"Rod Are your senses gone?"

"No. "I've just got them... . Grazia, start us up. To any of you who dares to leave your placeit is death! I mean iti" The white, frightened girls lifted the platform. Roc crouched ia its stern, facing forward. Tama huddled tense, watching him. His weapon was leveled. It swept the girls, came back upon her.

"To the nearest difftop, Grazia. Low at firstdown, you fooll Do you want us to be seen? The barrage turned on us shrivel us to ashes?" They skimmed low over the valley, back toward the cliff.

Tama, facing the rear, could see the enemy lines over Roc's crouching form. The barrage, on its distant side, was moving outward. Activity in the enemy camp. Was Jimmy caught? She feared so. She saw the rocket mount to the cliff. Saw Grenfell answer with a shot.

Roc chuckled. "Out of it, just in time." The girls were flying in frightened disorder. He warned them. They flew more evenly. The platform ascended, reached the plateau at a point some two miles from Grenfell's upper camp. It passed above the cliff at an altitude of a few hundred feet; sailed back over the dark empty reaches of the upper plain. It flew swiftly; the panic-stricken girls were menaced by Roc's weapon and his grim threats.

The lights and sounds of the battle faded into the distance. Ahead lay the black desolate vastnesses of the mountains, with the bursting storm upon them. The sky was lurid now with shafts of red and yellow light splitting the cloud funnels. Rain was falling, tossed by a crazy wind.

Roc had not moved from his crouching place in the platform stem. The red lightning flares painted his livid face, the Satanic peak of hair on his forehead, his blazing dark eyes.

Tama said abruptly out of the silence, "Are you mad, Roc? Where are you taking us?" Roc laughed again, but calmly now, and shifted his tense position. But he was still alert with his weapon.

"Back home. The Cave City, where you will be safe, m the Cold Country until this fighting is over, Tama. Dorrek will win, I hope. These fool meddling Earthmen1 wish them all to their hell. And I have youthat is all I want."

"But I thought" Her protest sounded so futile. She checked it. And then her heart leaped into her throat. Over Roc's shoulder, in the lurid darkness behind them, it seemed that she saw a following shape. She forced herself to speak, to hold Rocs attention, to keep him from turning to gaze back.

"But, Roc, I thought-"

"You thought I was going to plunge into a battle? Get killed! Or have you tell me you love that accursed Earthman, Guy Palisse."

"I never said I loved him. Roc."

"Do you?"

"Or do I love you? Is this the way to make me love you? Trickery once more. Traitor, again." The blob behind them was coming closer. Overtaking them.

Another flying platform.

"Perhaps it is the way to make you love me," Roc retorted.

"We shall see. I do not want you to be killed. I'm taking you to safety."

"Or is it for yourself you most fear?" she demanded. "You are despicable. Roc. A traitor. A lying little coward" The girls at the handles showed a sudden confusion. They had seen the pursing platform; two or three of them were looking backward.

It attracted Roc's attention. He turned; and Tama would have leaped upon him but he was too quick for her.

"Back! Sit quietl You, Graziaa faster strokel" But the girls, although they pretended to do their best, were faltering. Roc did not dare turn his head again; he moved forward, almost upon Tama, with the cylinder leveled at her breast. He called to the girls: "Faster! Do you want me to kill her?" The other platform was now barely a hundred feet behind them, and coming at far greater speed. It suddenly began ascending, to pass over them. The wind had momentarily lulled, but now it came up again as a roaring blast. The platform swayed, lurched as the girls fought to hold it.

The wind tore at his words and hurled them away. A crimson flare in the sky illumined the other platform clearly.

Two men 'were upon it. Triumph swept Tama. It was Guy and Toh! They were close behind, rising to a fifty foot higher level. Tama could presently see only the black insulated bottom of the platform, the winged shapes of its girls around it, and a face projecting beyond its forward edge.

The face of her brother Toh, staring down.

Roc was crouching on one knee.

"Faster!" Grazia, flying close at Tama's side, had looked -up and seen Toh, and had caught a signal from his hand over the edge of the platform. Guy was leaning over the side, trying to aim down at Roc. Both platforms were lurching; he could not make sure of any aim.

Grazia suddenly left her handle and with folded wings dropped into the void. It distracted Roc, as she had intended.

He leaned sideways, his weapon spat its small deadly beam.

But it missed Grazia's falling body; her wings opened; she flew away and vanished.

The lower platform wavered dangerously, all its girls in a panic of confusion. And then Toh leaped over the forward edge of the upper platform. He came hurtling down the fiftyfoot space with a knife in his outstretched hand.

Roc forgot Tama. He turned his cylinder upward and fired.

Toll's body crashed upon Roc. loh's knife stabbed in one convulsive blow.

On the swaying platform under Tama's homfled gaze, the bodies of the two men lay writhing in last agonies,, and then were still.

XV TRAPPED ROWENA AND I illight have escaped from the silver ball that time when Muta smuggled the brown-furred garments to us.

She was ready to distract the attention of the guards. But the alarm came. Grenfell's Cube was sighted, sailing high over the valley. Dorrek's encampment sprang into confusion.

He rushed in to us.

"You stay here with Rowena. We move the ball-not safe here." Rowena had barely time to hide our robes in her bed covering. Muta stood against the wall. Dorrek whirled around and was gone.

Our futile plans! Escape was impossible now. Men were clattering everywere in the small vehicle's interior. The guards still held their position at the foot of the ladder. And other men were constantly upon it. The upper-tier rooms near us were occupiedmen in the control rooms, which had hastily been unsealed. The lower door was closed. The ball lifted; the thrum of its rocket-stream ejectors sounded amid the turmoil of footsteps and voices.

I had thought that the battle was bursting around us; but almost at once I saw that it was not. Rowena and I stood at the small window oval. She had loosened the ropes which hampered her. But Dorrek had not noticed or had not cared.

Muta came like a shadow and stood behind us. The ball had been resting within a hundred feet of the valley's precipitous wall. Our window had faced that way; and all the main encampment was behind us, out in the open valley. As we lifted now, we had a wider vista. The ball sailed outward from the cliff, then backed into the center of the valley some three miles from the nearest cliff and came to rest again on the rocks.

We were now in the center of the encampment. I saw its turmoil of alarm. Men were dragging projectors with cables slithering after them like giant snakes. Brues were being harnessed to small carts loaded with storage batteries.

Mound-shaped tents were set up in straggling array on the rocky floor, and illumined by tiny lights, strung from metal poles. And houses which had been built of gathered loose stones crudely piled in tiers, with skins and fabric cloth stretched for a roof, dotted the valley floor.

Many of the giant projectors were ready. Dorrek had at least half expected this alarm. Within ten minutes after he had sighted the Cube, his great circular barrage was springing up around him. The flare of their upstanding beams, the hiss of them, was what I had mistaken for an attack.

The camp occupied a mile-wide circle, and within half an hour the barrage was complete around it. From our secondtier window we presently saw: tiny distant lights which marked the coming of Grenfell's force.