Life on other planets -- Fiction; Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Science fiction
I did not again try to sleep. I did not feel like sleeping; instead
I remained at the controls and watched the desolate landscape as it
rushed forward to pass beneath me. With the coming of dawn I saw
Tjanath directly ahead of me and as I approached the city it was
difficult for me to realize that I could do so with utter impunity
and that my ship with its closed ports was entirely invisible. Moving
slowly now, I circled above the palace of Haj Osis. Those portions of
the palace that were topped by flat roofs revealed sleepy guardsmen. At
the main hangar a single guardsman watched.
I floated above the east tower; beneath me, cuddled in her sleeping
silks and furs, I could picture Tavia. How surprised she would be
could she know that I hovered thus close above her.
Dropping lower I circled the tower, coming to a stop finally opposite
the windows of the room in which Tavia had been confined. I maneuvered
the ship to bring one of the ports opposite the window and close enough
to give me a view of the interior of the room. But though I remained
there for some time, I could see no one and at last I became convinced
that Tavia had been removed to other quarters. I was disappointed
for this must necessarily greatly complicate my plans for rescue. I
had foreseen but little difficulty in transferring Tavia by night
through the tower window to the flier; now I must make my plans all
anew. Everything hinged, of course, upon my ability to locate Tavia.
To do that it was evident that I must enter the palace. The moment
that I quitted the invisibility of my flier, I should be menaced by
the greatest danger at every turn, and, clothed as I was in home-made
harness fashioned by the hands of the slaves of Phor Tak, I should
arouse the active suspicion of the first person who laid eyes upon me.
I must enter the palace and to do it in any degree of safety I must
have a disguise.
All my ports were now closed, the periscope being my only eye. I turned
it slowly about as I tried to plan some method of procedure that might
have within it some tiny seed of success.
As the panorama slowly unfolded itself upon the ground glass before
me there appeared the main palace hangar and the single warrior upon
watch. Here my periscope came to rest, for here was an entrance to the
palace and here a disguise.
Slowly maneuvering my ship in the direction of the hangar, I brought it
down upon the roof of that structure. I should have been glad to moor
it, but here there were no means at hand. I must depend upon its own
weight and hope that no high wind would rise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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