"Tor Hatan gone mad? What do you mean? What has that got to do with me?"
"He swears that you have abducted his daughter."
In an instant I was upon my feet. "Abducted Sanoma Tora!" I cried. "Has something happened to her? Tell me, quickly."
"Yes, she is gone, all right," said my informant, "and there is something mighty mysterious about it."
But I did not wait to hear more. Seizing my harness, I adjusted it as I ran up the spiral runway toward the hangars on the roof of the barracks. I had no authority or permit to take out a flier, but what did that mean to me if Sanoma Tora was in danger?
The hangar guards sought to detain and question me. I do not recall what I told them; I know that I must have lied to them, for they let me run out a swift one-man flier and an instant later I was racing through the night toward the palace of Tor Hatan.
As it stands but little more than two haads from the barracks, I was there in but a few moments, and, as I landed in the garden, which was now brilliantly lighted, I saw a number of people congregated there, among whom were Tor Hatan and Sil Vagis.
As I leaped from the deck of the flier, the former came angrily toward me. "So it is you!" he cried. "What have you to say for yourself? Where is my daughter?"
"That is what I have come to ask, Tor Hatan," I replied.
"You are at the bottom of this," he cried. "You abducted her. She told Sil Vagis that this very night you had demanded her hand in marriage and that she had refused you."