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.

Beyond the circle of the camp's heat, the deadly cold of the region

assailed us. We had not wished to equip with the individual heating,

which for battle would leave us free of heavy garments; instead we

swathed ourselves in furs, with the exercise of climbing to aid us in

keeping warm.

It was wonderful to be again alone with Elza. Even with what was

impending we were young enough to put it momentarily from our minds.

Like young lovers clandestinely stealing away to a tryst, we left the

camp and hand in hand, climbed up amid the crags. A few hundred feet to

one side of the power house, and about the same distance above it, we

sat down at last to rest.

The scene from here was picturesque in the extreme. Across the flat,

shadowless snowy plain was the wall of ice with the city behind it. All

in the far distance, this city wherein our enemy was entrenched; and

there were no lights, no movement that we could see. In that drab

twilight, it seemed almost unreal.

The plain too, was empty. A few palpably deserted huts, nothing else.

Beneath us, snugly anchored there on the ledge, was our power house. No

unreality here. Its aerials were mounted; its external dynamos were

visibly revolving; from its windows blue shafts of light slanted out;

and from it rose the low hum of active power.

Below it, spread over the slightly sloping area of foothill beneath us,

lay our encampment. A ring of our tower vehicles, with their projectors

mounted and ready, their colored search-beams slowly sweeping the white

plain and the dead grey sky. Within their ring, the camp itself. Lighted

by the blue-white tubes set upon quadrupeds at intervals; heated by

strings of red-glowing wire and the red wire-balls used on Venus. The

snow and ice on the ground within the camp had melted, exposing the

naked rock.

A scene of blue and red lights and shifting shadows; bustling with

activity--figures, tiny from this height, hurrying about. The sounds

from it rose to us; the low hum and snap of the weapons being tested;

the shouted commands; and sometimes, mingled with it, the laughing shout

of a light-hearted girl.

Elza clung close to me. "Everything will be ready soon."

I nodded. "They're going to mount a ray up here on the cliff. Grolier

was telling me, for permanent protection--to stay here with the power

house when we go out to the attack."

Silent with her thoughts she did not answer me. Sidewise, I regarded her

solemn little face encased in its hood of fur. And then clumsily, for

our furs were heavy and awkward, I put my arm about her.

"I love you, Elza. It's worth a great deal to be here alone with you."

"Jac, what will he do?" Her gaze was to the far-off City of Ice. "It

seems so--so sinister, Jac, this silence from him. This inactivity. It

is not like him to be inactive."

"He's there," I said. "Rolltar the Mars man--boastful fellow,

blow-hard--he was telling some of us that in his opinion Tarrano had

already run away."

"Never!" she exclaimed. "This is his last stand. He'll make it

here--defeat us here--"

"Elza!"

She glanced momentarily at me, smiled a queer smile, and then gazed once

more over the distant plain. "I do not mean I think he'll defeat us,

Jac. I mean, that is his reasoning--make his last stand here--"

"He hasn't run away," I repeated. "I told Rolltar so. We got an outlaw

connection into the Ice Palace today. For a moment only, and then it was

discovered and broken off. But we had the image for a moment--it chanced

to show Tarrano himself. But he's isolated now. Bretan said his

isolation power--around the Ice Palace and the wall anyway--is greater

than any image-ray we can send against it."

My heart leaped suddenly, for I saw Elza's eyes widen, fear spring to

her face; heard the sharp intake of her breath, and felt her hand grip

my arm.

"Jac! There's something wrong! See there? And you hear it?"

From the instrument room I heard a vague drumming. A hiss, and then a

drumming growing louder. It was not a new sound, for now I remembered I

had been conscious of it for several moments past. Our encampment was

awake to it! A confusion down there; people running about; a figure

dashing wildly into the instrument room. And the aerials on the power

house began to snap viciously.

"Jac! What is it?"

"I don't know. See there, Elza? The sub-ray lights!"

The search-beams from our towers were inordinately active. Sweeping the

empty snow-plain and the empty sky. Empty? To my fevered imagination

they were peopled with enemies. And then one of the towers flashed on a

sub-ray--the dull infra-red for envisaging the slow rays below the power

of human sight. And another tower with its faint purple beam was using

the ultra-violet.

"That drumming, Elza! That's a microphone--the big one they just erected

near the instrument room. There's something coming! That's the magnified

sound of some distant rush of air. Very faint sound, but they must have

heard it on the ear-phones long ago. That microphone must have just been

connected--"

Something coming? We could see nothing.

"Let's go down, Jac! We must get back--"

"I've got infra-red glasses--" I fumbled beneath my furs. But I did not

have them.

"Jac--"

"Wait, Elza."

My glasses would have been useless, for the sub and ultra beams from the

towers were disclosing nothing. I could tell that by the hasty searching

sweeps they made. And then from the big Wilton tower, the newly

connected Zed-ray flashed on, I could hear the load of it in the

deepened, throaty hum from the power house. Its dirty brown beam sprayed

out over the plain; then swung to the sky, caught something, hung

motionless, narrowed into great intensity. The powerful Zed-ray,

capturing the visibility of dense solids only.[24]

[Footnote 24: Similar doubtless to our present-day X-ray.]

There was something up there in the sky! The Zed-ray met resistance; we

could see the sparks, and hear the snap of them coming like a roar from

the microphone above the drumming. Met the resistance and conquered it;

gradually the snapping roar died away.

"Jac! I see something! Something there--don't you see it?"

A luminous blur became visible in the nearer sky--moving blobs of silver

luminosity in the mud-brown light of the Zed-ray. A hundred or more

moving silver blobs. They were taking form. The silvery phosphorescent

look faded, became grey-white. Took definite shape. Waving arms and

legs! Bones bereft of flesh. Human skeletons! Limbs waving rhythmically.

Bony arms, with fingers clutching metal weapons. Assailants coming at us

through the air, stripped by the Zed-ray of clothing, skin, flesh,

organs, to the naked bone. Skeletons with skulls of empty eye-sockets

and set jaw-bones to make the travesty of human faces grim with menace!