about fifty older men in charge of the projectors and rockets, who, for
want of a better term, I might call our artillery corps. There was also
the organization of girls, and a miscellaneous corps of men to handle the
boats, mechanics to set up the projectors, and a commissariat.

The thousand young men represented those we had selected from the several
thousand enlisted in the Great City. All the rest, and the many thousands
in the other cities, we were holding in reserve.

We took with us, on this invading expedition, only small-wheeled trucks,
on which to convey the larger projectors, and storage tanks and other
heavy apparatus, for the Lone City river ran directly to the point where
we planned to conduct our siege.

Some forty large boats were required to carry the men, ammunition and
supplies. Mercer and I, with Anina and Miela, traveled as before through
the air on the two platforms with the girls. We crossed the Narrow Sea
without incident and entered the river.

Several hours up, the river narrowed and entered a rocky gorge, four or
five hundred feet wide and a thousand feet deep, with almost perpendicular
sides. Along one of these ran the Lone City trail. We passed through this
gorge. The river here flowed with a current that amounted almost to
rapids. Our boats made slow progress. Finally we emerged into an even
wilder country, almost devoid of trees. Here we made our first night's
encampment.

Noon of the next day found us approaching the Lone City. We did not need
to surmise now that Tao would be warned, for far away on the horizon ahead
we saw the beams from his great projectors mounting up into the blackness
of the sky. Some four miles from the Lone City the river we were ascending
swept off to the right. This was its closest point to the city, and here
we disembarked. There were several docks and a few houses, but we found
them all deserted.

The Lone City was particularly well suited to defense, even though the lay
of the country was such that we were enabled to approach here within four
miles, and establish our base in comparative safety. The country was wild
and rocky, with few trees. The river bed lay in a canyon. From where we
landed, a valley so deep and narrow, it might almost be termed a canyon,
also led up to the city.

This valley was some two miles wide, with a level floor, and precipitous,
rocky sides towering in many places over a thousand feet. Above it
stretched a broken plateau co