like him to be inactive."

"He's there," I said. "Rolltar the Mars man--boastful fellow,
blow-hard--he was telling some of us that in his opinion Tarrano had
already run away."

"Never!" she exclaimed. "This is his last stand. He'll make it
here--defeat us here--"

"Elza!"

She glanced momentarily at me, smiled a queer smile, and then gazed once
more over the distant plain. "I do not mean I think he'll defeat us,
Jac. I mean, that is his reasoning--make his last stand here--"

"He hasn't run away," I repeated. "I told Rolltar so. We got an outlaw
connection into the Ice Palace today. For a moment only, and then it was
discovered and broken off. But we had the image for a moment--it chanced
to show Tarrano himself. But he's isolated now. Bretan said his
isolation power--around the Ice Palace and the wall anyway--is greater
than any image-ray we can send against it."

My heart leaped suddenly, for I saw Elza's eyes widen, fear spring to
her face; heard the sharp intake of her breath, and felt her hand grip
my arm.

"Jac! There's something wrong! See there? And you hear it?"

From the instrument room I heard a vague drumming. A hiss, and then a
drumming growing louder. It was not a new sound, for now I remembered I
had been conscious of it for several moments past. Our encampment was
awake to it! A confusion down there; people running about; a figure
dashing wildly into the instrument room. And the aerials on the power
house began to snap viciously.

"Jac! What is it?"

"I don't know. See there, Elza? The sub-ray lights!"

The search-beams from our towers were inordinately active. Sweeping the
empty snow-plain and the empty sky. Empty? To my fevered imagination
they were peopled with enemies. And then one of the towers flashed on a
sub-ray--the dull infra-red for envisaging the slow rays below the power
of human sight. And another tower with its faint purple beam was using
the ultra-violet.

"That drumming, Elza! That's a microphone--the big one they just erected
near the instrument room. There's something coming! That's the magnified
sound of some distant rush of air. Very faint sound, but they must have
heard it on the ear-phones long ago. That microphone must have just been
connected--"

Something coming? We could see nothing.

"Let's go down, Jac! We must get back--"

"I've got infra-red glasses--" I fumbled beneath my furs. But I did not
have them.

"Jac--"

"Wait, Elza."

My glasses would h