He began quietly, "You heard this fellow Turk. He speaks with wisdom sometimes. He and I have talked much of ' you. He knows I love you." He waited but she was silent.

"You have nothing to say?"

"No."

"I am planning a conquest of all Mercury. I want you to rule with me, and keep the virgins from rebellion."

"You want many things. Roc."

"Most of all, I want your love. This Turk has the wisdom of Earth. He says I should not use force against you.

Perhaps now I realize I should try to earn your love." She measured him, wondering if he were sincere. "How, Roc? By warring on my country? By playing the traitor? By mutilating the wings of the virgins so that they might not fly, and then to-"

"That was your own country's law."

"You tricked them into passing iti" He waved that away. "I want not to quarrel, Tama. I am thinlong of joining with these Earthmen. Perhaps hoping to win your love." His calm voice turned suddenly vehement, intense, and he seemed wholly sincere.

"Perhaps I did play the traitor. Taught by my father1 was only a boy, did you never think of that? I grew up, with my father planning a conquest of the Light Country, which had banished him... . These last months, Tama, while you were taken from me to Earth, I had time to think. And now I know that to win your love, to have you, is what J want more than any conquest." Again he paused.

"You talk very strangely. Roc."

"I talk truth." He smiled. "You are not a fool but a very wise girl. I will tell you more truth: My father assembled a Cold Country army. It is waiting now. Weapons, every scientific device of war. And even in the Fire Country, the savages are ready. Do not shudder, Tama. It is ready now, everything for the conquest.

"With my father's death, I should be in command of it.

And now, because you are a wise girl, I will hide nothing from you. I say I will give up all this to win your love. I will join these Earthmen, get them to help us in the Light Country to repel the invasion. It will start very shortly." Ha paused again.

"Go on, Roc."

"You are charitable, Tama. You avoid saying the sharp things which are in your mind. You knowand therefore I am not trying to hide it from youthat I realize now I cannot lead the invasion. My father had all these forces under his control, 'but I have not. This Dorrek and his men they are only waiting to murder me. If I escape them, and try to lead the invasion, it will be the same." She said sarcastically, "And so, failing in villainy, you will try heroics?"

"Yes. But you must give me credit1 tell you frankly my reasons. And that I love you, as I always have, and that I regret the wrongs I have done." She touched him. "I wish I thought you were truthful.

But I have learned to fear your trickery."

"Tama, this time you are unjust. This time I will not change. And I think perhaps you might love me. Someday" They were startled as Jimmy darted suddenly away with a gesture of silence; he crossed the room on tiptoe and jerked at the door-slide which Roc had left unfastened. Behind the door aperture the woman Muta was standing, bending down as though listening. She started backward with surprise, recovering herself and said in her gutteral, broken English: "To the Master Roc, say food is ready." Her gaze swept the room. And abruptly she whispered to Jimmy, "I talk you alone, maybe, sometime."

"What in-" Her face was inscrutable. She turned and left the room.

Jimmy gazed after her with his )'aw dropping in astonishment. "What innow what in the devil does she mean by ' that?" VII MERCURY 1 TELL YOU, Jimmy, I'll trust Roc fust as much as I have to. No more."

"Reasonable enough. But, Jack, we have to trust him.

He's as frightened asas I am. If we ever get out of this" Jimmy's smile was lugubrious. Five days had passed. They had worn our nerves ragged. The situation was the same within the Mercurian ball, save that every hour as we approached Mercury the critical moment when we must make . our escape, or be murdered by Dorrek and his fellows, came closer.

And with it all, I could not bring myself to trust Roc. He had been allied to us these days by a common desire for safety. Yet, for all his words and his actions, I was mistrustful. Here in the narrow confines of these enclosing walls, be was with us right enough. But outside, free upon Mercury1 wondered. And I knew that Tama mistrusted him also.

The passing days seemed interminable. We were allowed apparent liberty of movement on the vehicle. Boc had given Jimmy and me each a small cylinder of the heat-ray and shown us how to operate it. We kept them hidden, and I still had my revolver, which even Roc did not know.

Outwardly we were Roc's prisoners. Dorrek and his men were subordinates. But it was all thinly disguised. The mutinbus Dorrek obeyed Rocbut always with a sneering confident smile.

There were times when Jimmy, Roc and I thought that it would be best to rush Dorrek and his men at once. Kill them and have done with it.

We had for instance, little bombs of blinding light and fragile bombs with fumes which would have stricken Dorrek and all his men into catalepsy. But to release one of them here would have endangered or killed us, as well as our enemies.

Both Jimmy and Rowena tried to find out from Muta what she had meant by her queer hints that she had something to say. But her face was blankexasperating. She had changed her mind; she only shook her head and would not answer.

The days passed. It was now March 22nd by Earth time.

The Earth had dwindled to a star, a dot of white tinged with yellow. The Moon, to the naked eye, was invisible. To one . side, Venus hung with dazzling glory, a trifle larger than she appears as the brilliant evening star from Earth. The Sun had expanded to a great round pot of fire with flames leaping from itslow streamers of flaming gas-tongues licking into space with a reach the distance from the Earth to the Mooni Ahead of us hung Mercurylarger now, even, than the Sun. We had swung in a line almost between the two. The bronze-red Mercurian disk was nearly full-round. Expanding hourly: becoming convex.

Other hours, and Mercury was a disk spread well across the firmament. Cloud areas hid the sharply convex surface.

The Fire Country, facing us, was hidden beneath grayblack vapor masses. The great celestial ball here in space, was waiting to receive us.

By Earth time, March 23rd. We swung lower, with the Mercurian atmosphere in its heavy layers close beneath us.

The world here under us now half filled the firmament. The sense of falling and traveling sideways was soon distinctreal movement now, to which our human senses are accustomed.

Gazing down at the great spread of vapor masses, I saw a gray-black tumbling sea, with rifts of fire in itelectrical storms tossing the clouds. Gigantic whirlpools of vapor appeared sucking huge circular holes with tossing flames edging them. Leaping bolts of lagged lightning slit the atmosphere.

And then, a sea of mist, shining opalescent with the sunlight on it; and a chasm in the clouds, with rain beating across it, and the sunlight catching the raindrops, spreading them with great shafts of prismatic color.

There was a vast area where the sea of clouds hung lower to the fiery surfacea boiling, bubbling sea, the spread of a giant caldron with red-green volatile liquid boiling up its crimson sediment.

The surface of the Fire Country was seldom visible; but once, through a great rift, I saw a spread of rockspeaks and spires. As the blistering sun-rays went down, diffused and radiated by the heavy air, it seemed that one of the mountain peaks burst with a )et of steam, edged with green burning gases. And then the clouds closed the rift.

We swept on, still above the upper atmosphere levels, heading toward the Light Country.