We had under manufacture at this time a number of protective devices by which this substance might be used. Boats had, in the past, been equipped with a sort of shield or hood in front, making them more or less impervious to a direct horizontal beam of the light.
Tao's boats which now threatened us were so protected, I was informed by the girls who reported them. Recognizing the probability of an attack by us from the air, they also had a covering of the cloth, like a canopy above them. But as may be readily understood, such protection could be made only partly effective.
I had already manufactured, at Miela's suggestion, a number of shields for our girls to carry while in flight. These consisted of the fabric in very light, almost diaphanous, form, hung upon a flexible frame of very thin strips of bamboo. It was some twelve feet broad across the top, narrowing rapidly into a long fluttering tail like a kite.
There was nothing rigid about this shield. Its two or three bamboo ribs were as flexible as a whip, with the veiling—it was hardly more than that—fluttering below them almost entirely unsupported. In weight, the whole approximated one‑twelfth that of a girl, not at all a difficult amount to carry.
Within two hours after the report came—it was near midday—we were ready to start from the Great City to repel Tao's attack. Our forces consisted of some six hundred girls, each armed with a light‑ray cylinder and a shield. This was the organization I have already mentioned, fifty squads of ten, each with a leader; and fifty other girls, the most daring and expert in the air, who were to act independently.
We had two platforms, protected by the fabric, and with a sort of canopy around the sides underneath, over which the girls grasping the handles could fly. Mercer and Anina rode on one platform, and Miela and I on the other. All of us were dressed in the black garments.
On each of the platforms we had mounted a projector of higher power than the hand cylinders, although of course of much less effective range than those the Mercutians had used in Wyoming.
Thus equipped we rose into the air from the castle grounds in the Great City, with a silent, awed multitude watching us—as strange an army, probably, as ever went forth to battle.