The Man on the Meteor by Ray Cummings

To Gahna. It took us a long while to get there, for the Maagog army advanced slowly. Following the lights we found ourselves descending at once to the sea-bottom. These Maagogs, lumbering and ungainly, were poor swimmers; the line of them was walking along the bottom.

It made my heart leap to realize that. What match would they be for us Marinoids in battle-our men so active in the water-our alert girls on the dolphins. We would cut them to pieces. would rout . . .

I whispered my thoughts to Nona.

"Be not too sure, my Nemo," she said soberly. "It may be so but first we must do what we are now planning."

We went on, through the forest road where the Maagogs had tramped aside the tall, tenuous growth of foliage. It was much dimmer in here. Beside us the trees and ferns spread as a dark lacework of green and brown. They met overhead, wavering, tenuous, but impenetrable to our sight.

What a spot for ambush! A thousand hiding-places all about us. An army could lurk here in ambush unseen.

It is very easy to look backwards upon life and say what should have been done. We Marinoids-how stupidly we had done things! Our army-if it had been organized and ready-could have lurked here in this dark forest. leaped upon the Maagogs. defeated them at once in one great surprise attack . . .

"What? " I whispered.

Nona, from her dolphin beside mine, had reached out and gripped my arm. I followed her gaze, caught a glimpse of a figure hovering amid the air-pods overhead and just in advance of us. A man, coming down now toward us, swimming cautiously.

My heart leaped; my grip on my sword tightened. Then I saw it was a Marinoid-one of my own couriers stationed here to watch the enemy pass.

He joined us. "Og," he said, "and his black fishes were last to pass. I would have given my own life to the fishes could I have killed him. But it did not seem possible."

I sent the courier back to Rax and we went on as before. Out of the forest now, across an open stretch, with the lights of the Maagogs still before us.

Then-Gahna. There it stood, leaning sidewise in the press of current. Traveling so slowly, we could feel the sweep of the moving water. A gentle current here; but just beyond Gahna, I knew there was an opening in the side wall of rock which bordered in the Marinoid domain. It was a large opening leading diagonally downward-an opening larger than the city itself-and into it the water rushed swiftly.

"Wait! " whispered Nona.

We halted our mounts, and waited while the last of the occupying Maagogs dispersed themselves about the city. From this distance we could see their lights but hear no sounds. Evidences of the recent half-breed massacre of the Marinoid population, were about us. Broken, inert bodies lying here and there on the sea-bottom; and the smell of blood in the water.

I shuddered to remember it. Gahna, bloody from end to end-a city of death now; and these triumphant Maagogs occupying it, making it a base from which to attack Rax.

At last they were all in. Cautiously, we advanced further. Moving lights on the city's outer surface-a murmur of sounds. Nothing more.

A few moments and we were under the city! In its cellar, let me say. No one lived down here; sand under our feet; woven vegetation twenty feet overhead-a cellar ceiling which formed the lowest tier of the city.

It was black in here; and almost soundless, just the murmur of the city above us. We stood motionless, listening. Were we alone? Dared we light our lights? I knew that if they caught us in here we could not escape. Yet we could see nothing without lights.

We unshrouded them finally-little pods which threw tiny wavering green beams. With them, we poked around, cautiously, with our swiftly beating hearts seeming about to smother us.