“All ready, Alice?”
She glanced up at the image finder; it stood on a post at the shore front. On my grid was the image of her figure standing there, with her insulated suit like a black cone around her, and her helmet in her hand.
“All ready, Leonard.” Her smile was grim, excited, tense, but I could see no fear in it.
“Be careful, Alice. Keep Dolores with you . . . and obey orders.”
“Yes.” She turned away.
Sonya, standing beside me, laid her hand on my arm. “We’re going to win, Leonard. And Altho—” She gestured. “I seem always to be getting his thoughts, Leonard. Again . . . just now.”
We knew that Altho was still alive, that Talon was going to keep Altho with him. Sonya very often had fragmentary communication. She had seemed to be getting it a few hours ago, and now, suddenly, we realized what evidently Altho had been trying to tell her. A messenger rushed up. He had come from one of our scout platforms.
Talon’s forces had started for Kalima. The brutemen with the heads mounted upon them were dragging heavy apparatus along the shore road. And there were rafts on the sea drawn by swimming brutemen. The rafts were already half way to the Virgins’ Island!
There was no time to be lost. Maxite’s aerial sent his voice to the seventy men and twenty girls who were equipped to receive it. Each of them urged his squad to greater haste.
The individual girl flyers rose first. One by one, each mounted upon a giant bird, they rose from the castle grounds, and began circling in the air. These girls were not protected against Talon’s electric rays.