We did not continue down that street. Sonya took us back. We turned another corner, and another. Soon we were near her home. She had not swerved from her purpose to take us to the Virgins’ Island. This thing we had seen was one of many of its kind which dwelt in the fastnesses of the mountains beyond the caves.

They never came out into the light; none, Sonya thought, had ever been seen more clearly than we had seen this one. No man of this realm, to Sonya’s knowledge, had ever ventured into the caves to seek them out.

I could not understand such a condition. On earth, nothing had ever been so fearsome but that man had sought to destroy it. But these people were of a different cast of mind.

“Sonya,” I demanded, “how long have these things been in the caves?”

“They were first seen only just before our prince and princess vanished.”

We reached Sonya’s home, a low, oval stone building, dark in its enshrouding garden of flower-trees. She led us aside, toward a small outbuilding. I suddenly paused.

I was in sympathy with Sonya and her cause, but was not the plight of the prince more important? Had I not better go and join Jim now, and follow the course we had planned?

We reached the dark, single-storied outbuilding. Sonya touched a switch. A soft glow showed inside. It was a square building of stone and metal, windows barred by a metal screening, a doorway with a hinged screen.

“Sonya,” I said, “just what is this you intend doing?”

She regarded me. Alice and Dolores stood beside her. I found myself arrayed against the three of them.

“Why,” she said, “we are going to the Island of the Virgins. The girls are ready; we have been waiting—” she hesitated, then finished, “waiting for this chance which has come tonight.”

“What chance? The king being ill or dead?”

Her eyes flashed. “Yes. The girls are ready. They will come back with us, now.”

She stood with shoulders squared, a defiant little figure before me.

I said, more gently, “What are you girls planning to do, Sonya?”

I think she had already told Alice and Dolores. They moved closer as though to defend her. Alice flashed me a defiant look.

I repeated, “What are you planning to do?”

Her eyes held level. “It is not my secret. You are a man. I have no right to tell you.” She added very slowly, but wholly without emotion,

“I think perhaps you had better go back.”

It struck me with a vague sense of shame. I felt like a deserter.

Alice said calmly, “Are you going back, Len?”

With what loyalty these girls already were banded against me! Little Dolores clutched me.

“Don’t do that, Leonard! Sonya, you misunderstand him.”

I tried to explain myself. “It’s only because I thought the other course would be better for the prince,” I finished. “How long will this take us, Sonya?”

Sudden tears were in her eyes. “I believe you! But you must know that I . . . least of all, would delay to help him I love! Mine is the better way, and we won’t be long—a few hours at most.”

I yielded, “All right, Sonya. You know best.”

We entered the building, a large room divided by the metal screening into huge cages. A great commotion, the flapping of wings, greeted our entrance. Travel in this realm indeed was primitive. We were to go by air, on a gliding platform drawn by giant birds trained to harness.

Sonya pulled down a swinging tube of light from the ceiling and held it toward one of the cages. Eight giant birds were there, soft, gray-white feathered bodies, heads small, round and bald with black top-knots like plumes.

They stood upon short legs, yet were as tall as myself. They seemed very gentle; they regarded us timorously, but curiously. They knew Sonya; as she entered the cage, they nuzzled with their beaks against her smock.

“Ah, Nana! They want sweets,” she laughed. One, more bold, pecked at her pocket. She leaned, and with her shoulder heaved it away. Then she produced small pieces of sweetmeat and made them each take a piece decorously.

“They are well trained, you see?” She rested an arm against the great curving side of one of them. I could well imagine that on its soft back she could have ridden into the air. One had lazily opened its wings; a feathered spread of fifteen feet at least, graceful wings, gray-white, with tips that were solid black.

The platform was under an enclosure of the flat roof. Sonya rolled it out, a platform some ten feet long, by six wide. Soft furs covered its surface. It was mounted upon small wheels, with a frame set in small cylinders of compressed gas as cushions against the shock of landing.

Midway of the platform, underneath, was a cross rod. Sonya extended its sections sidewise, each jutting out some six feet beyond the platform edge. To each of the ends of this rod, a bird was harnessed. The other six were in two strings in front, three in a string, one in advance of the other.

There were reins for the leading birds to pull their heads gently from one side to the other, a rein to pull downward on their feet, another rein, which when drawn upon, raised a cushion to press upward against the bird’s throat.

It took Sonya only a few minutes to harness them. I had been inspecting the platform. It was built of a light metal framework, upon which a thin, strong membrane was stretched. The whole seemed light as a kite.

Beneath it, set in the space between its landing gear, was a system of small, flexible wings, and movable cones through which the air rushed. And there was a horizontal and vertical rudder, with flexible tips. Flying skill was needed. There were several controls near the front of the platform, where now the reins were held in a notched cross-bar.

“We are ready,” said Sonya. She stretched upon her side on the fur covering of the platform with the reins and the controls before her.

We took our places beside her and behind her, lying at full length, arms crooked into leather straps to hold us. Sonya called to the birds. Eight of them as one, leaped upward. The great wings flapped. We moved, rolled across the roof. At its edge we lifted with a jerk.

The low housetop, the dark trees, other roofs, the dim city lights all slid downward into a blur of shadow. On a long slant, we headed upward into the starlit night.

I lay on my side, clinging to that swaying, leaping platform. The wind surged past, tearing away every sound save the flapping of those giant wings. A graceful bird on each side of me, two strings of them slanting upward in front, winged swiftly up into the night, drawing me after them.

The dark world was lost and gone. The star encrusted dome of the heavens encompassed everything.

This was not an air voyage. It was flying. The platform fluttered, slid over the air like some swiftly drawn kite. The heavens swung with a dizzy lurching. I gazed over the edge at the dark, moving landscape far down.

The faint lights of the city showed a thinly-built, suburban area, then the shore of a star-lit sea ahead. Primitive flying, with the first startling strangeness of it gone, its romance swept over me, a magic carpet upon which I lay, magically flying over reams of mystery, a flight unreal—romantically miraculous.

I was brought back from roaming fancy. Dolores, lying beside me, was pulling at my shoulder. I caught her words before the wind snatched at them.

“Look, Leonard! There is the island!”

There was no fear of this flight upon Dolores’s face. Only an eager wonderment, her mind struggling with these sights: romantic, awing to me, how much more so to her so newly emerged from a life-long darkness! “See the island, Leonard!”

We were, I suppose, no more than a thousand feet high. The shore of the sea was nearly beneath us, a dark, curving shore of gray sand with gentle white waves rolling upon it. Beyond the shore, some ten miles out, a dark island showed. It seemed irregularly circular.

As we swept closer its beach became visible, gray-white sand with white rollers. A tangle of vegetation was behind the beach, a forest jungle with the land sloping up over gentle foothills to a cone-shaped hill which occupied the island’s center.

Along one shore of the island, yellow and blue spots of lights were showing among the trees at the edge of the beach. It was all dim in the starlight. Far ahead, where the sea unbroken reached the horizon of stars, a yellow glow had come to the sky.

Sonya gestured, “The moon is rising.”

It came with a startling abruptness. A great yellow world swung up, twice, three times the visual size of our moon: a glowing yellow disk, marked with the dark configurations of its mountains. It rose horn-shaped, mounted straight up, slowly, but with a movement quite visible. The stars paled around it. A flood of yellow light lay upon the sea in a broad path of rippling gold.

The island was bathed in the golden flood. We were much closer to it now, swooping a few hundred feet above its beach which along here was broad and hard. The jungle was beside us, a fairyland of tropical verdure.

Warmed by the waters of the sea, and perhaps by hidden fires of the cone-shaped hill, the vegetation grew to giant size.

A giant forest edged with gold, mysteriously dark, romantic, amorous, scented with spices and the heavy perfume of flowers.

We landed upon the beach where the warm waves were liquid gold beside low, primitive, palm-thatched dwellings set like ground nests in the verdure.

With the rush of our flight gone, I felt a new warmth in the air. Upon my cheeks was the caressing breath of a warm breeze from the sea; it stirred the palm-fronds to amorous whispering.

White figures were drawn back from the beach to watch us land. They crowded forward into the moonlight, young girls, slim and white, with long, flowing black hair.

As I stood up and stepped from the platform to the sand, some of them scattered and fled with startled feminine cries into the enshrouded foliage. Others came shyly forward, crowded around us—golden nymphs in the moonlight, with a brief, veil-like garment from shoulder to thigh.

They were surprised at me, a man, here upon their island. They crowded around Sonya, talking seemingly all at once, casting mistrustful glances at me, and glances of curiosity and friendliness at Alice and Dolores.

What Sonya said to them I could only guess. It caused an excitement; like fauns, many of them leaped away, running down the beach, scattering over the village. In the distance I could hear their cries, and other cries, shouts, a great activity beginning.

And presently there was heard the cheep of giant birds, the flapping of their wings as they were released from their cages and brought out to be harnessed. Far ahead down the beach in the moonlight, presently a crowd of the girls began rolling out a huge platform.

The few girls who remained with Sonya continued talking. They were tense now, but wholly composed, beautiful, intelligent-looking girls, most of them a year or so older than Sonya, and very much the same type. Upon the left leg of each, just above the knee, was a broad metal band.

The girls now were ignoring me. But Sonya called Dolores and Alice over, and it was obvious they were welcomed.

I saw presently, some of the older women. With a few little girls among them, they came to the edge of the forest and stood timidly regarding us—infancy and age, common fugitives.

Alice was gesturing toward the sky. I turned. Off there in the starlight, in the direction we had come, was a lone bird flying. In a moment I could see its wings.

Sonya called something; and added to Alice, “A girl arriving from Kalima.”

The bird swooped in a great descending arc, a great white bird like those which had drawn our platform. Mounted upon its back was the figure of a girl, her arms clinging about its neck. It soared with poised wings, descended to the beach near us.

The girl leaped to the sand and called, “Sonya! Sonya!”

They talked in their own language; then Sonya whirled to me. Her face had gone white.

“Alta, this girl, lives very near Ren’s house in Kalima. I do not mean my home, his and mine. I mean that other house of his where you were living. Alta went there to see me.”

She was talking swiftly. Alice and Dolores drew me to one side; a common feeling of disaster was upon us all.

“Alta found the door open and went in. She read my message to Ren, that we had come here to the island. She was leaving. In the street outside she heard voices. From the window she saw Ren with your Jim. They were nearly to the house.

“Then . . . a great black thing leaped upon them, a giant, with a great, wobbling head. What we saw, Leonard! The Nameless Horror! It leaped upon them, and there were two or three others of its kind. They seized my cousin and Jim. Lifted them up, carried them off! She . . . Alta, took one of my birds, and came here to tell us!”

I stood a moment, transfixed with horror. Alice’s face had become as white as Sonya’s. Dolores uttered a faint little cry, “Jim!”

“Sonya—” I began. But she had turned to give orders to the girls. They sped away. I finished, “Sonya, get me back, at once!”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But you can do nothing—a stranger—you cannot talk our language.”

“I can, with you to interpret for me.”

She whirled upon Alta with other questions, then back to me. “More than ever now, I must go through with our plans. Alta says the king is not dead. But dying, he will die at any moment. We must get back.”

Down the beach the large platform was ready. A hundred girls or more were loading upon it. With a great flapping of the wings of the birds, it moved down the beach. Rose into the air. It had four strings of ten birds each, with others harnessed in tandem all along its sides. Magnificently, it sailed upward, turned in a broad arc, and passed us high overhead.

From everywhere now the girls were rising. Another great platform, and still another. A score of smaller ones; and from the forest, a hundred or more individual birds, each with a lone rider.

They flapped up from among the palms; circled overhead, with their numbers augmenting until they headed away. The first platforms were now mere blobs in the starlight. A thousand girls, I estimated, were up there in flight.

We hurried to our platform. Again we were in the air. Below us still another platform was rising; around us, three or four mounted birds circled like a convoy. We took our place in the line and sped back to the city.

“Is the king dead, Sonya?”

“No. I do not think so.”

I waited a moment. “Sonya, you girls are not armed?”

She said impulsively, “No. But in the underground rooms of the castle, the science weapons are stored. Once we get control of them—” She checked herself, but she had told me what I wanted to know. An arsenal under the castle! The weapons of a half-forgotten science of this decadent race, stored there!

I shuddered at the visions which surged to my imagination. Here in the city—a government menaced by crusading girls! This was our condition, pitiable indeed, to oppose a savage, outside enemy!

Yet what was I to do? I pondered it until a vague possibility came to me. It gripped me. It seemed feasible. I believed I could accomplish it. With swiftness of action, power, dominance, I could carry it through. A grim exaltation was upon me. A man, to play a man’s part.

We landed with a swoop upon the moonlit garden sward. The girls crowded around us, with a fringe of curious, apathetic men behind them. Sonya turned to speak to Alice and Dolores. Near by was a dark path between beds of giant flowers. I slipped from the platform. With my cloak held before my face, I avoided the girls and plunged into the shadows of the flowered path.

The path was dark, cut off from the moonlight by a great bed of flowers rising high above my head. A group of men came toward me; I stepped between the flower stalks, stood enshrouded in my cloak, my figure merging with the shadows, until the men had passed.

I caught a near glimpse of them. Young men, stalwart fellows, no doubt, according to the standards of their race. But not one of them was taller than my shoulder, and beside me, they were frail, delicate of build.

In a weaponless fight, I could doubtless have engaged two or three of them, and come off the victor.

The path turned into a dim street that encircled the rear of the castle, into the arsenal through some postern gate along here. The arsenal was within this curving wall of stone. I passed such a gate now, a small narrow opening, half the height of my upright body. But it was blocked solidly with a metal door which I could see no way of opening.

I passed on, heading back through the city to the house in which we had been held since our arrival. Behind that house, with a viaduct connecting them, was the laboratory room in which we had arrived. Our space-vehicle was there. I could not operate the vehicle, but it held a weapon I wanted.

I remembered that Jim had brought it. In the excitement of our arrival, the strangeness of everything, we had forgotten it, the Frazier beam, brought out by an Aberdeen physicist in 1994.

I had left the castle behind me, and turned, somewhat dubiously, into another street. I was sure if I could get to Sonya’s house, where so recently we had been, I could retrace my way from there. I had planned this while on the flying platform as we circled over the castle. I had been able then to locate Sonya’s home, and to gauge the lay of the streets in between. I turned another corner. The street was brighter.

Another corner. I saw and recognized Sonya’s house. From there, my way was sure. Within twenty minutes after leaving the castle grounds, I was groping in the darkness back of the house where Dr. Weatherby’s body lay.

It was near here that the Nameless Horrors had caught Jim and Ren. But I saw no signs of them now. The viaduct connecting the two buildings was a dark thin line against the stars. The building I was hoping to enter was wholly dark. A two-story structure: the viaduct extended from its upper floor.

I prowled around. The lower window openings were all barred. The door oval was barred. A stairway led up from the ground to the viaduct. From the viaduct’s platform I saw a cornice, too high for a normal man to reach. But I leaped for it, pulled myself up upon the dome-shaped roof of a turret.

A leap from here and I was upon the main flat roof. There should be a door under a mound cover; most of the buildings had them. I located it, wrenched at its bar. It yielded. I went down a curving metal ladder, into the house.

In a moment I had located the laboratory room. Our vehicle in its full normal size lay here, dead white, an end of it tinged yellow by a shaft of moonlight.

I stepped within it, went to Jim’s cupboard, lighting a tiny battery light overhead. The Frazier weapon I sought was here. Its copite cone, with smooth glistening bone handle, copite headband, the tiny pulse motor, the wires; it was all complete.

A triumph swept me. I was unarmed no longer. Playing a lone hand, here in this strange world, a man, comparatively of giant strength and physical power. But I was more than that now. I had a mental weapon, and the mental strength to use it.

I did not stop to adjust the apparatus. I wound it up in its wire, and hastily retreated. I reached the street, with the weapon under my cloak. I hurried back to the castle over the same route; I did not want to chance losing my way.

But as I advanced, I had more than memory of the streets to guide me. From the direction of the castle, a blur of cries was audible, a hum, a murmur, which as I progressed resolved itself into shouts. The shouting of a mob: heavy, angry voices of men, shrill cries of girls, a single, long, agonized scream of a girl.

I was on a lower street that fronted the water. A side entrance to the castle grounds was before me. Through the trees I could see the frowning turreted walls of the castle. I stopped to adjust my weapon.

It took no more than a moment. Around my forehead, with hat discarded, I bound the headband, a narrow strip of finely woven copite wire, with two small electrodes pressing my temples.

On the right side two finely drawn silk-insulated wires dangled from the headband to my neck. I tucked them under my shirt, over my shoulder, down my right arm to my wrist. A band at my wrist, to which the wires were attached, held the tiny pulse-motor in place. My heart set it in motion, to generate the necessary current.

The Frazier projector was a copite cone, this one some ten inches long; its shape was a cone section, one end, the muzzle, with an open diameter of six inches, the other end, one-fifth inch, across which the diaphragm was fitted.

The bone handle screwed into place at the diaphragm. It was hollow. Within it were amplifying tubes and a transformer, miracles of smallness. The whole projector weighed some twenty Troy ounces. I plugged the two connecting wires from my wristband to its butt, gripped the handle with my index finger along its side, resting on the trigger button.

I was ready! My heart was racing. The tiny motor at my wrist was racing. I could feel the hum of the current, the prickling of it under the forehead band, its tiny stabbing throb at the electrodes pressing my temples. There was power within me.

I had flung off my cloak. I stood in the white silk shirt, dark, short, tight trousers, and high, heavy black stockings of my earth costume, stood with outflung arms for an instant and exulted in the wave of triumph which swept me. Against the people the power of my weapon would be invincible.

Furtive no longer, I advanced with bold, open strides to the gate of the castle grounds. A few men were there, evidently about to enter. They stared at me. Before the strangeness of my aspect, the boldness of my flashing glance, they quailed, cried with fear and scattered before me.

I did not heed them. Beyond the gate, back from the water there was a rise of ground. I mounted it, and from the thicket of flowers that ornamented its top, gazed out at the moonlit scene.

Between the mound on which I stood, and the foot of the broad staircase leading up the broad terrace to the castle entrance, a throng of men were standing.

Spectators, standing idle. Occasionally a group of them would surge forward in one direction or the other, milling about some individual who seemed abruptly determined upon a course of action. A mob without a leader. Excited, aimless, striving for points of vantage to see what was taking place in front.

The girls were massed at the foot of the castle steps. Evidently, just before I arrived, the girls had tried to mount them. The guards were gathered in a group on top. Half way down, a girl’s body was lying. It writhed, rolled down the steps. From the crowd of men a murmur rose.

The scene was clear in the yellow moon-glow. The throng of girls at the staircase bottom, were gathering their leaders, preparing again to mount. The tense guards on top seemed confused, not knowing how to deal with this unarmed attack.

On the castle balcony, at the head of the steep metal stairway, a few other guards were standing. And on the rooftop, I could make out the doddering figures of old men, gazing down in confused terror.

There was, momentarily, a pause over the scene: a silence, expectant.

But abruptly the hush was broken by a shrill, electrical whine. It rose in pitch to a scream, a siren from the castle battlements. It screamed for a moment, then abruptly was stilled.

I wondered what it meant. The crowd was stricken breathless. But for an instant only. Then it broke into a roar of shouting.

The king had died!

I did not know it at the time, but I suspected it. On the rooftop, the old men were waving their arms; one of them seemed trying to talk to the throng. But his voice was lost in the din.

As though the siren had been a signal, the girls began swarming up the staircase, unarmed girls—unarmed save for the shining armor of their virginity and the desperation of their purpose. I stood watching; it was necessary for me to know with what arms the guards were equipped.

Some fifty young men, they stood in a group at the head of the staircase. The girls came up in a throng. I saw then that each of the guards seemed armed only with a long, curved knife, like a scimitar, incased in a black metal sheath.

Some drew these knives, waved the naked blades. But the girls were beyond intimidation. They came surging—a hundred of them in the first rank, with other hundreds pressing from below. The guards met them halfway down, a confusion of white figures with the black forms of the guards struggling in their midst.

A man with twenty girls around him. He did not want to use his naked sword. It was torn from him, the girls tearing at him savagely. He went down; the white forms swept over him. A girl who had secured his sword waved it with shrill cries.

Another guard, more desperate, was using his sheathed weapon as a club. He had cleared a space around him. A girl leaped; the club struck her head. She fell limp. But he too, was soon overwhelmed.

The girls presently were near the staircase top; the guards remaining there were standing now, all with naked swords. I could not doubt but that they would be driven to use them. The girls momentarily had paused, a dozen steps below them.

Many now were armed with swords they had taken. The blades were waving. A score of girls with the swords, pushed their way to the upper rank, gathered for concerted, frenzied action. Then, with a rush, started up the empty intervening steps.

I had been standing on that hillock, enshrouded by the flowers. I had wanted to be sure beyond a doubt, how the guards were armed, and had hoped vainly that I might locate Sonya. And a fear had struck me for Alice and Dolores. Where were they in all this turmoil?

I thought I saw Sonya now, her white-limbed figure, with the dark, high-necked smock. She was creeping alone up the steep bank of the terrace beside the staircase, trying, no doubt, to attain the top unnoticed, and thus to surprise the guards from behind.

My time had come. I stepped from the shadows of the flowers into a broad patch of moonlight. From the hillock here, I knew my figure would be visible from all parts of the scene. I stood, drawn to full height, with arms outstretched. And called with all my voice,

“Sonya! Sonya!”

The fighting did not stop, but the nearer men of the crowd turned and saw me. A murmur went up.

“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”

I kept repeating it. The murmur spread; rose to a shouting, shouts of wonderment, awe, and then fear. I strove to hold my voice to dominate the noise.

“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”

The faces were turning my way. The shouting near me died into a frightened silence. The men were milling about, with a surge away from me. Over on the stairs I saw that the girls had paused in their attack.

“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”

She had turned, was staring at me. I waved my arms.

“Sonya! I am Leonard; come here!”

I plunged forward down the hillock path. The crowd scattered before me.

“Sonya, come here!”

She had turned. She was coming! I advanced steadily, not running, walking swiftly, with arms outstretched, menacing the crowd with my unknown weapon. The throng was stricken motionless with the strangeness of my aspect. From the staircase, the girls were staring; the guards were staring, a sea of faces, everywhere staring.

Calmly I advanced, and before me now a lane opened in the crowd. For all my outward calmness, my heart was pounding. The pulse-motor at my wrist was throbbing. I had not used my weapon yet. But it would be effective.

“Sonya! Come here! Hurry! Sonya!”

My words, strange of language, awed the crowd further. The men parted before Sonya’s running figure. She came up panting, white-faced.

“Len!”

“Sonya, you are going to obey me! You understand? You . . . everyone—obey me.”

She stared. I was speaking swiftly, grimly, imperatively. “You stay at my side. I’ll want you to translate when I give orders. Was that siren to announce the king’s death?”

“Yes, he . . . Leonard, what are you doing? That thing in your hand—”

I silenced her. And then, fearing perhaps that she might not follow me, I gripped her hand, jerked her forward as I ran with rapid strides toward the crowd of girls at the foot of the stairway.

I think that Sonya believed at that moment that I had lost my reason. Her face stared up at me with terror in her eyes—a frightened child beside my bulk, whom I was dragging forward so swiftly that she could hardly keep her feet.

A few men near us shouted at me, but when I turned ferociously on them, they ran. Someone threw a missile at me, then another—stones which they were picking up from the flower beds. One struck my back; and one struck Sonya.

The crowd was beginning to take courage; a wave of it surged at me. Struggling men shoving one another, shouted menacingly at me; but the men in the front rank, shoved forward by the press behind them, were pushing back, away from me.

Another stone hit me. I stopped short. I did not want to use the Frazier beam yet—time enough for that.

“Sonya, tell them to stop!” I dropped her hand, stood away from her. “Tell them that I won’t hurt you! Tell them to stop . . . or I’ll kill them! All of them!”

The missiles stopped at the first sound of her voice. From the stairway top a guard was shouting up to one of the old men on the roof; at Sonya’s voice they both were silent to listen.

I added swiftly, “Sonya, you follow me! I don’t want to drag you! Will you come?”

“Yes. I . . . I’ll come.”

I took her at her word and ran on. I had overawed an unarmed crowd of spectators. But the girls were still ahead of me, a thousand or more of them, jammed near the foot of the great stairway, and a hundred or two more upon it.

I reached the first of them, with Sonya running fleet as a faun behind me. The girls, unarmed, scattered to give us room. We dashed through to the foot of the stairway, began mounting it.

The girls on it made way for me. But, halfway up, I saw above me, three girls with swords. They stood their ground, and whirled to oppose me.

Others with swords were near them and turned at me also, and above them, I was aware that the guards were coming down from the top to attack them from behind.

I stopped, and thrust Sonya in front of me. “You tell your girls to get out of the way!”

She screamed it.

“Again, Sonya! Tell them to get off the stairway! Fools! Can’t they understand I’m for them! Get them off here, I tell you! I’ll handle those guards up there!”

It stung Sonya into action. She shouted my commands, rushed up a few steps, waving the girls aside. Behind me, they were retreating, clearing the stairway. Above they stood undecided, with awkwardly brandished swords, undecided whether to oppose me or to turn to defend themselves from the guards coming down from above.

Then one girl came, passing me hurriedly along the edge of the broad steps, then another. Then they all came with a rush.

And presently the stairs above me were empty, up to near the top where the guards had retreated and now stood with drawn swords gazing down at me. Empty steps, save for a girl’s white body lying head down in a crimson pool.

I started slowly up. “Keep behind me, Sonya—careful! You’ll be safe enough.”

In silence I mounted toward that line of swords. The guards stood a moment in doubt. Then from the castle roof one of the old men screamed a command. The guards answered it. With a leap they came surging down the top steps to rush me.

I raised the Frazier muzzle, pressed its trigger. Its pale-green beam sprang out through the moonlight. I waved it lightly, and it spread, painting the oncoming guards with its thin, lurid color.

The first of them fell; his sword clattered; his body came hurtling down. I swept Sonya aside to avoid it. Another fell, but held to a step, lying huddled. Two others sank to their hands and knees, stiffened, awkwardly propped against the steps.

A dozen more were standing frozen of movement, with swords held stiffly outstretched. And a few retreated woodenly to the top level where they stood swaying drunkenly, stupidly regarding me, hypnotized by the power of my will which the Frazier beam had intensified and thrown at them.

I snapped off the beam. Its effect, with my flashing glance to aid it, would last five minutes or more. Hypnotized in the modern sense, very much as the ancients claimed they could do it with the eyes alone, and mysterious passes of the hands, these men here now, to some extent, would do my bidding. Certainly, they were powerless to move, save as I might direct them.

I swung on Sonya. “They’re not hurt! Not injured! Tell the crowd; tell everyone it’s an evidence of power.”

Down in the garden the throng was pouring out the gates in a panic, hundreds milling at the gates, trying to escape. They quieted somewhat at the sound of Sonya’s shrill voice.

We mounted past the stricken guards. They moved slightly; they were recovering. At the top, I stood, and with vehement thoughts commanded them to move aside. They swayed, moved a few steps, like sleep-walkers.

“Hurry, Sonya! They’re recovering! Tell your girls to stay where they are, down there! If they move, I’ll strike them as I struck the guards. Tell them that!”

A lone hand! But I was winning. We came to the front of the balcony stairway. The guards up there had vanished in fright. I mounted the steep stairs, with Sonya close under me. Down on the terrace top, the guards had recovered, but they were too frightened to do anything but stare up at me.

I reached the balcony, moved to where there was no door behind me, where I could not be attacked unawares. And I drew Sonya to the balcony rail. Beneath us in the yellow moonlight the great throng of men, the girls, and the vanquished guards stood silently gazing up at me.

“Now, Sonya, I’ll talk to them! Tell them I am Leonard Gray, the Earthman. Remind them that their king is dead; their prince is captured by a horrible unknown enemy that menaces us all! Tell your girls that they shall have justice. Tell the men that we are going to rescue our prince! All of us united, not fighting one another.

“Tell them they have seen a little of my power. I want to use it for them, for you all, not against you! All of us united to rescue our prince. And until that is done—Leonard the Earthman is their ruler!”

Jim had been received by the dying king. For what seemed hours he sat with Ren in a castle room waiting to be admitted to the royal bedside. To Jim it was irksome. He was afraid the king would die, afraid something would go wrong, and we would all be held as prisoners again.

But he finally saw the king. Jim took the oath of allegiance, swore he would do what he could to rescue the prince.

They started back through the city streets. At this time I was with the girls on the Island of the Virgins. The moon had just risen.

They were in the main lower street before our house. The moon was still low at the horizon; its light was cut off by the houses. The street lamp shone full on the railed flower bed, but close to the buildings, under the pedestrian levels, the shadows were black. Jim suddenly became aware of peering green eyes, a black shape that leaped at him. Other shapes, with great wobbling heads.

A giant shape of human form had knocked Ren down. Another struck Jim, bore him with its weight to the pavement. His senses faded from a blow on the head, and blackness, smothered by clanging gongs in his ears as he lost consciousness.

For a moment, after an interval of what length he never knew, knowledge that he was still alive came to him. He seemed to remember that a giant manlike shape with a bullet head had leaped upon him. It had another head, huge, wobbling like a balloon. But the large head had fallen off it; the large head lay on the ground, with tiny arms supporting it.

The phantasmagoria of a dream. But Jim’s head was clearing now, just a little. Something was holding him, and he could feel movement—a rhythmic jogging. He opened his eyes. A city street was passing. A great hairy arm was about his middle; he was being carried by something that walked; being held horizontal, his head, arms and legs dangling.

A giant, brown, hairy shoulder was over him; and above that, the great bulge of a head—a smooth, dead-white inflated membrane—a head that bounced and wobbled as the thing strode forward.

A brief consciousness, a vague, dreamlike impression, scarcely strong enough to make a memory, and Jim’s senses again faded into a black void of silence.

When Jim came fully to himself he was lying in a glow of yellow moonlight. Beneath him was a smooth, curving metal surface. His head ached horribly; a lump was upon it, and there was matted blood in his hair.

He was sore, bruised all over, but with returning strength he realized that he was not seriously injured.

He lay a moment, trying to remember what had happened, and the memory came, distorted and vague. Over him spread the canopy of stars, with a great yellow moon rising. The curving metal surface beneath him was gently swaying. Was he on a boat? He was still no more than half conscious. He murmured, “Ren! Ren!”

“Yes, Jim? Jim, is that you?”

Jim struggled up on one elbow. Ren was sitting hunched beside him. Ren—alive, seemingly uninjured.

They were on a boat, lying in its bottom, a small, narrow metal boat, six feet wide perhaps, and perhaps five or six times as long. Its gunwale curved up two or three feet over Jim’s head. They were lying in the narrowing of its bow.

Farther astern, in the yellow moonlight, were figures, brown, hairy bodies—men; or were they giant gorillas? They had small bullet-like heads, faces flat-nosed, with receding forehead and receding chin, and two small eyes that blazed green.

Jim very slowly sank back, but in a posture where he could see the length of the boat. The figures there were not animals; they were men of brute force and brute intelligence. Four of them, with powerful, hairy bodies, wide-shouldered, deep-chested, with short, thick legs and very long arms.

They were clothed in what seemed trunks of animal skin, and a skin fastened over the bulging chest to one shoulder. And each had a broad, tightly drawn belt at his waist.

To Jim came the memory of his capture. It was no fantasy, his memory of a hairy body, with a balloonlike, wobbling head. The four huge heads were here now, in a group near the center of the boat. Each was about four feet in diameter. A dead-white membrane, with bulging, distended veins on a forehead, over a grotesque flat face.

Heads, belonging to these four bodies? Jim realized it was not that. These were separate living entities, which had been riding astride the shoulders of the four.

Intelligent, reasoning beings—it seemed monstrous to call them men—beings which were nearly all brain, just as the others were nearly all body, heads so distended that they sagged of their own weight.

As he regarded them, Jim became aware that to each of the great heads a shrunken semblance of body was attached. Two tiny arms, which came out directly from the sides of the head, and were now turned down, with hands pressing the boat to give balance.

From the wide, convex face, beneath what might have been a bloated chin, a shriveled body dangled: a trunk and legs some two feet long. They lay shriveled beneath the heads. Useless appendage! But all of these shrunken, dangling bodies were clothed with colored fabric, and upon the breast of one was an ornate metal ornament.

Jim whispered: “Ren?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Something struck me. Then somebody, something was carrying me. Men! I heard their voices. I tried to scream; a hand went over my mouth. I knew we were captured. I thought—”

“Hush! Not so loud! They’re here . . . with us now.”

“I know. They were talking a while ago. They—hear them now, Jim?”

Low, gutteral voices sounded back there—the brute men. The brains, the balloon heads, were talking also, low, suave voices in a foreign tongue.

“Jim! Jim, one of these men here in the boat with us—” Ren’s voice held a quiver of fear. “He’s, Jim, I can receive thoughts now . . . like Dolores did from a distance. It seemed, just a little while ago, that I was getting Len’s thoughts. He was triumphant, exulting over something. But it was gone. Then I—”

“You get the thoughts of someone here in the boat?”

“Yes. I guess so. Someone . . . the thought came to me that he called himself Talon. I just now got it again. Talon. He’s been studying thoughts from me. Putting them into my language. He’s doing it now. It’s very easy for him, studying my thoughts, our words . . . my words to you now. He can understand them.”

“Hear us now?”

“Yes. Or hear the thought of our words. We can’t escape! Can’t do anything secretly! He’s laughing at us. He—”

Jim saw one of the heads raise itself up on its hands. Its shriveled body hung limp, the body with the ornate cross on its breast. The arms bent, then straightened with a snap; the head bounded a foot or two in the air, landed again on its hands, and again leaped.

It was hitching itself the length of the boat, its shriveled body trailing after it. One of the giant, hairy brutes of men moved aside to let it pass.

Jim whispered, “It’s coming!”

A revulsion of horror swept him—a repugnance to have this great bloated head come near him. He strove to master the horror. This was a man. Strange of form, but a living, mortal being. A man—an enemy. Nothing supernatural, not gruesome, merely strange, an enemy with whom he had to cope.

Jim sat up abruptly. His shoulder touched Ren’s. From down the boat the bloated head came hitchingly forward. A few feet from Jim and Ren it stopped, rested with a slight swaying upon the tiny body hunched under it.

Jim stared into a huge, convex face: round green eyes, holes, a circular rim of them, for nostrils, a wide mouth, thin-lipped. The mouth seemed almost a human feature; it was smiling. A soft, suave voice said,

“I . . . Talon.” And corrected itself, “I mean . . . I am Talon.”

It seemed to Jim in that instant that with those few spoken words the thing itself had removed most of the horror with which its outward aspect invested it.

A sense of relief swept over Jim. His tenseness relaxed. He said slowly: “What do you want of us, Talon?”

“Yes . . . Talon.” His arm had a hand, with a sheaf of broad, flat fingers. He pointed to the ornament hanging on the chest of his shrunken body. “Talon . . . leader of my people.” He spoke haltingly, groping with the unfamiliar words, and carefully, as though to avoid error. “Called Talon. You . . . lie quiet and soon my words are more. I study. Lie quiet . . . until I speak again.” He gestured. “Lie quiet, or—”

Another more vehement gesture. It embraced Jim and Ren. Jim understood the threat. The voice repeated very calmly, “You had better lie down . . . now!”

The eyes seemed leaping pools of green fire.

They sank back. With his elbows slightly raising him, Jim watched the head of Talon hitching itself to the stern of the boat.

The moon had risen high above the horizon. From where Jim lay he could see its yellow, horn-shaped disk. That, and a narrow segment of the star-strewn sky, was all that showed above the gunwales of the boat. The stars rolled with a lazy swing; the boat was throbbing, propelled evidently, by some invisible engine, over a calm, rolling sea, and in the silence Jim could hear the water slipping past the boat’s smooth sides.

He wondered how far from shore they were? If he and Ren, with a leap, could plunge overboard, a mad, fool-hardy attempt, of course, but still he must see where they were, try and plan something.

“Ren?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Move over a little. I’m going to get behind you and sit up, see where we are, how far from shore.”

Jim cautiously raised his head. He half expected a command from the rear of the boat. But none came.

They were on a broad expanse of calm water. The moon made a yellow shimmering path into which they were heading. Jim sank back. It would have been folly to have attempted an escape. For a long time he and Ren lay quiet. An hour, perhaps, or more. The boat sped rapidly on.

Its invisible engine made a hiss, and a line of bubbles rose from its sides. Jim had noticed them when he sat up; the boat seemed traveling on a continuous, rising mass of bubbles. There was a queer acrid smell in the air from the gas of them.

Jim learned later from Talon the details of this boat. It was built of metal which, with its load, would barely float. Beneath its hull was a chamber through which the water circulated. A grid of wires was there; a current heated the wires, decomposed the water into its two component gases, hydrogen and oxygen.

The bubbles were buoyant. The rising flow of them lifted the boat, so that in truth it skimmed forward upon the gas bubbles beneath it. The generation of gases was controlled, so that the boat floated high or low at will. The engine was similar. The forcible ejection of gases from a tube extending under water from its stern propelled it forward. The tube was movable, like a rudder, to give direction.

An hour passed. Then the hairy brutemen who had been sitting quiet got to their feet, fumbled at the gunwales. An oval metal cover rolled from beneath the gunwales up like a canopy to enclose the boat overhead.

Jim had taken a last swift look outside, before the arched metal cover rolled and closed them in. The boat was now making for a sheer wall of cliff that lay directly ahead.

But in one place, for which they were steering, the cliff dropped sheer, unbroken into the water. Above the cliff, behind it, a jagged mountain range stood yellow in the moonlight, tumultuous, naked crags.

The cover closed overhead. A tiny green light winked on. Within the boat, lurid in the green glow, the four brutemen moved about with swift activity; the soft voice of Talon was directing them; his great head was raised on his hands as he followed their movements.

They bolted the metal over, adjusted other mechanisms which now came into use at the stern. A lessening of the flow of gas from beneath the hull; the water filled the chamber there. The rear power tube now pointed downward, to dip the bow. Other tubes, one on each side below the water line, pointed upward, with powerfully ejected streams of gas.

The bow of the boat dipped; it sank beneath the surface. Jim had no idea then of the mechanisms, but he knew the boat was under water. One of the great heads was busily adjusting a mechanism to purify the air they were breathing. Another was seated at what seemed a mirror; gazing ahead through the water, steering the boat with his fingers on a row of buttons which governed the controls.

Another hour. Jim and Ren whispered occasionally. The boat was speeding uninterruptedly beneath the surface. At last Jim called,

“Talon?”

“Yes. What is it?” the head of Talon answered him.

“Come here. You can talk better now, can’t you?”

Talon evidently was amused at the imperative tone. “Yes. I can talk better now.”

He came hitching forward; his great face was broken by a grotesque grin. “What is it?”

“Who are you?” Jim demanded. “What do you want of us? Where are you taking us?”

Talon was willing to talk. He sat, his fingers toying with the metal ornament, his head resting against the side of the boat for support. He and his fellows were of a race which he called the Intellect. They came from a distant world in the sky, a dark planet, satellite of one of the remote suns up there.

Five thousand or more of them, adventurous Intelligences like himself, had built a great ship and come to this foreign world. They had landed in mountains, a wild, desolate country. Their ship had been destroyed, irreparably broken in landing. They could not get back.

There were, he explained, in this distant world two distinct races of beings, those like himself, for countless ages bred to develop the intellect so that their bodies shriveled and dwindled from disuse, all their physical powers nearly gone. And another, quite opposite race, bred for physical strength and power, the brutemen, of slight mental capacity but powerful of body.

He gestured. “You see four of them? They do our bidding unquestioned. They supply the body for us; we are the mind.”

“You ride on their shoulders,” said Jim.

Talon’s eyes gleamed. “We more than ride on them.” He showed Jim where from beneath his head a ropelike sinew depended. “This we fasten upon a nerve-center of their backs. Their little brain is dulled, unconscious then of existence. Our brains take command.

“The body is ours, for the time! We can feel its physical power; our brain animates it. We are one being. One entity when that connection is made.”

Ren spoke up softly, “Why did you go to that city where you captured us? Those people there haven’t harmed you. But you captured their prince and princess.”

The huge face grinned with a look of cunning. “We cannot get back to our world. We do not like these bleak mountains, these dark caves where we have been living. We must have a better land, and other people; we want to establish our own race. And there is little food, here in the mountains. We began wandering, searching. We brought this one boat with us from our own world.” He described the workings of the boat, and went on. “One day I came upon that man and that woman you call prince and princess. He says he is called Altho. They escaped from me, climbed to a cliff. But we caught them again finally.”

He paused. Then he added slowly: “The princess is dead now. I did not want her to die . . . but the prince killed her.”

It brought a shudder to Jim. He said, cautiously, “What are you going to do now? What do you want of us?”

“I was thinking that if you were important, like Prince Altho, to this other world, I might offer to release all of you, not kill you, if they would let us live among them in the city. But I have decided now not to bother with that. I think, if you annoy us too much, we shall kill you before we start.”

“Start where?” Ren demanded. His voice was steady.

“Start upon our attack. We brought little with us from our world, a few devices and scientific supplies; but for all this time since we arrived we have been manufacturing. It is difficult with so few materials at hand. But we are nearly ready. When I return now, we will start our last preparations.”

His voice rose to a sudden grim power, “We have prepared well for this conquest. It is a beautiful land down there; the women, so many of them like the princess, are very beautiful. The men, they are not like you two—they are already afraid of us. Some have seen us wandering near the cave entrances. They always run in terror.”

His chuckle had a horrible gloating. “They will be easy to kill. A swift attack upon the city; we are almost ready for it now!”

The boat at last came to the surface; the cover rolled back; the stars gleamed overhead as before, but the yellow moon had crossed the sky and was falling to the horizon behind them. Jim saw that they had come to the surface of a very small lake.

He could see all around its shore, a circular lake of black, cold-looking water. It lay unrippled, smooth as polished black stone, unbroken except as the boat’s gas bubbles rose, and by the V-shaped waves the boat left behind it.

Around the shore was a ring of mountains. Bleak, naked cliffs of rocks came down sheer to the water; behind them the mountains rose in tumbled, serrated ranks, naked crags and spires, snow-capped with yellow snow where the moonlight struck them.

Here in the remote mountain fastness, Talon had established his stronghold. This was an isolated lake, which a subterranean boat had been plowing.

At Jim’s elbow, Talon said, “These mountains seem to extend back endlessly. But I have another base already established on the Warm Sea, and from there I will make my attack. I have planned well.”

Ahead of them, in one small place the mountains were broken. A narrow canyon-like valley was open to the water, with a fringe of black-sand beach. Cave mouths showed along the sloping valley sides. Lights moved. The mouths of the caves were outlined by a green-white glare from within.

The boat landed on the black beach. Brute figures crowded around it in the fading moonlight, sinister giant figures. Huge gruesome heads came bouncing forward over the sand. Voices sounded. Questions. The voice of Talon shouted commands.

Half a hundred of the brutemen lifted the boat bodily from the water, deposited it on the beach. Jim and Ren were carried up the valley, and into the green glow of a cave mouth. Ren seemed entranced.

Prince Altho faced Jim and Ren in the dimly lighted cave. Talon had left them. At the cave-mouth, barely beyond sight and hearing around an angle of its narrow entrance passage, two of the brutemen stood on guard. Altho’s cave had been his home during most of his captivity. Jim saw it as a small room of glittering black rock, dimly lighted with pale green radiance from a ceiling tube from which green-glowing wires depended.

There was a bed of skins, crude stone furniture, a mere slab of rock for a table, upon which food now lay. Draped skins walled off a corner where the bed was placed.

Altho could not talk with Jim, but he very soon established that he was friendly. He was a man about Jim’s height, this prince, but delicate, almost frail of build. A handsome square-jawed face, had the delicacy of royalty stamped upon it. A high, white forehead was topped with curly hair like pale gold.

He smiled and shook his head at Jim’s voluble words. He shook hands with smiling puzzlement at Jim’s insistence. He seemed to understand Ren’s condition.

They sat, earnestly trying with gestures and words to make each other understand. Hours passed. Altho prepared some skins for beds, and gestured that they should sleep. Ren lay down, but Jim refused.

Another interval. A bruteman came with food. One of the heads, like Talon, came hitching itself in, looked around, spoke to Altho, and withdrew.

Jim ate some of the food. He had thought Ren was asleep, but when he questioned him, Ren sat up at once.

“Jim, what are we going to do?”

Jim was wondering that himself, and wondering also what fate Talon had in store for them. Abruptly Ren murmured,

“Awhile ago, Jim, I was sure I was getting someone’s thoughts. Not Talon’s; he’s hiding them from me now. Someone like Len, or Dolores. Or perhaps it was Sonya.”

Jim’s heart leaped. Something was impending! He sat between them tensely; his hand touched Altho’s arm; his eyes flashed at Altho with eager questioning.

Ren murmured, “I’ve got it now, Jim! It’s Sonya! She says, I am Sonya. We know you are with Altho. I am getting his thoughts too!”

A silence. Altho sat cross-legged on the stone floor, as Jim and Ren were sitting, with the stone slab of table before them; the green glow of light nearby threw shadows behind them. Altho was sitting with closed eyes, his hands to his temples. He looked up momentarily; his gaze rested on Jim and Ren with a new understanding, a new friendship.

Ren murmured, “She’s telling Altho about us. She says, Hold connection! I’m telling him . . . he’s telling me—”

Altho’s lips were moving with his thoughts to Sonya. The girl, over all this distance, was translating from the universal language of thoughts for these two strangers at Jim’s elbow.

Ren added, “Altho says to us in his thoughts, Talon had promised not to kill him; Talon now thinks he will be useful after our city of Kalima is conquered. But one of Talon’s men—that head who was in here a while ago—he said they had decided we all three were to die. I’m asking Altho what he thinks we can do to escape.”

Altho raised his head at the question; his eyes searched Ren’s face. His lips moved.

“Jim! Jim, she says, We are coming to try and rescue you! If you or Altho can direct us . . . we’re coming . . . in the air now.”

Altho was on his feet. He seemed to be warning Sonya back.

“No!” cried Ren. “Altho says no, they must not come! But they’re coming! Sonya and . . . she doesn’t say who’s coming.”

“What’s that?”

Altho and Jim stiffened. From the entrance passage a figure had emerged, a giant, hairy bruteman. He stood with swaying, dangling arms, green eyes blazing in the pale green cave light; a leer on his small flat face, a black tongue like an animal’s, licking his black lips with murderous anticipation!