alone with Elza. Even with what was
impending we were young enough to put it momentarily from our minds.
Like young lovers clandestinely stealing away to a tryst, we left the
camp and hand in hand, climbed up amid the crags. A few hundred feet to
one side of the power house, and about the same distance above it, we
sat down at last to rest.

The scene from here was picturesque in the extreme. Across the flat,
shadowless snowy plain was the wall of ice with the city behind it. All
in the far distance, this city wherein our enemy was entrenched; and
there were no lights, no movement that we could see. In that drab
twilight, it seemed almost unreal.

The plain too, was empty. A few palpably deserted huts, nothing else.
Beneath us, snugly anchored there on the ledge, was our power house. No
unreality here. Its aerials were mounted; its external dynamos were
visibly revolving; from its windows blue shafts of light slanted out;
and from it rose the low hum of active power.

Below it, spread over the slightly sloping area of foothill beneath us,
lay our encampment. A ring of our tower vehicles, with their projectors
mounted and ready, their colored search-beams slowly sweeping the white
plain and the dead grey sky. Within their ring, the camp itself. Lighted
by the blue-white tubes set upon quadrupeds at intervals; heated by
strings of red-glowing wire and the red wire-balls used on Venus. The
snow and ice on the ground within the camp had melted, exposing the
naked rock.

A scene of blue and red lights and shifting shadows; bustling with
activity--figures, tiny from this height, hurrying about. The sounds
from it rose to us; the low hum and snap of the weapons being tested;
the shouted commands; and sometimes, mingled with it, the laughing shout
of a light-hearted girl.

Elza clung close to me. "Everything will be ready soon."

I nodded. "They're going to mount a ray up here on the cliff. Grolier
was telling me, for permanent protection--to stay here with the power
house when we go out to the attack."

Silent with her thoughts she did not answer me. Sidewise, I regarded her
solemn little face encased in its hood of fur. And then clumsily, for
our furs were heavy and awkward, I put my arm about her.

"I love you, Elza. It's worth a great deal to be here alone with you."

"Jac, what will he do?" Her gaze was to the far-off City of Ice. "It
seems so--so sinister, Jac, this silence from him. This inactivity. It
is not