l go by the window. I dropped
those damn shoes."

Anita and Venza tore their dark coats into strips. We bound and gagged
Meka, laid her in a corner of the room. We had dropped the shoes as we
came plunging through the door oval. We found that we could all fasten
their things to our feet. I put Meka's knife in my belt.

"Hurry, all of you!" Snap was saying. "Got to get out of here; jump by
the window."

"Say, look at these wing-shields!" From a recess in a corner of the
room Venza appeared with an armful of the small shields. We thrust our
hands and forearms into their loops. The shields extended from a few
inches beyond our fingers to the elbow.

Snap had slid the window blind. I bent over the prone form of Meka.
"Don't try to move. Molo will release you when he comes back."

We gathered on the starlit balcony. The city stretched around us.
There was as yet no alarm. No swimming figures near here; but a
distance away we saw the towering conclave globe, with its audience
just beginning to emerge, like bees coming from a hive.

"Let me go first." I held Anita and Venza at the rail. "It's like
swimming. I suppose we'll get the way of it pretty quickly."

I balanced on the rail, and then leaped off. With the others after me,
we swam awkwardly upward into the reddish starlight.

The city structures dropped away, showing in a dark blur with winking
lights. Over us were the stars and the cloudless night sky. Behind,
the flashing light beams of radiance at the landing stage, the
figures fluttering, the great globe, all dropped swiftly beneath a
sharply curving horizon.

We had passed the city. A thousand feet below us, a dark forest
stretched. It was beyond this that the control station was located.

The swimming flight became less awkward, but it was an effort in this
abnormal Wandl air. Snap and Venza were behind me. Anita was leading,
a strange, bird-like little figure. White blouse; long parted dark
skirt from which her gray-sheathed legs kicked out as she swam,
sometimes half upon one side, or with a breast stroke. The braids of
her dark hair fell forward over her shoulders.

She was tiring: I could not miss it. How far had we gone? Ten miles,
perhaps. There was only a small vista of this little world visible at
once, it was so sharply convex. A line of distant mountains was to our
left. We had crossed a river at the forest edge.

I suppose we had been half an hour swimming those ten-miles. Was
daylight comi