Chapter VIII

THE FLYING PLATFORMS.

When she paused, I said abruptly, "Yes, I'll come."

And I stood watching her as she walked to the brink of the jagged eminence. She faced the rolling naked landscape, a dark blur out there in the murk of the storm. It was raining heavily now—hot rain that slanted down on the wind in great sheets.

The turgid green of the sky caught the raindrops and turned them to emeralds, and to rubies when the lightning flashed in puffs like crimson bombs. One seemed to explode directly over us. The report was deafening; the crimson glare blinding.

Tama stood with upraised arms and her crimson feathered wings out-stretched. In the lightning her figure showed clearly.

A signal. And in a moment it was answered. From some other rocky point near by two blobs rose into the air. They came soaring, swooping. Two rectangular platforms with girls flying beside them, carrying them. They came with a rush, swept by the wind; turned and steadied over our heads.

I gazed up, and a distant lightning flare illumined them clearly. One was a small platform, possibly twelve feet by six. Three long, flexible poles were fastened crosswise under its bottom and bound with vine-strands. The poles, some eighteen feet long, thus extended out each side about six feet.

At each of these handles a girl was flying. Six to the smaller platform, three on each side. I saw that the other platform was similar, save that it was several times larger, with sixteen girls bearing it.

They turned into the wind and with a great flapping of wings settled down to the rocks near us. The smaller platform was empty. Upon the larger, perhaps a dozen girls were lying. I went over and gazed at them, standing silent while Tama told them that I had joined the flight. They lay huddled, clinging to the low railing that outlined the platform.

A lump rose in my throat at their strained white faces. Some of them shifted their positions, trying to hide from me the white bandages, blood-stained, with which their mutilated wings were bound. The platform carrying them was presently back in the air. We watched it as it fled off into the face of the storm, off away from the city toward the wilds of the Fire Country. A moment, and then the lurid murk swallowed it.

"Come, Guy. I will ride with you and with Toh."

Toh took his place on the platform; he gestured to me. My mind was confused, whirling with all Tama had told me—the shock of this catastrophe.

Then the confusion fell from me. I stopped, stood a moment in thought. And questions rushed at me.

I faced Tama. "Did that platform start for your distant meeting place?"

"Yes! Yes, Guy."

"And now you want to take Toh and me there?"

"Yes. All is ready."

"But is it?"

"Yes."

I knew vaguely the locality the girls had selected.

"There is no valley with soil off there, Tama."

"No. But I had to select some place that all the girls knew. We have often met there in little groups—to try and plan what we might do."

"And because you have done that before," I said, "Roc probably knows the place. He'll follow. Did you think of that?"

She had not. But it was too late now to change. Every moment girls were leaving the city.

"On foot," Toh said, "Roc and his men cannot get there in less than two day-cycles. More, in this storm. The cañons will be river-torrents."

It was true enough. The ferocity of the storm here on the exposed height where we stood, was only too apparent. The wind tore at us. The rain-sheet beat and drenched us.

"Come," I said. "No more of this." I realized that the wind was tearing at our almost shouted words. I took my place on the platform. "Tell your girls to circle over the city, Tama."

She stared at me. "But, Guy—"

"I'll explain as we go. And I must know more about your plans. It will be death—out there in the desert—without every possible safeguard."

She gave the order. We rose into the wind. The light platform swayed and bucked. The girls struggled with it. For a time I thought they would lose control. They had had little practice; the wind caught us, bore us away despite their struggling wings. Then they pulled more evenly, turned us, held us soaring. Then they turned again; and more steadily this time, we swept upon the heels of the wind, out over the circular valley.

The lights of the storm-lashed city gleamed a thousand feet beneath us. Down all the inclined streets the water was pouring. The little lake by the palace showed its surface lashed by the wind.

I crouched by Tama. "Tell me, quickly, what preparations for food and equipment you have made."

They were surprisingly complete. It was obvious that there was no way by which we could now improve them.

We crossed over the city, and turned back while she told me.

"Our plan, Guy, is to gather at this meeting place. And when we are all there and the storm is past, we can find a suitable valley with soil."

There were girls rising occasionally from the city. One passed near us. I said abruptly, "Tama, call her."

She obeyed at once. And for all my ten years on Mercury, the action gave me a start. She stood up on our tiny, tilting platform, and I had the sudden absurd shock of fear that she would fall—a thousand feet down into the city under us.

"Tama, you—"

I choked it back, as she spread her wings and leaped into the void. Followed the other girl. Called to her. And the two came winging back to us.

This other was a girl hardly sixteen. She gazed at me and smiled to know that I would help them.

"Tama," I demanded, "how many young men are coming?"

"Twenty. Thirty, perhaps. The platform bearing them should be gone by now."

It occurred to me that Roc, if he had wind of this, could so easily place a spy among those men.

"You think you can trust them all?"

"Yes. We thought of that. They all have been in sympathy with us for months."

"Are there any others?"

"Other young men?"

"Yes. Who would come—but have not heard of this?"

"Many others," she said.

"You know who they are?"

"Oh, yes. I have been testing them—talking to them, with caution, for a long time back."

"Then tell this girl who they are. She is under sixteen, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"Then Roc's men will not bother her. This new law does not touch her."

The girl listened eagerly while Tama translated. She was to stay in the city for a day or two, and find other girls of her age who would spread the word.

"Gather all the young men she can trust—tell her that, Tama. Have you any other platforms down there?"

"Yes. Lina knows where they are hidden."

The girl nodded when this was told her. There would be other girls in a day or two who would be wanting to leave. And there were fifty or more waiting now to gather the victims of Roc's first execution of the new law, and bring them on platforms.

The girl left us and dropped back into the city.

Tama asked me, "Now, Guy, shall we start away? I do not want to tire our girls, flying here in this wind and rain, with the long flight before them."

"Presently, Tama. Circle around a moment more."

I had been studying the situation beneath us. One does not relinquish his native world without a struggle. My rocket-cylinder was down there, in my workshop under the palace. It was practically ready for operation. The small cylinder with its mechanisms was ready. I could, I felt sure, even unaided and alone in the desert, find means to load its firing chambers, and launch it. I had been living for ten years upon the hope of communicating with Earth.

And now it came to me clearly that even more important than my own desire to send a message to Earth was the fact that it might be the best thing to do for these girls. I saw myself now their logical leader. The responsibility for their safety would rest with me. And we were burning our bridges. This rebellion, this flight was an irrevocable step. The government, dominated by Roc, would never compromise.

We might be followed by the Light Country army, found, assailed. Or if not that, then there could be starvation in the desert, or death from savages or the strange fearsome animals that lurked in the Fire Country.

As though with prophetic vision I could see us embattled. And I knew that every one of these virgins would choose death before she would return beaten and yield her wings to the mutilating knife, to marry and bear girl children, perhaps, to suffer the same.

I said abruptly, "Tama, I'm going down and get my cylinder. We may have need to send a message to the Earth."

I told her why. There was no argument. Both she and Toh could see it.

"I killed a man to-night," said Toh, and turned his white face to his sister as he told her how he had killed the guard to get me out. "We are in this—there is no returning."

I had been pondering how I could best land and get to my room unseen. I knew that Roc would stop me, seize me if he could. The opened gateway and the vanished guard had perhaps by now been discovered, along with my own escape.

We were now almost directly over the flat roof of the palace. The simplest way to get to my rooms was from the lake, over the wall into the garden, through the corridor gate—the way Toh and I had come out. But I saw, as a flare illumined the scene, that there were figures down there. Not at the gateway, but so near it that Tama could not land this platform unobserved anywhere in that vicinity. And the trees would make a ground landing very difficult and precarious in this wind, almost anywhere on the city level.

But the flat roof of the palace seemed empty. It would take only a moment to touch the roof. I could leave the platform and it could at once dart away. Even if it were seen from below, it could not be assailed so quickly. Probably no one would realize that I had left it. And from the roof, I would take my chances on getting down through the palace unseen.

"Then we will wait for you on the roof, Guy?"

"No! You girls would be seen. It would cause comment, and they would come up after you."

I thought I had a quick way of getting out of the city. I told her where to meet me with the platform, in a secluded place well away from the city.

She gazed at me sharply when I described the place.

"I can get there," I smiled. "You forget, I am more agile than the Mercutian men. The whole thing will take no more than half an hour—if I have luck."

We were dropping toward the roof. Its flat top was a little lake of water with the rain pouring on it and gathering there. The men outside the palace saw us as we came down. There was no doubt of that. The red puffs in the sky were almost continuous now. The glare showed us clearly; and I saw the men staring up at us.

Half a dozen of the official carts were coming up to the main doorway of the building, the brues drawing them through the water on the roadway. Girls were being taken from the carts and shoved roughly into the palace. One went fighting. Her cries floated up to us through the surge of the storm.

We landed on the rain-soaked roof with a splash.

"I am going with you," Toh said suddenly.

"No. I can manage it better alone. If I meet any one, he may not necessarily know that Roc had me imprisoned. Hurry now, get this platform away. I'll be there, Tama, in half an hour."

The platform lifted. One of the girls had already shown signs of tiring. Tama took her place.

I crouched in the water by the roof palisade, watching the platform sweep away. From the ground the roof-top was invisible. I thought no one had seen me land.

I waited a few moments. Then I went to the hooded trap, opened it, and descended the ladder into the palace.