_"Danger! Jac! Danger! Jac!"_

I waited no longer, but rushed to Georg and Maida--beautiful Maida in her robe of sleep with her white hair tumbling about her. Georg half awake--yet almost at once he could understand me, and explain.

Natural, instinctive telepathy! It had not occurred to me. I had never bothered to develop telepathy; and indeed with any degree of fluency--or even of surety of reception--the phenomenon is difficult to perfect.

Yet, as I knew, with a loved one absent upon whom one's thoughts dwell constantly--in time of stress telepathy is occasionally automatically established.

It was so in Georg and Maida's case, back there in the Mountain Station on Earth. Telepathy was the explanation of Georg's mysterious actions as he stood there before the sending mirrors, crossed the room in confusion, and like one in a dream leaped from the window to be seized by Tarrano's spies. Maida had been abducted a moment before. Georg's brain became aware of it. Her danger, the appeal she sent to him.

So it now seemed to be from Elza to me. Georg, out of bed now beside me, urged me to greater efforts of concentration, that I might understand what message Elza was sending.

_"Elza! Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"_

I murmured the words to myself as with all my power, I thought them over and over, flinging out the thoughts like radio waves into the night.

Mysterious vibrations! In an instant, from here--everywhere in the universe. Who knows their character? Their speed? The speed of light a laggard perhaps beside the flash of a thought! Waves of my thoughts, speeding through the night, with only one receiving station in all the universe! Would Elza's brain capture them?

_"Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"_

_"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"_

It was very clear. The words rang in my head. But always only those two.

And then at last--it may have been an hour later--other words:

_"Death! The black cloud of death! You can see it coming! See it coming!

Death! To you Jac! To all of you in the city!"_

We rushed to the cas.e.m.e.nt. The broad lagoon before the palace lay like a mirror tinted red and purple. Beyond it, palms and the outlines of houses lay dark against the star-strewn sky.

But out there, over the city, in the distance a dark patch obscured the stars. We watched it breathless. A dark patch which soon took shape. A cloud! A black cloud--unnatural of aspect somehow--a rolling, low-lying black cloud. Growing larger; spreading out side-wise; sweeping toward the city on a wind which had not reached us.

_"Jac! Jac dear! Danger! Death to all the city!"_

Elza's words were still beating in my brain. Soundless words of terror and warning!

_"Death, Jac! Death to all the city! The black cloud of death!"_

CHAPTER XXVII

_Tarrano the Man_

"Wake up, Lady Elza."

A silence. His hand touched her white shoulder. "Wake up, Lady Elza. It is I--Tarrano."

Elza opened her eyes, struggling to confused wakefulness. The white walls of her sleeping room in Tarrano's palace of the City of Ice were stained with the dim red radiance of her night light. She opened her eyes to meet Tarrano's inscrutable face as he bent over her couch; became conscious of his low, insistent, "Wake up, Lady Elza;" and his fingers half caressing the filmy scarf that covered her shoulders.

Terror flooded Elza; that time she had always feared, had come. Yet she had the presence of mind to smile, drawing away from him and sitting up, with the fur bed-covering pulled to her chin.

"Tarrano? Why--"

He straightened, and into his expression came apology.

"I frightened you, Lady Elza? I'm sorry. I would not do that for all the worlds."

Her terror receded. The old Tarrano over whom she still held sway. She summoned a look of haughty questioning.

"You are bold, Tarrano--"

His gesture was deprecating; he seated himself on the edge of her couch.

She saw now that he was fully dressed and armed with a belt of many instruments.

At this time Elza had been in the City of Ice for a considerable period.

Irksome, worried days of semi-imprisonment; and through them, Tarrano's att.i.tude toward her was unchanged. She saw little of him; he seemed very busy, though to what end, and what his activities, she could not learn.

Within the palace, half as guard, half as maid-servant, Tara was generally Elza's only companion. And then, one evening when Tara's smouldering jealousy broke forth in Tarrano's presence and Elza uttered an involuntary cry of fear, Tara was summarily removed.

Elza was left practically alone; until at length came this night when invading the privacy of her sleeping room, Tarrano awakened her. He sat now upon the edge of her couch.

"I have a confession to make to you, Lady Elza." He smiled slightly. "As you know, there is no one else in our habitable universe to whom I would speak thus frankly."

"I am honored, Tarrano. But here, at this hour of sleep--"

He waved away the words. "I have asked your pardon for that. My confession--as once before, Lady Elza, I come to you most humbly, confessing that my affairs are not going as I would like. You do not know, of course, that Mars--"

"I know nothing," she interrupted. "You have kept me from the news-mirrors, if indeed there are any here--"

"Mars revolted against me," he went on imperturbably. "The Little People are again in control. Fools! They do not realize, those governors of Mars, that their public ultimately will demand this _Everlasting Life_ of mine--the Brende secret--"

She frowned. "No one knows better than you, Tarrano, that my father's secret does not bestow immortality. To cure disease, in a measure--"

He checked her; his smile was ironical. "You and I know that, Lady Elza.

We know that on this plane we would not want everlasting life if we could have it. But the public does not know that--let us not discuss it.

I was telling you--confessing to you--I have lost Mars. Temporarily, of course. Meanwhile, I have been preparing to invade the Earth." His gesture was expansive. "I have been planning, from here in the Cold Country, to send armies to your Earth."

He paused an instant. "I think now I shall wait until the next opposition--we are far from Earth now, but all in good time we shall be closer.... Strange is it not, that I should like to tell you my plans?"

She did not answer; she watched his smile fading into a look of grimness. "In the Great City, here on Venus, they are getting ready to attack me. Did you know that?"

"No," she said.

"You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?"

"Yes."

"And you hoped they were, of course?"