The end of the trail was close before him. It appeared merely an opening in the trees with the fallen logs and underbrush cleared away.

The girls were obviously cold, standing idle now after their long flight. Mercer lost no time in preparing for the return journey. He tumbled his captives unceremoniously off the platform and set the box of food and blankets beside them.

"What's this, Anina?"

He was holding in his palm a tiny metal cylinder.

Anina took it from him.

"For fire, see?"

She picked up a bit of driftwood, and, holding the end of the cylinder against it, pressed a little button. A curl of smoke rose from the wood, and in a moment a wisp of flame.

"A light‑ray!" Mercer exclaimed.

"The ray—but different."

She tossed the blazing bit of wood aside, and held her hand a foot or so in front of the cylinder.

"No danger! See?" She brought her hand closer. "Heat here—close—no heat far away."

Mercer understood then that this was not a light‑ray projector, but a method of producing heat with the property of radiation, but not of projection—a different and harmless form of the ray.

He took the little cylinder from the girl, inspected it curiously, then laid it on the blankets.

"They'll need it, I guess, if it's any colder where they're going."

He set one of the captives free.

"Anina, tell him to sit quiet until we've gone. Then he can cut the others loose." He tossed a knife into the box. "Come on, Anina; let's get away."

They were about ready to start back, when Mercer suddenly decided he was hungry. He hopped off the platform. "They don't need all that food."

He gathered some of the little flat cakes of dough in his hands. "Want some?" He offered them to the girls, who smilingly refused.

"All right. I do. I'm hungry. Might as well take a blanket, too. It's devilish cold."

He was back on the platform in a moment, sitting down with the blanket about his knees and munching contentedly at the bread.

"All right, Anina. Start her off."

They swung up into the air and began the return flight.

A few hours more and they would be back at the Great City. Then the real work would begin. Mercer squared his shoulders unconsciously as he thought of all there was to do.

But there was no danger to the Light Country from Tao, he thought with satisfaction. At least, there would be none when the other cities were rid of Tao's men, as the Great City was now. The men would find their way back all right—

At the sudden thought that came to him Mercer dropped his bit of bread and sat up in astonishment. Tao no longer a menace? He remembered my reasoning in the boat coming down the bayou. Of course, Tao would have no reason to attack the Light Country by force of arms until he was sure his propaganda among the people had failed.

My argument was sound enough, but the utter stupidity of what we had done now dawned on Mercer with overwhelming force. Tao would await the results of his emissaries' work, of course. And here we had gone and sent them straight back to their leader to report their efforts a failure! If anything were needed to precipitate an invasion from Tao, this very thing Mercer had just finished doing was it. He cursed himself and me fervently as he thought what fools we had been.

Then it occurred to him perhaps it was not too late to repair the damage. Not more than half an hour had passed since he had set the men free on the shore of the Twilight Country. He must go back at once. Under no circumstances must they be allowed to reach Tao and tell him what had occurred.

Anina was flying near Mercer as before. He leaned over the edge of the platform to talk with her, but the wind of their forward flight and the noise of the girls' wings made conversation difficult.

"Anina! Come up here with me. Sit here. I want to talk to you. It's important. They don't need you flying now."

Obediently the girl sat where he indicated, close beside him. And then as he was about to begin telling her what was in his mind Mercer suddenly remembered that they were still heading toward the Light Country, every moment getting farther away from Tao's men, whose homeward journey he must head off some way.

"We must go back, Anina—back where we came from—at once. Tell them—now! Then I'll tell you why."

The girl's eyes widened, but she did as he directed, and the platform, making a broad, sweeping turn, headed back toward the Twilight Country shore.

"Anina, how far is it to Tao's city from where we landed?"

"The Lone City? A day, going fast."

"But they won't go fast, will they? Some of them are pretty badly hurt."

"Two days for them," the girl agreed.

Mercer then told her what an error we had made. She listened quietly, but he knew she understood, not only his words, but the whole situation as he viewed it then.

"Most bad," she said solemnly when he paused.

"That's what I want to tell you; it's bad," he declared. "We've got to head them off some way; stop them somehow. I don't see how we're going to capture them again—ten of them against me. But we've got to do something."

Then he asked her about the lay of the country between the shore of the sea and the Lone City.

Anina's English was put to severe test by her explanation; but she knew far many more words than she had ever used, and now, with the interest of what she had to say, she lost much of the diffidence which before had restrained her.

She told him that the trail led back through the forest for some distance, and then ran parallel with a swift flowing river. This river, she explained, emptied into the Narrow Sea a few miles below the end of the trail. It was the direct water route to the Lone City.

The trail, striking the river bank, followed it up into a mountainous country—a metallic waste where few trees grew. There was a place still farther up in a very wild, broken country, where the river ran through a deep, narrow gorge, and the trail followed a narrow ledge part way up one of its precipitous sides.

Anina's eyes sparkled with eagerness as she told of it.

"There, my friend Ollie, we stop them. Many loose stones there are, and the path is very narrow."

Mercer saw her plan at once. They could bar the men's passage somewhere along this rocky trail, and with stones drive them back. He realized with satisfaction that he could throw a stone fully twice as large and twice as far as any of the men, and thus, out of range, bombard them until they would be glad enough to turn back.

His plan, then, was to land, and with Anina follow the men. The rest of the girls he would send back to me with the platform, to tell Miela and me to come over the next evening to the end of the trail.

He and Anina meanwhile would keep close behind the men, and then when the cañon was neared, get around in front of them, and bar their farther advance. This would be easy since he could walk and run much faster than they, and Anina could fly. He would drive them back out of the gorge, send Anina to keep the appointment with me and bring me up to him with the girls and the platform.

They reached the shore and landed within a few feet of where they had been an hour before. The men were not in sight; nothing remained to show they had been there, save pieces of cut cord lying about.

Anina now instructed the girls what to tell me, and in a moment more, with the blanket and a few pieces of bread, she and Mercer were left standing alone on the rocky beach. Anina was cold. He took off his fur jacket and wrapped it about her shoulders.

She made a quaint little picture standing there, with her two long braids of golden hair, and her blue‑feathered wings which the jacket only partly covered. They started up the trail together. It was almost dark in the woods, but soon their eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, and they could see a little better. They walked as rapidly, as Anina was able, for the men had nearly an hour's start, and Mercer concluded they would be far ahead.

They had gone perhaps a mile, climbing along over fallen logs, walking sometimes on the larger tree trunks lying prone—rude bridges by which the trail crossed some ravine—when Anina said: "I fly now. You wait here, Ollie, and I find where they are."

She handed him the coat and flew up over the tree‑tops, disappearing Almost immediately in the darkness. Mercer slung the coat around him and sat down to wait. He sat there perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, staring up at the silent, motionless tree‑tops, and thinking all sorts of vague, impossible dangers impending. Then he heard her wings flapping and saw her flitting down through the trees.

"Very near, they are," she said as soon as she reached the ground. "A fire—they have—and they are ready now to sleep."

They went on slowly along the trail, and soon saw the glimmer of a fire ahead. "A camp for the night," whispered Mercer.

"It must be nearly morning now."

He looked about him and smiled as he realized that no light would come with the morning. Always this same dim twilight here—and eternal darkness on ahead. "Good Lord, what a place to live!" he muttered.

They crept on cautiously until they were within sight of the camp. A large fire was burning briskly. Most of the men were wrapped in their blankets, apparently asleep; three were sitting upright, on guard. Mercer and Anina crept away.

"We'd better camp, too," Mercer said when they were well out of hearing. "They will probably stay there four or five hours, anyway. Lord, I'm tired." He laid his hand on her shoulder gently, almost timidly. "Aren't you tired, too, little girl?"

"Yes," she answered simply, and met his eyes with her gentle little smile. "Oh, yes—I tired. Very much."

They did not dare light a fire, nor had they any means of doing so. They went back from the trail a short distance, finding a little recess between two fallen logs, where the ground was soft with a heavy moss. Here they decided to sleep for a few hours.

A small pool of water had collected on a barren surface of rock near by, and from this they drank. Then they sat down, together and ate about half the few remaining pieces of bread which Mercer was carrying in the pockets of his jacket. They were both tired out. Anina particularly was very sleepy.

When they had finished eating Anina lay down, and Mercer covered her with the blanket. She smiled up at him.

"Good night, Anina."

"Good night, my friend Ollie."

She closed her eyes, snuggling closer under the blanket with a contented little sigh. Mercer put on his jacket and sat down beside her, his chin cupped in his hand. It seemed colder now. His trousers were thin, his legs felt numb and stiff from his recent exertion.

He sat quiet, staring at the sleeping girl. She was very beautiful and very sweet, lying there with her golden hair framing her face, her little head pillowed on her arms, a portion of one blue‑feathered wing peeping out from under the blanket. All at once Mercer bent over and kissed her lightly, brushing her lips with his, as one kisses a sleeping child.

She stirred, then opened her eyes and smiled up at him again.

"You cold, Ollie," she said accusingly. She lifted an edge of the blanket. "Here—you sleep, too."

He stretched himself beside her, and she flung a corner of the blanket over him; and thus, like two children lost in the woods and huddled together for warmth under a fallen log, they slept.

---

[ CHAPTER XXI.
ANOTHER LIGHT‑RAY!]

The news that Mercer and Anina had been left in the Twilight Country completely dumfounded Miela and me. "Something was wrong," Mercer had said. And then they had insisted on staying there, and had sent the girls back to tell me to come over.

We could make nothing of it, nor did the half hour of argument into which we immediately plunged further enlighten us. That flaw in our plans which had dawned on Mercer so suddenly and clearly certainly never occurred to us, for all it was seemingly so obvious.

We were interrupted—having reached no conclusion whatever except that we would go over that evening as Mercer had directed—by the arrival of the police chief to see me. He was a little man, curiously thin and wizened for a Mercutian, with wide pantaloons, a shirt, short jacket and little triangular cocked hat. His face seemed pointed, like a ferret. His movements were rapid, his roving glance peculiarly alert.

He bowed before me obsequiously. He would obey me to the letter, I could see that at once from his manner; though, had I impressed him as being like my predecessor, I did not doubt but that he would do as he pleased upon occasion.

I toyed with the little light‑ray cylinder in my hand quite casually through the brief interview, and I saw he was thoroughly impressed, for he seemed unable to take his eyes from it.

"Where are your men just now?" I asked.

He raised his hands deprecatingly and poured out a flood of words to Miela when my question was translated to him.

"He himself was sleeping," she said to me when he had paused for breath. "His third watch was on patrol about the city. Then from the castle came the king's guards, fleeing in haste. Those of the police they met they told that evil men were in the castle with the light‑ray, and all who represented the city's authority would be killed."

"That was a lie," I interrupted. "There was no light‑ray here then."

Miela nodded. "It was what Baar's men had told them to say, I think."

"And then what happened to the police?"

"Then they left their posts about the city. Some fled; others went back and reported what they had heard."

"And it never occurred to any of them to come up here and try to stop the disturbance? Curious policemen, these!"

"It is too deadly—the light‑ray," said Miela. "They were afraid. And then the alarm bell began ringing. They sent for Ano, here, to ask him what they should do. And then you sent for him. He has his men at the police building, in waiting. And he comes to you at the risk of his life, and now asks your commands."

Thus did my chief of police explain satisfactorily to himself, and with great protestations of loyalty to his trust, how it came about that he and his men did nothing while their king was being murdered and another put in his place.

Recriminations seemed useless. He stood bowing and scraping before me, eager only to obey my slightest wish.

"Tell him, Miela, how Baar's men captured Lua. Have the city, thoroughly searched—Baar's house particularly. Tell him I killed Baar's wife. Have that slave woman sent home to me.

"Tell him to capture Baar and any of his known associates. If he does, have him report to me at once. Say to him that I must have word of Lua—or I'll have a new chief of police by to‑morrow. For the rest, have his men patrol the city as usual."

I spoke as sternly as I could, and the little man received my words with voluble protestations of extreme activity on his part.

When he had bowed himself out I smiled at Miela hopelessly.

"This has got to be a mighty different government before we can ever hope to accomplish anything against Tao." Tao was not worrying me for the moment. Lua must be found, and I had no idea of relying entirely upon this little chief of police to find her. And Mercer needed me, too, this very evening.

I stood up wearily and put my arm about Miela's shoulders. Her little body drooped against mine, her head resting on my shoulder. There was little about us then, as we stood there dispirited and physically tired out, that would have commended respect from our subjects.

"We must get some sleep, Miela," I said. "Things will look very different to us then."

It must have been mid‑afternoon when we awoke. Ano was at hand to report that Baar and his men, and all the king's guards, must have fled the city. Of Lua he had, so far, found no trace. Baar's slave woman was in the castle, waiting our commands. The girl who had brought us Mercer's message was also waiting to ask us when we wanted her and the other girls for the trip back to the Twilight Country.

"Right away," I exclaimed. "I'm not going to take any chances with Mercer. We'll start at once."

The girl flew away to get her friends and the platform, which had been left in the garden of Miela's home. I planned to start openly from the castle roof; there was now no need of maintaining secrecy.

The disappearance of Lua was alarming. Equally so was the possible danger into which Mercer might have blundered. In Lua's case there did not seem much I could do personally at that moment. Before starting I arranged with the aged councilors to call a meeting the following morning of all government officials.

"Could we get Fuero to come, Miela?"

She shook her head positively. "His oath would forbid it."

"Well, tell the councilors to call also any of the city's prominent men. I've got to get some good men with me. I can't do it all alone."

Miela smiled at me quizzically as I said this: "You have forgotten our women and their help, my husband?"

I had, in very truth, for the moment.

"We'll need them, too," I said. "Tell these girls who carry us to‑night to call all those who went with us to the mountains—a meeting to‑morrow at this time—here on the castle roof."

"To the Water City we must go," Miela said. "There Tao's men are very strong, our girls report. And to‑day there was a fight among the people, and several were killed."

"But we must go armed, Miela, with more than one light‑ray. I shall see this Fuero to‑morrow. After all, he's the key‑note to the whole thing."

We started from the castle roof, Miela sitting with me this time on the platform. Flying low, we passed over the maze of bayous, and in what seemed an incredibly short time we were out over the sea. I had now no idea what we might be called upon to do, or how long we would be gone, for all my specific plans for the next day; so we started as well prepared as possible.

The precious light‑ray cylinder I held in my hand. We had a number of blankets, enough food for us all for two days of careful rationing, a knife or two, and a heavy, sharp‑edged metal implement like an ax.

It seemed hardly more than half an hour before a great black cloud had spread over the whole sky, and we ran into the worst storm I have ever encountered. The wind came up suddenly, and we fought our way directly into it. Lightning flashed about us, and then came the rain, slanting down in great sheets.

We were still flying low. The mirror surface of the sea was now lashed with waves, extraordinarily high, whose white tops blew away in long streaks of scud. The girls fought sturdily against the wind and rain, carrying us steadily up until after a while I could not see the water below.

We were in the storm perhaps an hour altogether. Then we passed up and beyond it; and emerged again into that gray vacancy, with a waste of storm‑lashed water far beneath us.

The Twilight Country shore was still below the horizon, and it was a considerable time before we sighted it. Miela and I sat quiet, wrapped in a blanket, which, wet as it was, offered some protection against the biting wind. The girls seemed exhausted from their long struggle against the storm, and I was glad for them when we finally landed.

This was the place, they said, where Mercer and Anina had set Tao's men free, and where the two were standing when the girls had left with the platform. I looked about, and saw on the beach the pieces of cut cord with which the men had been bound.

Of Mercer and Anina there was no sign. We waited until well after the time of the evening meal, and still Mercer and Anina did not arrive. We concluded, of course, that they had followed Tao's men up the trail for some reason, and we expected it would be Anina who would come back to tell us where Mercer was.

"Let us go up a little distance," Miela suggested finally. "They cannot tell what the hour is. They may be near here now, coming back."

The girls were rested and warmed now, and we started off again with the platform. We flew low over the tree‑tops, following the trail as best we could, but in the semi‑darkness we could see very little from above. After a time we gave it up and returned to the shore.

Again we waited, now very much alarmed. And then finally we decided to return to the Great City for the night. Anina might have missed us some way, we thought, and flown directly home. She might be there waiting for us when we arrived. If not, we would return again with several hundred girls, and with them scour the country carefully back as near the Lone City as we dared go.

With our hearts heavy with apprehension we started back across the channel. Lua, Mercer and Anina were separated from us. All had been captured, perhaps, by our enemies! Things were, indeed, in a very bad way.

Without unusual incident we sighted the Light Country shore. Three girls were winging their way swiftly toward us.

"They wish to speak with us, Alan," said Miela. "From the Great City they seem to come. Perhaps it is Anina."

Our hopes were soon dispelled, for Anina was not one of them; they were three of the girls we had directed to patrol the seacoast.

When they neared us Miela flew off the platform and joined them. They circled about for a time, flying close together, then Miela left them and returned to me, while they hovered overhead. Her face was clouded with anxiety as she alighted beside me.

"They were near the Water City a short time ago. And they say the light‑ray is being used there. They saw it flashing up, and dared not go closer."

The light‑ray in the Water City! My heart sunk with dismay. The cylinder I held in my hand I had thought the only one in use in all the Light Country. With it I felt supreme. And now they had it also in the Water City!

One of the girls flung up her hand suddenly and called to Miela.

"See, Alan—a boat!"

I looked down to where Miela pointed. The sea was still rough from the storm, but no longer lashed into fury. Coming toward us, close inshore and from the direction of the Water City, I saw a boat speeding along over the spent waves. And as I looked, a narrow beam of light, green, shading into red, shot up from the boat and hung wavering in the air like a little search‑light striving to pierce the gray mist of the sky!

---

[ CHAPTER XXII.
THE THEFT OF THE LIGHT‑RAY.]

The touch of soft, cool hands on his face brought Mercer back to sudden consciousness. He opened his eyes; Anina was sitting beside him, regarding him gravely.

"Wake up, my friend Ollie. Time now to wake up."

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The same dim twilight obscured everything around. For an instant he was confused.

"Why, I've been asleep." He got to his feet. "Do you think it's been long, Anina? Maybe the men have started off. Let's go see."

Anina had already been to see; she had awakened some little time before and, leaving Mercer asleep, had flown up ahead over the tree‑tops.

The men were just then breaking camp, and she had returned to wake up Mercer. They ate their last remaining pieces of bread, drank from the little pool of water, and were soon ready to start on after their quarry.

"How long will it take them to reach the gorge, Anina?"

"Not very long—four times farther reach Lone City."

By which Mercer inferred that within three or four hours, perhaps, they would be at the place where they hoped to turn the men back.

They started off slowly up the trail, Mercer carrying the folded blanket, and Anina wearing the fur jacket. They soon came upon the smoldering fire that marked the other party's night encampment. The men were, Mercer judged, perhaps a mile or so ahead of them.

They continued on, walking slowly, for they did not want to overtake the slow‑traveling men ahead. The look of the country, what they could see of it in the darkness, was unchanged. The trail seemed bending steadily to the right, and after a time they came to the bank of a river which the trail followed. It was a broad stream, perhaps a quarter of a mile across, with a considerable current sweeping down to the sea.

They kept to the trail along the river bank for nearly another hour. Then Anina abruptly halted, pulling Mercer partly behind a tree trunk.

"Another fire," she whispered. "They stop again."

They could see the glow of the fire, close by the river bank among the trees. Very cautiously they approached and soon made out the vague outlines of a boat moored to the bank. It seemed similar to the one in which they had come down the bayous from the Great City, only slightly larger.

"Other men," whispered Anina. "From Lone City."

Mercer's heart sank. A party from the Lone City—more of Tao's men to join those he had set free! All his fine plans were swept away. The men would all go up to the Lone City now in the boat, of course. There was nothing he could do to stop them. And now Tao would learn of the failure of his plans.

Mercer's first idea was to give up and return to the shore of the sea; but Anina kept on going cautiously forward, and he followed her.

The fire, they could see as they got closer, was built a little back from the water, with a slight rise of ground between it and the boat. There were some thirty men gathered around; they seemed to be cooking.

"You stand here, Ollie," Anina whispered. "I go hear what they say. Stand very quiet and wait. I come back."

Mercer sat down with his back against a tree and waited. Anina disappeared almost immediately. He heard no sound of her flight, but a moment later he thought he saw her dropping down through the trees just outside the circle of light from the fire. From where he was sitting he could see the boat also; he thought he made out the figure of a man sitting in it, on guard. The situation, as Mercer understood it from what Anina told him when she returned, seemed immeasurably worse even than he had anticipated.

Tao had been making the Water City the basis of his insidious propaganda, rather than the Great City, as we had supposed. He had been in constant communication by boat with his men in the Water City; and now affairs there were ripe for more drastic operations.

This boat Mercer had come upon was intended to be Tao's first armed invasion of the Light Country—some twenty of his most trusted men armed with the light‑ray. Joining his emissaries in the Water City, and with the large following among the people there which they had already secured, they planned to seize the government and obtain control of the city. Then, using it as a base, they could spread out for a conquest of the entire nation. Mercer listened with whitening face while Anina told him all this as best she could.

"But—but why does he want to attack the Light Country, Anina? I thought he wanted to go and conquer our earth."

"Very big task—your earth," the girl answered. "Light Country more easy. Many light‑rays in the Great City. Those he needs before he goes to your earth. More simple to get those than make others."

Mercer understood it then. The large quantity of light‑ray ammunition stored in the Great City was what Tao was after. This was his way of getting it, and once he had it, and control of the Light Country besides he would be in a much better position to attack the earth.

The idea came to Mercer then to steal the boat and escape with it. If he could do that, the enemies would have to return to the Lone City on foot, and the threatened invasion of the Light Country would thus be postponed for a time at least. Meanwhile, with the boat he could hasten back to me with news of the coming invasion.

These thoughts were running through his head while Anina was talking. It was a daring plan, but it might be done. There was apparently only one man in the boat, and the slight rise of ground between it and the fire made him out of sight, though not out of hearing, of the others.

"Can you run the boat, Anina?"

The girl nodded eagerly. Mercer drew a long breath.

"We'll take a chance. It's the only way. They've got that cursed light‑ray." He shivered as he thought of the danger they were about to invite.

Then he explained to Anina what they were to do. She listened carefully, with the same expectant, eager look on her face he had seen there so often before.

They left the blanket and fur jacket on the ground, and, making a wide detour around the fire, came back to the river bank several hundred yards above the boat. They stood at the water's edge, looking about them. The boat was just around a slight bend in the stream; the glimmer of the fire showed plainly among the trees. Intense quiet prevailed; only the murmur of the water flowing past, and occasionally the raised voice of one of the men about the fire, broke the stillness.

Mercer stared searchingly into the girl's eyes as she stood there quietly at his side. She met his gaze steadily.

"You're a wonderful little girl," he whispered to her, and then abruptly added: "Come on. Don't make any splash if you can help it. And remember, if anything goes wrong, never mind me. Fly away—if you can."

They waded slowly into the water. The current carried them rapidly along. Side by side, with slow, careful strokes, they swam, keeping close to shore. The river was shallow—hardly over their heads. The water was cold and, Mercer thought, curiously buoyant.

It seemed hardly more than a moment before the shadowy black figure of outlines of the boat loomed ahead. They could make out the figure of its single occupant, sitting with his arm on the gunwale. They swam hardly at all now, letting the current carry them forward. As silent as two drifting logs they dropped down upon the boat and in another moment were clinging to a bit of rope that chanced to be hanging over its stern.

The bow of the boat was nosed against the bank; it lay diagonally downstream, with its stern some twenty feet from shore. Its occupant was sitting amidships, facing the bow. Mercer drew himself up until his eyes were above the stern of the boat and saw him plainly. He was slouching down as though dozing. His elbow was crooked, carelessly over the gunwale.

Mercer's heart gave an exultant leap as he saw a little cylinder in the man's hand. There was a little projection on the boat at the water line, and, working along this with his hands, Mercer edged slowly toward the man. He knew he could not be heard, for the murmur of the water slipping past the sides of the boat drowned the slight noise he made.

He edged his way along, with not much more than his face out of water, until he was directly beneath the motionless form in the boat.

Mercer's heart was beating so it seemed to smother him. Slowly he pulled himself up until the fingers of his left hand gripped the gunwale hardly more than a foot or two behind the man's back. His other hand reached forward. He must have made a slight noise, for the man sat suddenly upright, listening.

Mercer's right hand shot out. His fingers closed over the little cylinder and the hand holding it. He bent it inward, twisting the man's wrist. His thumb fumbled for the little button Anina had described. There was a tiny puff of light; the man's body wavered, then fell forward inert. Mercer climbed into the boat. He looked back. Anina was pulling herself up over the stern. A long pole lay across the seats. He picked it up and started with it toward the bow. And then he tripped over something and fell headlong, dropping the pole with a clatter.

As he picked himself up there came a shout from the men in the woods. Mercer hurried forward and cast off the rope that held the boat to the bank. It had been tied more or less permanently at this end. As he fumbled at the knots he heard Anina's soft, anxious voice calling: "Hurry, Ollie, hurry!"

The shouts from the woods continued. The knots loosened finally. The boat slid back away from the bank; with the pole Mercer shoved the bow around. An instant later Anina had started the mechanism, and in a broad curve they swung silently out into the river.

Up from the woods shot a beam of the greenish‑red light. It darted to and fro for an instant, almost vertically in the air, and Mercer heard the crackle of the tree‑tops as they burst into flame under its heat. Then it swung downward, but before it could reach the water level the rise of ground at the bank cut it off.

Without realizing it, Mercer had been holding his breath as he watched. Now he let it out with a long sigh of relief.

"We did it, Anina—we did it," he said exultantly. "And we've got a light‑ray, too."

A moment later they swept around a bend in the river, out of sight and out of hearing of their enemies.

---

[ CHAPTER XXIII.
THE STORM.]

On the little stern seat of the boat Mercer and Anina sat side by side, the girl steering by a small tiller that lay between them. They were well out in the middle of the river now, speeding silently along with its swift current. They made extraordinary speed. Both banks of the river were visible in the twilight—dim, wooded hills stretching back into darkness.

The stream widened steadily as they advanced, until near, its mouth it had become a broad estuary. They followed its right shore now and soon were out in the Narrow Sea.

"We'd better go right on across," said Mercer. "It's too early for Alan to be at the end of the trail. He won't be there till to‑night. We can reach the Great City before he starts."

They decided to do that, and headed straight out into the sea. They had been cold, sitting there in the wind, and wet to the skin. But the boat contained several furry jackets, which the men had left in it, and in the bottom, near the stern, a cubical metal box which lighted up like an electric radiator. By this they had dried and warmed themselves, and now, each with a fur jacket on, they felt thoroughly comfortable.

Mercer was elated at what they had accomplished. He could see now how fortunate a circumstance it was that we had set the men free. He would not have stumbled upon this other party, and the invasion of the Light Country would have begun, had we not released them.

He talked enthusiastically about what we were to do next, and Anina listened, saying very little, but following his words with eager attention. Once he thought she was more interested in the words themselves than in what he was saying, and said so.

"Your language—so very easy it is. I want to learn it soon if I can."

"Why, you know it already," he protested. "And how the deuce you ever got it so quickly beats me."

She smiled.

"When you say words—very easy then for me to remember. Not many words in spoken language."

He shook his head.

"Well, however you do it, the result's all right. I'm mighty glad, too. Why, when I get you back home on earth—" He stopped in sudden confusion.

She put her hand on his arm.

"Miela says your earth is very wonderful. Tell me about it."

She listened to his glowing words. "And opera—what is that?" she asked once when he paused.

He described the Metropolitan Opera House, and the newer, finer one in Boston. She listened to his description of the music with flushed face and shining eyes.

"How beautiful—that music! Can you sing, Ollie?"

"No," he admitted, "but I can play a little on a guitar. I wish I had one here."

"I can sing," said the girl: "Miela says I can sing very well."

He leaned toward her, brushing the blue feathers of her wing lightly with his hand.

"Sing for me," he said softly. "I'll bet you sing beautifully."

It may have been their situation, or what they had been through together, or the girl's nearness to him now with her long braids of golden hair, the graceful sweep of her blue‑feathered wings that matched the blue of her eyes, her red lips parted in song—but whatever it was, Mercer thought he had never heard so sweet a voice. She sang a weird little song. It was in a minor key, with curious cadences that died away and ended nowhere—the folk song of a different race, a different planet, yet vibrant with the ever unsatisfied longing of the human soul.

She sang softly, staring straight before her, without thought of her singing, thinking only of her song. She ended with a tender phrase that might have been a sigh—a quivering little half sob that died away in her throat and left the song unfinished. Her hands were folded quiet in her lap; her eyes gazed out on the gray waste of water about the boat.

Mercer breathed again.

"That is beautiful, Anina. What is it?"

She turned to him and smiled.

"Just love song. You like it, my friend Ollie?"

"It's wonderful. But it's—it's so sad—and—and sort of weird isn't it?"

"That is love, my mother says. Love is sad."

Mercer's heart was beating fast.

"Is it always sad, Anina? I don't think so—do you?"

There was no trace of coquetry in her eyes; she sighed tremulously.

"I do not know about love. But what I feel here"—she put her hand on her breast—"I do not understand, Ollie. And when I sing—they are very sad and sweet, the thoughts of music, and they say things to the heart that the brain does not understand. Is it that way with you?"

Unnoticed by the two, a storm cloud had swept up over the horizon behind them, and the sky overhead was blotted now with its black. They had not seen it nor heeded the distant flashing of lightning. A sudden thunderclap startled them now into consciousness of the scene about them. The wind rushed on them from behind. The sea was rising rapidly; the boat scudded before it.

"A storm! Look at it, Anina, behind us!"

There was nothing in sight now but the gray sea, broken into waves that were beginning to curl, white and angry. Behind them the darkness was split with jagged forks of lightning. The thunder rolled heavily and ominously in the distance, with occasional sharp cracks near at hand.

"Look, Anina—there comes the rain! See it there behind us! I hope it won't be a bad storm. I wouldn't want to be out in this little tub."

The wind veered to the left, increasing steadily. The sea was lashed into foam; its spray swept over the boat, drenching them thoroughly.

The waves, turning now with the wind, struck the boat on its stern quarter. One curled aboard, sloshing an inch or two of water about the bottom of the boat. Mercer feared it would interfere with the mechanism, but Anina reassured him.

As the waves increased in size, Mercer swung the boat around so as to run directly before them. The stern frequently was lifted clear of the water now, the boat losing headway as a great cloud of hissing steam arose from behind.

After a time the Light Country shore came into sight. They were close upon it before they saw it through the rain and murk. They seemed to be heading diagonally toward it.

"Where are we, Anina?" Mercer asked anxiously.

The girl shook her head.

Steadily they were swept inward. The shore line, as they drew closer, was to Mercer quite unfamiliar. There were no bayous here, no inundated land. Instead, a bleak line of cliffs fronted them—a perpendicular wall against which the waves beat furiously. They could see only a short distance. The line of cliffs extended ahead of them out of sight in the gray of the sheets of rain.

They were slanting toward the cliffs, and Mercer knew if he did not do something they would be driven against them in a few moments more.

"We'll have to turn out, Anina. We can't land along here. We must keep away if we can."

With the waves striking its stern quarter again, the boat made much heavier weather. It seemed to Mercer incredible that it should stay afloat. He found himself thoroughly frightened now, but when he remembered that Anina was in no danger he felt relieved. He had made her lie down in the boat, where she would be more sheltered from the wind and rain. Now he hastily bade her get up and sit beside him.

"We might be swamped any minute, Anina. You sit there where you won't get caught if we go over."

They swept onward, Mercer keeping the boat offshore as best he could.

"Haven't you any idea where we are, Anina? How far along do these cliffs extend?"

A huge, jagged pinnacle of rock, like a great cathedral spire set in the cliff, loomed into view ahead. Anina's face brightened, when she saw it.

"The way to the Water City," she cried. "A river there is—ahead. Not so very far now."

In spite of all Mercer could do, they were blowing steadily closer to the wave‑lashed cliffs.

He began to despair. "If anything happens, Anina—you fly up at once. You hear? Don't you wait. You can't help me any. I'll make out some way. You say good‑by to Alan and your mother and sister for me—if—" He fell silent a moment, then said softly: "And, Anina, if that should happen, I want you to know that I think you're the sweetest, most wonderful little girl I ever met. And, Anina dear—"

The girl gripped his arm with a cry of joy.

"See, Ollie! There, ahead, the cliffs end. That is the Water City river! See it there?"

The mouth of a broad estuary, with the waves rolling up into it, came swiftly into view. They rounded the rocky headland and entered it, running now almost directly before the wind. The river narrowed after a short distance to a stream very much like the one they had left in the Twilight Country.

Mercer turned to the quiet little girl beside him.

"Well, Anina, we've certainly had some trip. I wouldn't want to go through it again."

Mercer thought the situation over. They could stay where they were in the river for an hour or two until the storm was entirely over, and then go back to the Great City. On the other hand, now that they were here, Mercer felt a great curiosity to see this other city where Tao's men had created trouble. Why should they not use these few hours of waiting to see it?

"We might get a line on how things stand up there to tell Alan when we get back," Mercer said when he explained his ideas to Anina. "It won't take long." Very probably it was the light‑ray cylinder in his hand which influenced his decision, for he added: "We can't get into any trouble, you know; there's no light‑ray here yet."

And so they went on.

There was a perceptible current coming down the river. The water was cold and clear, and in the brighter light now he could see down into it in many places to the bottom, six or eight feet below. The region seemed utterly uninhabited; no sign of a house or even a boat on the river met them as they advanced.

"Mightn't there be boats along here?" Mercer asked once. "How far up is this place?"

"Not far now—beyond there."

The river appeared to terminate abruptly up ahead against the side of a frowning brown cliff, but Mercer saw a moment later that it opened out around a bend to the left.

"Around that next bend?"

She nodded.

It seemed incredible to Mercer that the second largest city in Mercury lay hidden in the midst of this desolation.

"We'll meet boats," he said. "What will the people think of me? Don't let's start anything if we can help it."

"You lie there." Anina indicated the bottom of the boat at her feet. "No one see you then. I steer. They do not notice me. Nobody care who I am."

Mercer had still the very vaguest of ideas as to what they would do when they got to the Water City. As a matter of fact, he really was more curious just to see it than anything else. But there was another reason that urged him on. Both he and Anina were hungry.

They had eaten very little since leaving the Great City the night before; and now that it was again evening, they were famished. They had rummaged the boat thoroughly, but evidently the men had taken all their supplies ashore with them, for nothing was in the boat.

"We'll have to dope out some way to get something to eat," said Mercer.

They came upon the sharp bend in the river Anina had indicated. Following close against one rocky shore, they swept around the bend, and the Water City lay spread out before Mercer's astonished eyes.

---

[ CHAPTER XXIV.
THE WATER CITY.]

It had stopped raining; the sky overhead was luminous with diffused sunlight; the scene that lay before Mercer was plainly visible. The river had opened abruptly into a broad, shallow, nearly circular lake, some five or six miles across. The country here showed an extraordinary change from that they had passed through. The lake appeared to occupy a depression in the surrounding hills, like the bottom of a huge, shallow bowl. From the water's edge on all sides the ground sloped upward. It was no longer a barren, rocky land, but seemingly covered with a rich heavy soil, dotted with tropical trees. That it was under a high state of cultivation was evident. Mercer saw tier upon tier of rice terraces on the hillsides.

But what astonished him most was the city itself. It covered almost the entire surface of the lake—a huge collection of little palm‑thatched shacks built upon platforms raised above the water on stilts. Some of the houses were larger and built of stone, with their foundations in the water.

Off to one side were two or three little islands, an acre or less in extent, fringed with palms and coconut trees. In nearly the center of the lake stood a stone castle, two stories in height, with minarets ornamenting its corners. An open stretch of water surrounded it.

There was little of regularity about this extraordinary city, and no evidence of streets, for the houses were set down quite haphazard wherever open space afforded. In some places they were more crowded together than others, although seldom closer than twenty or thirty feet.

Around the larger ones there was a little more open water, as though the owners controlled it and forbade building there. Some of the smaller houses were connected by little wooden bridges. Anina said this was where two or more families of relatives had located together.

There were a few boats moving about—little punts hollowed out of logs and propelled by long poles—and Mercer saw many others, some of them larger like the one he and Anina were in, tied up by the houses. It was now the time of the evening meal. The workers had returned from the terraces; there were few moving about the city. Occasionally a girl would dart up from one of the houses and wing her way to another, but beyond that there were no signs of activity.

Anina took command of the boat now, slowing it down and heading for the nearest of the houses, which were hardly more than quarter of a mile away. Mercer stretched himself out in the bottom of the boat, covering himself with a large piece of fabric that lay there. He felt that he would be unnoticed, even should a girl chance to pass directly overhead. But he could see nothing of the city from where he was, and soon grew restless and anxious to do something else.

"I'm coming up, Anina," he said once. "Shucks! Nobody can do anything to us. Haven't I got this light‑ray?"

But Anina was obdurate, and made him stay where he was.

They went slowly forward and were soon among the houses. On the front platform of one a man sat fishing. A little naked boy slid down into the water from another, swimming as though born to the water. Both stared at Anina curiously as she passed slowly by, but they said nothing. A girl looked out of the window of another house and waved her hand in friendly greeting, which Anina answered.

Mercer, lying with all but his face covered by the cloth, could see only the sides of the boat, the bottom of the cross‑seat over his head, and Anina as she sat above him in the stern.

"Where do you suppose the Tao people hang out around here?" he suddenly asked. "If we could—"

The girl silenced him with a gesture.

He lowered his voice. "Try and find out where they are, Anina," he whispered.

Anina steered the boat directly under several of the houses, which must have been quite a usual proceeding, for it attracted no attention. A girl flew close to them once, and Anina called to her. The girl alighted on the stern of the boat for a moment; Mercer slid the cloth over his face and held himself motionless. Then he heard Anina's voice calling to him softly. He slid the cloth back; the girl had gone.

"She says Tao's men live, there—large house, of wood," said Anina, pointing off to one side.

Mercer nearly rapped his head against the seat above him in his excitement.

"You know which house? Let's go there. Maybe we can hear what they're saying. Can we get under it?"

She nodded.

"Let's try, Anina," he said eagerly. "You steer us slow right under it, just as if you were going past. If there's nobody in sight you can stop underneath, can't you? Maybe we can hear what they're saying."

"I try," the girl said simply.

"I'll lay still," encouraged Mercer. "Nobody will bother about you. Just sneak in and see what happens. If anybody sees you, keep going."

He was all excitement, and in spite of Anina's protests wriggled about continually, trying to see where they were.

The house that the girl had pointed out lay only a few hundred yards ahead. It was one of the largest of the wooden buildings—sixty or seventy feet long at least—single story, with a high sloping thatched roof.

It was raised on a platform some six feet above the water, which, in front, had a little flight of wooden steps leading down to the surface. There was a hundred feet of open water on all sides of the building. The boat, moving slowly, slipped through the water almost without a sound.

"Where are we now?" Mercer whispered impatiently. "Aren't we there yet?"

The girl put a finger to her lips. "Almost there. Quiet now."

She steered straight for the house. There was no one in sight, either about the house itself or about those in its immediate vicinity. A moment more and the boat slid beneath the building into semi‑darkness.

Anina shut the power off and stood up. The floor of the house was just above her head. In front of her, near the center of the building, she saw the side walls of an inner inclosure some twenty feet square. These walls came down to the surface, making a room like a basement to the dwelling. A broad doorway, with a sliding door that now stood open, gave ingress.

The boat had now almost lost headway. Anina nosed its bow into this doorway, and grasping one of the pilings near at hand, brought it to rest.

Mercer, at a signal from her, climbed cautiously to his feet, still holding the little light‑ray cylinder in his hand.

"What's that in there?" he whispered.

Beyond the doorway, through which the bow of the boat projected, there was complete darkness.

"Lower room," Anina whispered back. "Store things in there. And boat landing, too."

"Let's go in and see."

Mercer started toward the bow of the boat. Six feet or more of it was inside the doorway. He made his way carefully into the bow, and found himself inside the basement of the house.

In the dimness of this interior he could just make out the outlines of things around. The doorway was located at a corner of the inclosure. In front lay a small open space of water. At one side a platform about two feet above the surface formed the floor of the room. A tiny punt lay moored to it. Farther back a small, steep flight of steps led up through a rectangular opening to the building above.

Most of the light in this lower room came down through this opening; and now, as Mercer stood quiet looking about him, he could hear plainly the voices of men in the room above.

Anina was beside him.

"They're up there," he whispered, pointing. "Let's land and see if we can get up those stairs a ways and hear what they're saying."

They stood a moment, undecided, and then from the silence and darkness about them they distinctly heard a low muffled sound.

"What's that?" whispered Mercer, startled. "Didn't you hear that, Anina? There's something over there by the bottom of the steps."

They listened, but only the murmur of the voices from above, and an occasional footstep, broke the stillness.

"I tell you I heard something," Mercer persisted. "There's something over there." He rattled a bit of rope incautiously, as if to startle a rat from its hiding place. "Let's tie up, Anina."

They made the boat fast, but in such a way that they could cast it loose quickly.

"We might want to get out of here in a hurry," Mercer whispered with a grin. "You never can tell, Anina."

He stood stock still. The sound near at hand was repeated. It was unmistakable this time—a low, stifled moan.

Mercer stepped lightly out of the boat onto the platform. A few boxes, a coil of rope, and other odds and ends stood about. He felt his way forward among them toward the bottom of the steps. He heard the moan again, and now he saw the outlines of a human figure lying against the farther wall.

Anina was close behind him.

"There's somebody over there," he whispered. "Hurt or sick, maybe."

They crept forward.

It was a woman, bound hand and foot and gagged. Mercer bent over and tore the cloth from her face. In another instant Anina was upon her knees, sobbing softly, with her mother's head in her lap.

They loosed the cords that held her, and chaffed her stiffened limbs. She soon recovered, for she was not injured. She told Anina her story then—how Baar had captured her in her home while she was waiting for Miela and me, and how two of his men had brought her here to the Water City by boat at once.

That was all she knew, except that this house was the headquarters of Tao's emissaries, who, it appeared, were now allied with Baar and his party.

Anina whispered all this to Mercer when her mother had finished.

"Let's get out of here," said Mercer.

The responsibility of two women, especially the elder Lua, who could not fly, weighed suddenly upon him, and his first thought was to get back to the Great City at once.

Anina helped her mother into the boat.

"Wait," she whispered to Mercer. "I hear what they say. You wait here."

She went to the foot of the steps and began climbing them cautiously.

"Not on your life, I won't wait here," Mercer muttered to himself, and, gripping the light‑ray cylinder firmly as though he feared it might get away from him, he joined Anina on the stairway.

Slowly, cautiously they made their way upward. The steps were fairly wide, and they went up almost side by side. From near the top they could see a portion of the room above.

The corner of a table showed, around which a number of men were gathered, eating. A woman was moving about the room serving them.

Their words, from here, were plainly audible. Mercer would have gone a step or two higher, without thought of discovery, but Anina held him back. "Wait, Ollie. I hear now what they say."

They stood silent. The men were talking earnestly. Mercer could hear their words, but of course understood nothing he heard.

"What do they say, Anina?" he whispered impatiently after a moment.

"Baar is here with two or three of his men. He talks with Tao's men. They talk about men from Twilight Country. Waiting for them now. Speak of storm. Worried—because men do not come. Waiting for light‑ray."

"They'll have a long wait," Mercer chuckled. "Let's get out of here, Anina."

He must have made a slight noise, or perhaps he and Anina, crouching there on the stairs, were seen by some one above. He never knew quite how it occurred, but, without warning, a man stood at the opening, looking down at them.

There was a shout, and the room above was in instant turmoil. Mercer lost his head. Anina pulled at him and said something, but he did not hear her. He only knew that they had been discovered, and that most of their enemies in the Water City were crowded together in this one room at hand. And he had the light‑ray—the only one in the city.

A sudden madness possessed him. He tore away from Anina and, climbing up the steps of the stairway, leaped into the room above.

Twenty or thirty men faced him, most of them about the table. Several had started hastily to their feet; two or three chairs were overturned.

The man who had been looking down into the opening darted back as Mercer came up, and shouted again.

Mercer saw it was Baar.