resulting in dog-fights in which my instructor and I took part.
During this period of instruction I was studying the four of the five principal languages of Poloda with which I was not familiar, giving special attention to the language of the Kapars. I also spent much time studying the geography of Poloda.
All during this period I had no recreation whatsoever, often studying all night until far into the morning; so when I was finally awarded the insignia of a flyer, I was glad to have a day off. As I was now living in barracks, I had seen nothing of the Harkases; and so, on this, my first free day, I made a beeline for their house.
Balzo Maro, the girl who had been first to discover me on my arrival on Poloda, was there, with Yamoda and Don. They all seemed genuinely glad to see me and congratulated me on my induction into the flying service.
'You look very different from the first time I saw you,' said Balzo Maro, with a smile; and I certainly did, for I was wearing the blue sequins, the blue boots, and the blue helmet of the fighting service.
'I have learned a number of things since I came to Poloda,' I told her, 'and after having enjoyed a swimming party with a number of young men and women, I cannot understand why you were so shocked at my appearance that day.'
Balzo Maro laughed. 'There is quite a difference between swimming and running around the city of Orvis that way,' she said, 'but really it was not that which shocked me. It was your brown skin and your black hair. I didn't know what sort of wild creature you might be.'
'Well, you know when I saw you running around in that fancy-dress costume in the middle of the day, I thought there might be something wrong with you.'
'There is nothing fancy about this,' she said. 'All the girls wear the same thing. Don't you like it-don't you think it's pretty?'
'Very,' I said. 'But don't you tire of always wearing the same thing? Don't you sometimes long for a new costume.'
Balzo Maro shook her head. 'It is war,' she said: the universal answer to almost everything on Poloda.
'We may do our hair as we please,' said Harkas Yamoda, 'and that is something.'
'I suppose you have hairdressers who are constantly inventing new styles,' I said.
Yamoda laughed. 'Nearly a hundred years ago,' she said, 'the hairdressers, the cosmeticians, and the beauticians went into the field to work for Unis. What we do, we do ourselves.'
'You all work, don't you?' I asked.
'Yes,' said Balzo Maro, 'we work that we may release men for men's work in the fighting service and the Labour Corps.'
I could not but wonder what American women would do if the Nazis succeeded in bringing total war to their world. I think that they would arise to the emergency just as courageously as have the women of Unis, but it might be a little galling to them at first to wear the same indestructible costume from the time they got their growth until they were married; a costume that, like Balzo Maro's, as she told me, might be as much as fifty years old, and which had been sold and re– sold time and time again as each wearer had no further use for it. And then, when they were married, to wear a similar, destructible silver costume for the rest of their lives, or until their husbands were killed in battle, when they would change to purple. Doubtless, Irene, Hattie Carnegie, Valentina, and Adrian, would all commit suicide, along with Max Factor, Perc Westmore, and Elizabeth Arden. It was rather a strain on my imagination to visualize Elizabeth Arden hoeing potatoes.
'You have been here several months now,' said Harkas Don; 'how do you like our world by this time?'
'I don't have to tell you that I like the people who live in it,' I replied. 'Your courage and morale are magnificent. I like your form of government, too. It is simple and efficient, and seems to have developed a unified people without criminals or traitors.'
Harkas Don shook his head. 'You are wrong there,' he said. 'We have criminals and we have traitors, but unquestionably far fewer than in the world of a hundred years ago, when there was a great deal of political corruption, which always goes hand in hand with crimes of other kinds. There are many Kapar sympathizers among us, and some full-blooded Kapars who have been sent here to direct espionage and sabotage. They are constantly dropping down by night with parachutes. We get most of them, but not all. You see, they are a mixed race and there are many with white skins and blond hair who might easily pass for Unisans.'
'And there are some with black hair, too,' said Harkas Yamoda, as she looked at me meaningly, but softened it with a smile.
'It's strange I was not taken for a Kapar, then, and destroyed,' I said.
'It was your dark skin that saved you,' said Harkas Don, 'and the fact that you unquestionably understood no language on Poloda. You see, they made some tests, of which you were not aware because you did not understand any of the languages. Had you, you could not have helped but show some reaction.'
Later, while we were eating the noonday meal, I remarked that for complete war between nations possessing possibly millions of fighting ships, the attacks of the Kapars since I had been in Unis had not seemed very severe.
'We have lulls like this occasionally,' said Harkas Don. 'It is as though both sides became simultaneously tired of war, but one never can tell when it will break out again in all its fury.'
He scarcely had ceased speaking when there came a single, high-pitched shrieking note from the loudspeakers that are installed the length and breadth of the underground city. Harkas Don rose. 'There it is now,' he said. 'The general alarm. You will see war now, Tangor, my friend. Come.'
We hurried to the car, and the girls came with us to bring the car back after they had delivered us to our stations.
Hundreds of ramps lead to the surface from the underground airdromes of Orvis, and from their camouflaged openings at the surface planes zoom out and up at the rate of twenty a minute, one every three seconds, like winged termites emerging from a wooden beam.
I was flying a ship in a squadron of pursuit planes. It was armed with four guns. One I fired through the propeller shaft, there were two in an after cockpit, which could be swung in any direction, and a fourth which fired down through the bottom of the fuselage.
As I zoomed out into the open the sky was already black with our ships. The squadrons were forming quickly and streaking away toward the southwest, to meet the Kapars who would be coming in from that direction. And presently I saw them, like a black mass of gnats miles away.
Chapter Six
OF COURSE, at the time that I had been killed in our little war down on Earth, there had not been a great deal of aerial activity; I mean, no great mass flights. I know there was talk that either side might send over hundreds of ships in a single flight, and hundreds of ships seemed a lot of ships; but this day, as I followed my squadron commander into battle, there were more than ten thou-sand ships visible in the sky; and this was only the first wave. We were climbing steadily at terrific speed in an effort to get above the Kapars, and they were doing the same. We made contact about twelve miles above the ground, and the battle soon after developed into a multitude of individual dog-fights, though both sides tried to keep some semblance of formation.
The atmosphere of Poloda rises about one hundred miles above the planet, and one can fly up to an altitude of about fifteen miles without needing an oxygen tank.
In a few minutes I became separated from my squadron and found myself engaged with three light Kapar combat planes. Ships were falling all around us, like dead leaves in an autumn storm; and so crowded was the sky with fighting ships that much of my attention had to be concentrated upon avoiding collisions; but I succeeded in manoeuvring into a commanding position and had the satisfaction of seeing one of the Kapars roll over and plummet toward the ground. The other two were now at a disadvantage, as I was still above them and they turned tail and started for home. My ship was very much faster than one of theirs, and I soon overhauled the laggard and shot him down, too.
I could not but recall my last engagement, when I shot down two of three Messerschmitts before being shot down myself; and I wondered if this were to be a repetition of that adventure-was I to die a second time?
I chased the remaining Kapar out over the enormous bay that indents the west coast of Unis. It is called the
