ander had been searching for one
ultra-precious substance. Now his detectors had found it; and, feeling
neither fear of Triplanetarian weapons nor reluctance to sacrifice those
thousands of Triplanetarian lives, he was about to take it!

CHAPTER 10

WITHIN THE RED VEIL

Nevia, the home planet of the marauding space-ship, would have appeared
peculiar indeed to Terrestrial senses. High in the deep red heavens a
fervent blue sun poured down its flood of brilliant purplish light upon
a world of water. Not a cloud was to be seen in that flaming sky, and
through that dustless atmosphere the eye could see the horizon--a
horizon three times as distant as the one to which we are
accustomed--with a distinctness and clarity impossible in our Terra's
dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky
would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and
steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as
they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and
through that huge world's wonderfully transparent gaseous envelope the
full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we
know it--for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were
light-years distant from Old Sol and his numerous brood--but a strange
and glorious firmament containing few constellations familiar to Earthly
eyes.

Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void--the vessel
that was to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of Triplanetary and
Roger's planetoid--plunged into the rarefied outer atmosphere, and
crimson beams of force tore shriekingly through the thin air as it
braked its terrific speed. A third of the circumference of Nevia's
mighty globe was traversed before the velocity of the craft could be
reduced sufficiently to make a landing possible. Then, approaching the
twilight zone, the vessel dived vertically downward, and it became
evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of
intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing
toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings
were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color,
and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb
would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively
narrow channel of water, and all were built of the same white metal.
Many bridges and more tubes