, then began to fall. It
struck the ground near the wall with a blinding explosion. As the great
mushroom of white smoke began to lift up, the stem of the mushroom blew
away, and where the ship had fallen was only a hole, surrounded by bits
of shattered metal. The wall near the explosion was breached in a
fifty-foot-wide break, and the bodies of men could be seen through the
breach, killed by concussion.

From the city a blazing yellow beam lanced here and there in pursuit of
the traitor disk, but it darted like a dragonfly, up, down, and zig-zag.
The pursuing beam came nowhere near it. Somehow I knew the prince, and
perhaps Wananda too, were in that ship, and my heart was in my throat as
I thought of the queen in that ship, being shot at by the repulsive
insect men.

The army deploying on the plain kept right on marching, columns slanting
outward from the center, forming three columns that spread out like the
extending prongs of a trident. I could make nothing of it.

Several dogfights had broken out among the smaller disk ships since the
fall of the mother disk, but these were quickly over, and the flight
came on, swift as arrows.

The remaining mother disk settled to earth on the level land directly
below our hiding place, and the smaller disk settled now around it. The
army marched on, nearer and nearer.

I looked at Holaf, handed him the glasses.

"I don't know whether we are lost, or, whether the prince has joined us,
deserting the Jivros in the city you Zervs built."

"None but Prince Genner knew our hiding place, and who else would place
themselves under our fire range, knowing we were here?" Even as he
spoke, the door opened in the side of the great disk, and the prince
sprang out, turning to assist his sister to the ground.

The Croen, Cyane, standing beside me, suddenly leaped off the ledge, her
long limbs making easy going of the sloping detritus below. Seconds
later she was running easily across the plain toward the ship, and I was
surprised to see the prince and the queen bow their knees to her, kneel
before her as if praying to a goddess. She touched the bowed heads with
her fingertips, and the three figures then entered the disk and the door
closed. The ship lifted, took off alone in a southerly direction, flying
higher and higher and out of sight. Even as it disappeared, another
great disk lifted from the city, set out in the same direction in
pursuit.

But the smaller ships below lifted at