ey
flew onward. Rising now to top the line of jagged mountains. Over them
the platform swept. In the crisp air the snow down there gleamed
blue-white; the ice with an age-old look filled the valleys between the
peaks.

The arctic! It was nothing like the Polar regions of Earth. Stark
desolation. A naked land seemingly upheaved by some gigantic cataclysm
of nature, lying tumbled and broken where it had fallen in convulsive
agony; and then congealed forever in a grip of ice.

The Sun hung level as the vehicle advanced. In these latitudes it would
swing side-wise in a slow, low arc, to dip again below the horizon and
vanish. Here in the Cold Country it was morning of the Long Day. Summer!

On over the crags and glaciers Tarrano guided their frail flying
platform. Houses occasionally showed now--huts of ice, congealed
dwellings, blue-white in the flat sunlight.

And then at last, over the horizon came the ramparts of a city. The City
of Ice! The size of it--the evidences of civilization here in this
brittle land of deadly cold--made Elza gasp with wonderment.

CHAPTER XXIV

_Attack on the Palace_

I must take you back now to the Water Festival and the events in the
Great City which followed it. _Slaans_ in murderous frenzy were plunging
through the throng of erstwhile revelers. Maida could not quell them.
The revolt which she had started against Tarrano seemed now a
self-created monster to destroy us all.

But there were Earth men among us. A hundred of them, no more. They had
come from Washington that same day; had landed, I learned later,
secretly near the Great City, sent with our Earth Council's plans to
communicate with Maida. Beneath the water, coming individually, they had
entered the festival; and helping Maida's girls (the diving girls whom I
had encountered) they had made away with most of Tarrano's guards.

In those first moments of frenzy, I got to the balcony--joined Maida and
Georg. Elza was gone! My heart went cold, but in those hurried, frantic
moments, grave disaster as it was, I did not dwell upon it.

"We must get away--back to the palace!" Georg exclaimed as I joined
them.

The Earth men on the main floor were holding the _slaans_ partially in
check. Bodies were lying in a welter--I shall not describe it. Then
abruptly, upon a table a huge _slaan_ leaped--his garments blood-stained
from his victims, a blade of dripping steel in his hands. He shouted
above the tumult--words not in th