Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings

The Warm Sea was a body of water some one hundred miles long by ten miles wide at most places. It lay in a bowl-like depression of rolling country. Bays and caves indented its shores in some places; in others cliffs came sheer to the water.

Kalima lay at what I might term its southern end. The sea broadened here into a sheet of water nearly twenty miles wide, which I had learned to call Kalima Bay. To the north it narrowed. The Virgins' Island divided it, with a narrow channel on each side, beyond which it opened again.

To the left along the west side of the sea, the road from Kalima wound northward. The west channel of the Virgins' Island was very narrow-two thousand feet at the utmost-but it was deep, with a sandy strip of beach on the mainland, a bluff of fifty feet, with the road on top. It was along the west side that Talon's land forces were coming. And on the same road from Kalima Jim's force was marching to oppose them.

Our water division of ten boats headed into the center of Kalima Bay, and there I halted them. They lay drawn in a black ring on the placid water. To one side of me, the squadron of girls flew now in a circle at about the threshold foot level. The platforms hovered near them.

Along the shore I could see the slow-moving line of Jim's army, crawling like a black snake over the winding, moonlit road. I had hoped that the head of it would be approaching the bluff near the west channel of the Virgins' Island. But it was not that far as yet.

I spoke into my aerial. "Make it faster, Jim! " The image of him showed his smiling face. Good old Jim, always smiling. "Right," he said.

From this height there was no sign of Talon. Behind me, from Kalima, Maxite had sent out an aerial image-finder. Its pink whirling ball came sailing past me overhead.

I sat enshrouded in my black insulated suit. I switched the current into it; I could hear the current hum; smell its faint acrid odor. The apparatus of the Frazier projector was already assembled. The pulse-motor was on my wrist; the head-band I now adjusted on my forehead. I made all the connections, but I did not turn on the current.

Before me were my smaller instruments. A bank of image-grids was lashed here; voice receivers were at my ears, my speaker aerial was on my shoulder. I caught the rays from the image lens mounted in Maxite's castle room. I tuned into it, saw his pale, intent face, heard his grave voice.

"No sign of Talon, Leonard?"

"No. I'm holding the girls and the boats ready. I'll go higher myself-your lens just passed me."

"Yes. But it shows nothing yet."

"I'll send one beyond it."

"Good luck, Leonard."

I nodded and disconnected. Sonya was calling me.

"Can't we go forward?"

"No."

From the boats down there I caught Alice's voice, but her image did not register; it was dark in the boat behind the black shields which enshrouded it.

"Len, have you seen Talon's rafts yet? Mett says he wants to know what our boats are to do?"

"Nothing. Stay as you are."