An overwhelming sense of failure, of the inevitable doom overtaking them and all humanity, rested oppressively upon them; despair held them in dead silence.
The keen blue eyes that peered above Hal Samdu’s red beard caught a black space flier—a colossal spider-ship of the Medusae, riding eerie green jets—moving toward the somber walls above the yellow river.
He pointed, silently followed it.
“Is that———?” John Star cried, with a sudden painful leap of his heart.
“Beneath it—could it be———?”
“It is,” Jay Kalam said gravely, “the Purple Dream!”
“Your ship?” cried Aladoree.
“Our ship.
We left it wrecked, under the yellow sea, with Adam Ulnar on board.”
“Adam Ulnar!”
Her voice was edged with scorn.
“Then he has gone back to his allies.”
She looked at John Star oddly.
“It looks,” he admitted, “as if he had.
He could communicate with the Medusae by radio.
He must have called them, got them to raise the ship and help repair it.”
They watched the Purple Dream, flying under the vast black vanes of the Medusae’s flier, its tiny torpedo shape no more than a silver mote.
Blue flame burst from its rockets as it approached the black city, and it slanted down athwart the red sky, the other huge machine hanging near above it, on green wings of distant thunder.
It slowed; it came at last to rest on a tower of the black wall, in full, maddening view of them.
The black ship landed close beside it.
For a few minutes they all stared at it, silent with the intensity of their desires.
“We must get that ship!” Jay Kalam whispered, at last.
“It would take us to the System,” breathed Aladoree, voiceless.
“We could find iron.
We could set up AKKA.
We could save at least a remnant of humanity.”
“We could try,” agreed Jay Kalam.
“They would follow us from here, of course.
With those weapons that throw flaming suns.
The Belt of Peril is still above us; we’d have to get through that again.
All their invasion fleet will be guarding our System, now.
And the hordes of them, in that new fortress on the Moon… But,” he whispered, “we could try.”
“But how?” rasped Hal Samdu hoarsely.
“That’s the first question.
It’s miles to where the ship is, across the jungle.
On top of that smooth wall, a mile high. Nothing could reach it but a flying thing.
And that black flier is beside it, apparently to guard it.
How?”
His eyes fell, then, on John Star, who was staring fixedly at the wings of the creature he had killed, glittering beside them on the black sand.
“What is it, John?” he demanded, his low voice strangely tense.
“You look———”
“Nothing could reach it except a flying thing?” John Star said slowly, absently.
“But I think—I think I see a way.”
“You mean—to fly?”
Jay Kalam searched his intent, haggard face; puzzled, he glanced at the long splendid wings at which John Star was staring, sheets of sapphire, veined with red.
“Yes.
I used to fly,” said John Star.
“At the Legion Academy.
Gliding.
One year I was gliding champion of the Academy.”