"But what do you intend to do?" I asked. "You'll not give up the attack?"
"No!" he shouted. "We'll go on, and meet them if they come out. But there will be no surprize now."
"But what of our friends?" I asked. "We were to rescue them from the pit."
"We'll send an air-boat for them," he said. "It can speed up to the city of cylinders, and since the Kanlars will come down to meet us now, it can sink down into the shaft you spoke of without interference, and get your friends. I will need you with me, to guide us to the city of Kanlars, in case their fleet doesn't come out to meet us."
And so we swiftly decided. At an order from Kethra, an air-boat slanted up toward us and hung beside us. We gave the pilot of it, and his two assistants, precise information that would enable them to reach the temple and get down to the pit, where they could rescue our comrades from the roof-top where they would be awaiting us. The pilot was instructed to race up toward the city of cylinders in a wide circle, to avoid meeting any of the Kanlars' air-boats, and when the city was deserted by guards and Kanlars, as we were confident it would be, he could easily penetrate to the temple and the pit. He promised to carry out our instructions faithfully, and sped away into the gathering dusk toward the northwest.
Night was falling now, and with an order from Kethra, the fleet again began to move, speeding toward the north, but going warily now, with a fringe of swift scouts flying above and far ahead, and with Kethra's car and our own soaring at the point of the fleet's triangular formation.
On we sped, into the darkness, showing no lights and progressing entirely by compass. Midnight came and passed, while we raced north over the limitless ice-fields, and it began to seem that the Kanlars had no stomach for fighting, now that we had come to attack them. I relieved Lantin at the controls of our car, an hour after midnight, and while he caught a little sleep on the car's floor, we soared smoothly on.
The soundless, mighty fleet of air-boats moving steadily along behind me, the monotonous, endless ice below, and the hour after hour that passed without any attack materializing, all of these smoothed down the fears in my mind and lulled me into a temporary lassitude. Half drowsing at the controls of the car, I kept beside the air-boat of Kethra, speeding on into the thick darkness. A glance at a dial told me that we were within a hundred miles of the ice-field's end, and the thought pulled me up somehow from the sudden weariness that had gripped me. Then, a half-mile ahead of me, there was a blinding glare of azure light, a crash that came loudly to my ears even from that distance, and then silence.
Through the mighty fleet behind me pulsed a sudden murmuring sound, a whisper of excitement, of expectancy. Lantin, aroused by the crash, jumped up and was at my side.