The official flyer landed them on the broad stage amid deep, soft snow.

It was night--a brief trip from the late afternoon, through dinner and they were there. A night of clear shining stars--brilliant gems in deep purple. Clear, crisp, rarefied air; a tumbling expanse of white, with the stars stretched over it like a close-hung canopy.

They were ushered into the low, rambling building. The attempt was to be made at once. Mars was mounting the eastern sky; and to the west, Venus was setting. Both visible from direct helios at that moment--Red Mars, from this mountain top, glowing like the tip of an arrant-cylinder up there.

In the brief time since the party had left Washington, the worlds had been notified. The eyes and ears of the millions of three planets were waiting to see and hear this Georg Brende and this Princess Maida.

The sending room was small, circular, and crowded with apparatus. And above its dome, opened to the sky, wherein the intensified helios shaded so that no ray of them might blind the operators, were sputtering as though eager to be away with their messages.

With a dozen officials around him, Georg prepared to enter the sending room. He had parted from Maida a few moments before, when she had left him to be shown to her apartment by the women attendants.

As she moved away, on impulse he had stopped her. "We shall succeed, Maida."

Her hand touched his arm. A brave smile, a nod, and she had pa.s.sed on, leaving him standing there gazing after her with pounding heart.

Pounding, not with excitement at the task before him in that sending room; pounding with the sudden knowledge that the welfare of this frail little woman meant more to him than the safety of all these worlds.

At last Georg stood in the sending room. The officials sat grouped around him. Maida had not yet arrived from her apartment. There was a small platform, upon which she and Georg were to stand together. He took his place upon it, waiting for her.

Before him was the sending disc; it glowed red as they turned the current into it. Then they illumined the mirrors; a circle of them, each with its image of Georg upon the platform. The white lights above him flashed on, beating down upon him with their hot, dazzling glare. The reflected beams from the mirrors, struck upward into the dome overhead.

The helios up there were humming and sputtering loudly.

Beyond the circle of intense white light in which Georg was standing, the spectators sat in gloom behind the mirrors. Maida had not come. The Skylan Director, impatient ordered a woman to go for her.

Then, suddenly, Georg said to this Director:

"I--these lights--this heat. It makes me feel faint--standing here."

Georg had stumbled from the platform. Between two of the mirrors, shaded from the glare, the perturbed Director met him. Moisture beaded Georg's forehead.

"I'll--be quite all right in a moment. I'm going over there." He smiled weakly. A dozen feet away there was an opened outer cas.e.m.e.nt. It looked down twenty feet, perhaps, to the deep snow that covered the station's grounds. The Director started with Georg; but Georg pushed him violently away.

"No! No! You let me alone!" His accents were those of a spoiled child.

The Director hesitated, and Georg, with a hand to his forehead, wavered toward the cas.e.m.e.nt. The Director saw him standing there; saw him sway, then fall or jump forward, and disappear.

They rushed outside. The snow was trampled all about with heavy footprints, but Georg had vanished. From the women's apartment, the attendant came back. The Princess Maida could not be found!

And in those moments of confusion, from outside across the starlit snow, an aero was rising. Silent, black--and no one saw it as it winged away into the night.

CHAPTER XII

_Tara_

I must revert now to those moments in the tower room when Tarrano dissolved the isolation barrage which Wolfgar had thrown around us.

Georg escaped, as I have recounted. Tarrano--there in the tower room--rendered me unconscious. I came to myself on the broad divan and found Elza bending over me.

I sat up, dizzily, with the room reeling.

"Jac! Jac, dear----" She made me lie back, until I could feel the blood returning to my clammy face; and the room steadied, and the clanging of the gongs in my ears died away.

"I--why, I'm--all right," I gasped. And I lay there, clinging to her hand. Dear little Elza! In that moment of relief that I had come to my senses, she could not hide the love which even now was unspoken between us. Tarrano! I lay there weak and faint; but with the pressure of Elza's hand, I did not fear that this Tarrano could win her from me.

Wolfgar was standing across the room from us. He came forward.

"You did not die," he said; and smiled. "I told her you would not die."

It was now morning. Wolfgar and Elza told me I had been unconscious some hours. We were still imprisoned as before in the tower. Georg had escaped with Maida, they said; or at least, they hoped so. And they described the burning of the other tower. The city had been in a turmoil. It still was; I could hear now the shouts of the crowd outside.

And turning as I lay there, through the cas.e.m.e.nt I could see the blackened, still smoking ruins of Maida's tower; the broken iron terrace; the spider bridge melted away, hanging loose and dangling like an aimless pendulum.

The latest news, Elza and Wolfgar could not give me. The instrument room of our tower had been disconnected by Tarrano when he left some hours before. As they said it, we heard a familiar buzz; then the drone of an announcer's voice. Tarrano's guard had doubtless observed my recovery and had had orders to throw current into our instruments. Strange man, this Tarrano! He wished the news spread before us again. Confident of his own dominance over every crisis, he wanted Elza and me to hear it as it came from the discs.

We went to the instrument room. I found myself weak, but quite uninjured. Elza left us there, and went to prepare food which I needed to strengthen me.

The public events of those hours and days following, I have recounted as Georg saw them and took part in them in Washington. We observed them, here in the tower, with alternate hopes and fears. Our life of imprisonment went on much as before. Occasionally, Tarrano visited us, always making us sit like children before him, while at his ease he reclined on our divan.

But he would never give us much real information; the man always was an enigma.

"Your friend Georg has a wonderful plan," he announced to us ironically early one evening. He smiled his caustic smile. "You have seen the tape?"

"Yes," I said. It was Georg's plan to address with Maida, the publics of Earth, Venus and Mars.

Tarrano nodded. "He and the Princess are going to convince everyone that I am an impostor."

I did not answer that; and abruptly he chuckled. "That would be unfortunate for me--if they could do that. Do you think they'll be able to?"

"I hope so," I said.

He laughed openly. "Of course. But they will not. That long note of mine to your government--you read it, naturally. But you didn't read in it my secret instructions to my agents in Washington, did you? Well, they were there in it--my commands--the letters ending its words made another message."

He was amused at our discomfiture. "Simple enough? Yet really an intricate code in itself. It made the phrasing of the main note a little difficult to compose, that was all." He sat up with his accustomed snap of alertness, and his face turned grim. "Georg will never address his audience. Nor the Princess--she will never appear before those sending mirrors. I have seen to that." Again he was chuckling. "No, no, I could not let them do a thing like that. They might turn people against me."

Elza began indignantly: "You--you are----"

His gesture checked her. "Your brother is quite safe, Lady Elza. And the Princess Maida also. Indeed, they are on the point of falling in love with each other. Natural! And perfectly right. It is as I would have it."

His strong brown fingers were rubbing each other with his satisfaction.

"Curious, Lady Elza--how fortunate I am in all my plans."

"I don't think you are," I said. "Our government has you a prisoner here. They didn't withdraw the patrol as you demanded, did they?"

He frowned a trifle. "No. That was too bad. I rather hoped they would.

It would have been a stupid thing for them to do--but still, I almost thought they'd do it."

I shook my head. "What they will do is sweep down here and overwhelm you."

"You think so?"