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.”