scene—only our silent plane and we two infinitesimal atoms wandering aimlessly through space. Duare moved a little closer to me. Companionship was good in this infinite loneliness.
During the night the wind veered and blew from the south, and at dawn I saw cloud banks rolling in ahead of us. The air was much cooler. It was evident that we were getting the tail end of a south polar storm. I didn't like the looks of that fog. I had blind flying instruments on the instrument board; but, even so, who would care to fly blind in a world concerning the topography of which he knew nothing? Nor was I particularly keen to chance waiting the fog out on the surface of the sea. The chances are it would have been safe enough, but I had seen far too many leviathans cavorting about in the waters beneath us to incline me toward spending any more time on the surface of the water than was absolutely necessary. I determined to change our course and fly north ahead of the fog. It was then that Duare pointed ahead.
'Isn't that land?' she asked.
'It certainly has all the appearances of land,' I said, after taking a long look.
'Maybe it is our island,' she suggested laughingly.
We'll go and have a look at it before the fog rolls over it. We can always beat that fog if it gets too thick.'
'Land will look pretty good again,' said Duare.
'Yes,' I agreed. 'We've been looking at an awful lot of water.'
As we approached the coast line we saw mountains in the distance and far to the northwest what appeared to be one of those giant tree forests such as cover almost the entire area of the island of Vepaja .
'Oh, there's a city!' exclaimed Duare.
'So it is—a seaport. Quite a good-sized city, too. I wonder what kind of people live there.'
Duare shook her head. 'I don't know. There is a land northwest of Vepaja that is called Anlap. I have seen it on the map. It lies partially in Trabol and partially in Strabol. The maps show it as an island, a very large island; but of course nobody knows. Strabol has never been thoroughly explored.'
It seemed to me that none of Venus had ever been thoroughly explored, nor could I wonder. The most able men I had met here clung to the belief that it was a saucer-shaped world floating on a molten sea. They thought that its greatest circumference lay at what I knew to be the south pole, and on their maps the equator was not even a dot. They never dreamed of the existence of another hemisphere. With maps based on such erroneous reasoning, everything was distorted; and because their maps were therefore useless, no navigator dared go far from familiar waters and seldom out of sight of land.
As we approached the city I saw that it was walled and heavily fortified, and closer inspection revealed the fact that it was being beleaguered by a large force. The hum of Amtorian guns came faintly to our ears. We saw the defenders on the walls; and, beyond the walls, we saw the enemy—long lines of men encircling the city, each lying behind his shield. These shields are composed of metal more or less impervious to both r-rays and t-rays; and their use must result in far more mobile attacking forces than could have been possible were the men facing earthly bullets; it practically amounted to each man carrying his own trench. The troops could be maneuvered almost anywhere on the field of battle while under fire, with a minimum of casualties.
As we passed over the city, firing practically ceased on both sides. We could see thousands of faces upturned toward us, and I could imagine the wonder and amazement that the ship must have engendered in the minds of those thousands of soldiers and civilians, not one of whom could possibly have conceived the nature of this giant, birdlike thing speeding silently above them. As every portion of the ship, whether wood, metal, or fabric, had been sprayed with a solution of this ray-resisting substance I felt quite safe in flying low above the contending forces; and so I spiralled downward and, circling, flew close above the city's wall. Then I leaned out and waved my hand. A great shout rose from the men within the city, but the attackers were silent for a moment; then a volley of shots were directed at us.
The ship might have been coated with ray-resisting material; but Duare and I were not, and so I zoomed to a safer altitude and turned the ship's nose inland to reconnoiter farther. Beyond the lines of the investing forces we flew over their main camp, beyond which a broad highway led toward the southwest, from which direction troops were marching toward the camp; and there were long trains of wagons drawn by huge, elephantine animals, and men mounted on strange beasts, and big t-ray guns, and all the other impedimenta of a great army on the march.
Turning toward the north, I reconnoitered in search of information. I wanted to know something about this country and the disposition of its inhabitants. From what I had already seen, their dispositions seemed unequivocally warlike; but somewhere there might be a peaceful, hospitable city where strangers would be treated with consideration. What I was looking for was a single individual whom I might question without risking injury to Duare or myself, for to have made a landing among those fighting men would probably have been fatal—especially among comrades of the contingent that had fired on us. The attitude of the defenders of the city had been more friendly; but still I couldn't risk a landing there without knowing something about them, nor did it seem the part of wisdom to land in a beleaguered city that, from the number of its attackers, might be taken any day. Duare and I were looking for peace, not war.
I covered a considerable area of territory without seeing a human being, but at last I discovered a lone man coming out of a canyon in the hills several miles north of the big camp I have mentioned. As I dropped toward him, he turned and looked up. He did not run; but stood his ground, and I saw him draw the pistol at his hip.
'Don't fire!' I called to him as I glided past. 'We are friends.'
'What do you want?' he shouted back.
I circled and few back, landing a couple of hundred yards from him. 'I am a stranger here,' I shouted to him. 'I want to ask for information.'
He approached the ship quite boldly, but he kept his weapon in readiness for any eventuality. I dropped down from the cockpit and went forward to meet him, raising my right hand to show that it held no weapon. He raised his left—he wasn't taking any chances; but the gesture signified a friendly attitude, or at least not a belligerent one.
A half smile touched his lips as I descended from the ship. 'So you are a human being, after all,' he said. 'At first I didn't know but that you were a part of that thing, whatever it is. Where are you from? What do you want of me?'
'We are strangers here,' I told him. 'We do not even know in what country we are. We want to know the disposition of the people here toward strangers, and if there is a city where we might be received hospitably.'
'This is the land of Anlap ,' he said, 'and we are in the kingdom of Korva .'
'What city is that back by the sea? There was fighting going on there.'
'You saw fighting?' he demanded. 'How was it going? Had the city fallen?' He seemed eager for news.
'The city had not fallen,' I said, 'and the defenders seemed in good spirits.'
He breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly his brow clouded. 'How do I know you're not a Zani spy?' he demanded.
I shrugged. 'You don't,' I said, 'but I'm not. I don't even know what a Zani is.'
'No, you couldn't be,' he said presently. 'With that yellow hair of yours I don't know what you could be— certainly not of our race.'
'Well, how about answering some of my questions?' I inquired with a smile.
He smiled in return. 'That's right. You wanted to know the disposition of the people of Korva to strangers and the name of the city by the sea. Well, before the Zanis seized the government, you would have been treated well in any Korvan city. But now it is different. Sanara, the city you asked about, would welcome you; it has not yet fallen under the domination of the Zanis. They are trying to reduce it now, and if it capitulates the last stronghold of freedom in Korva will have fallen.'
'You are from Sanara?' I asked.
'Yes, at present. I had always lived in Amlot, the capital, until the Zanis came into power; then I couldn't go back, because I had been fighting them.'
'I just flew over a big camp south of here,' I said; 'was that a Zani camp?'
'Yes. I'd give anything to see it. How many men have they?'
'I don't know; but it's a large camp, and more soldiers and supplies are coming in from the southwest.'
'From Amlot,' he said. 'Oh, if I could but see that!'
'You can,' I told him.
