from the vehicles. This, he said, would solve the land
question, which, after all, was more serious than the clipping of women's
wings.

He found many followers--adventurers, principally, to whom the
possibilities for untold personal gain in such a conquest appealed. Then
abruptly the women took part. Dropping for the time their own fight, they
opposed Tao vigorously. If Venus or the earth were inhabited, as it was
thought they were, such an expedition would be a war against humanity. It
would result in the needless destruction of human life.

In this controversy the government of the Light Country remained neutral.
But the women finally won, and Tao and his followers, a number of them men
of science, were all banished by the government, under pressure of popular
sentiment, into the Twilight Country.

Here Tao's project fell upon fertile soil. The Twilight People had every
reason to undertake such a conquest; and Tao became their leader in
preparing for it. These preparations were known in the Light Country. The
government made no effort to prevent them. It was, indeed, rather glad of
the possibility of being rid of its disturbing neighbors.

Only the women were concerned, but they alone could do nothing, since by
principle they were as much opposed to offensive warfare against the
Twilight People as against the possible inhabitants of the earth. Miela
paused at this point in her narrative. The thing was getting clearer to me
now, but I could not reconcile this feeble attempt to conquer the earth
which we were then fighting in Wyoming with the picture she drew. I said
so.

"She hasn't come to that," Alan broke in. "You see, Bob, Tao, with about a
hundred followers, was banished to the Twilight Country a couple of years
ago. There was plenty of brains in the party, scientific men and such.
They had only one vehicle, but they have been at work ever since building
a lot of others.

"This expedition of Tao to Wyoming--with only about a hundred of the
Twilight People with him--is not intended to be an offensive operation at
all. He's only looking the situation over, finding out what they're up
against. They decided before they started that the light-ray would protect
them from anything on earth, and they have only come to look around.

"Right now up there"--Alan leaned forward earnestly, and in the moonlight
I could see the flush on his handsome face--"right now up there in the
Twilight Country of Mercury they're work