Geno-Rhaalton's face in the mirror beside me was very solemn. I heard him murmuring something to the other towers, saw their light flash downward, searching the mountain defiles. And as I watched that little image of Rhaalton, I chanced to notice a mirror on Rhaalton's desk. Rhaalton himself was looking at it—a mirror which had been dark, but which now flashed on. An outlaw circuit! The mirror imaged the face of Tarrano. Tarrano grinning ironically!
CHAPTER XXXIV
Invisible Assailants
We did not locate the source of the bomb, and no others rose to assail us. The mountain defiles, so far as our lights could illuminate them, seemed deserted. We passed over the Divide, and on the plateau beyond, we landed. A region of rolling country beneath its snow and ice. The mountains came down sharply to the inner plain—a crescent of mountain range stretching off into the dimness of distance, half encircling this white plateau in the center of which stood the City of Ice. We could just see it at the horizon, the glittering spires of its Ice Palace.
Around the city, completely enveloping it, was a thick circular wall of ice twenty times the height of a man. We were too far away to see it plainly—a turreted wall doubtless armed with projectors throughout its circular length. Our finders would not show it, for it was insulated against them. It stood there grey-white, bleak and apparently deserted.
Georg said: "It's the man's accursed inactivity! Is he going to do nothing?... Our power plant has landed, Jac—there in the foothills—see it drop?" A call from Rhaalton took his attention.
We landed our entire force in the foothills of the mountains. The power plant was there; it looked like a squat industrial building set upon a ledge of ice—a shining cliff-face behind it, a precipice in front. At the foot of the precipice our other vehicles were clustered.
We were there throughout three entire times of sleep, hours strangely the same in that unaltered polar twilight. During them, with the tower platforms set in a ring about us to make an armed camp, we unloaded our apparatus, erected our power controls, prepared the individual circuits, making ready for our offensive. And still—though we, were alert for it—no move from Tarrano.
They were hours during which, with my lack of technical knowledge, I found myself often with nothing to do. Our camp was bustling with activity, but among the now idle girls and many of the young men, there was an air of gayety. They laughed, shouted, played games amid the rocks from which we had long since melted the snow. Once, in what would have been early evening had not the Sun in these latitudes held level like a burned-out ball near the horizon, Elza and I wandered from the camp to climb the cliffs nearby.