Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings

We did not continue down that street. Sonya took us back. We turned another corner, and another. Soon we were near her home. She had not swerved from her purpose to take us to the Virgins' Island. This thing we had seen was one of many of its kind which dwelt in the fastnesses of the mountains beyond the caves.

They never came out into the light; none, Sonya thought, had ever been seen more clearly than we had seen this one. No man of this realm, to Sonya's knowledge, had ever ventured into the caves to seek them out.

I could not understand such a condition. On earth, nothing had ever been so fearsome but that man had sought to destroy it. But these people were of a different cast of mind.

"Sonya," I demanded, "how long have these things been in the caves?"

"They were first seen only just before our prince and princess vanished."

We reached Sonya's home, a low, oval stone building, dark in its enshrouding garden of flower-trees. She led us aside, toward a small outbuilding. I suddenly paused.

I was in sympathy with Sonya and her cause, but was not the plight of the prince more important? Had I not better go and join Jim now, and follow the course we had planned?

We reached the dark, single-storied outbuilding. Sonya touched a switch. A soft glow showed inside. It was a square building of stone and metal, windows barred by a metal screening, a doorway with a hinged screen.

"Sonya," I said, "just what is this you intend doing?"

She regarded me. Alice and Dolores stood beside her. I found myself arrayed against the three of them.

"Why," she said, "we are going to the Island of the Virgins. The girls are ready; we have been waiting-" she hesitated, then finished, "waiting for this chance which has come tonight."

"What chance? The king being ill or dead?"

Her eyes flashed. "Yes. The girls are ready. They will come back with us, now."

She stood with shoulders squared, a defiant little figure before me.

I said, more gently, "What are you girls planning to do, Sonya?"

I think she had already told Alice and Dolores. They moved closer as though to defend her. Alice flashed me a defiant look.

I repeated, "What are you planning to do?"

Her eyes held level. "It is not my secret. You are a man. I have no right to tell you. " She added very slowly, but wholly without emotion,

"I think perhaps you had better go back."

It struck me with a vague sense of shame. I felt like a deserter.