Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings

I stood a moment, transfixed with horror. Alice's face had become as white as Sonya's. Dolores uttered a faint little cry, "Jim!"

"Sonya-" I began. But she had turned to give orders to the girls. They sped away. I finished, "Sonya, get me back, at once!"

"Yes," she agreed. "But you can do nothing-a stranger-you cannot talk our language."

"I can, with you to interpret for me."

She whirled upon Alta with other questions, then back to me. "More than ever now, I must go through with our plans. Alta says the king is not dead. But dying, he will die at any moment. We must get back."

Down the beach the large platform was ready. A hundred girls or more were loading upon it. With a great flapping of the wings of the birds, it moved down the beach. Rose into the air. It had four strings of ten birds each, with others harnessed in tandem all along its sides. Magnificently, it sailed upward, turned in a broad arc, and passed us high overhead.

From everywhere now the girls were rising. Another great platform, and still another. A score of smaller ones; and from the forest, a hundred or more individual birds, each with a lone rider.

They flapped up from among the palms; circled overhead, with their numbers augmenting until they headed away. The first platforms were now mere blobs in the starlight. A thousand girls, I estimated, were up there in flight.

We hurried to our platform. Again we were in the air. Below us still another platform was rising; around us, three or four mounted birds circled like a convoy. We took our place in the line and sped back to the city.

"Is the king dead, Sonya?"

"No. I do not think so."

I waited a moment. "Sonya, you girls are not armed?"

She said impulsively, "No. But in the underground rooms of the castle, the science weapons are stored. Once we get control of them-" She checked herself, but she had told me what I wanted to know. An arsenal under the castle! The weapons of a half-forgotten science of this decadent race, stored there!

I shuddered at the visions which surged to my imagination. Here in the city-a government menaced by crusading girls! This was our condition, pitiable indeed, to oppose a savage, outside enemy!

Yet what was I to do? I pondered it until a vague possibility came to me. It gripped me. It seemed feasible. I believed I could accomplish it. With swiftness of action, power, dominance, I could carry it through. A grim exaltation was upon me. A man, to play a man's part.

We landed with a swoop upon the moonlit garden sward. The girls crowded around us, with a fringe of curious, apathetic men behind them. Sonya turned to speak to Alice and Dolores. Near by was a dark path between beds of giant flowers. I slipped from the platform. With my cloak held before my face, I avoided the girls and plunged into the shadows of the flowered path.

The path was dark, cut off from the moonlight by a great bed of flowers rising high above my head. A group of men came toward me; I stepped between the flower stalks, stood enshrouded in my cloak, my figure merging with the shadows, until the men had passed.

I caught a near glimpse of them. Young men, stalwart fellows, no doubt, according to the standards of their race. But not one of them was taller than my shoulder, and beside me, they were frail, delicate of build.

In a weaponless fight, I could doubtless have engaged two or three of them, and come off the victor.

The path turned into a dim street that encircled the rear of the castle, into the arsenal through some postern gate along here. The arsenal was within this curving wall of stone. I passed such a gate now, a small narrow opening, half the height of my upright body. But it was blocked solidly with a metal door which I could see no way of opening.