I sat enshrouded in my black insulated suit. I switched the current into it; I could hear the current hum; smell its faint acrid odor. The apparatus of the Frazier projector was already assembled. The pulse-motor was on my wrist; the head-band I now adjusted on my forehead. I made all the connections, but I did not turn on the current. Before me were my smaller instruments. A bank of image-grids was lashed here; voice receivers were at my ears, my speaker aerial was on my shoulder. I caught the rays from the image lens mounted in Maxite’s castle room. I tuned into it, saw his pale, intent face, heard his grave voice. “No sign of Talon, Leonard?” “No. I’m holding the girls and the boats ready. I’ll go higher myself—your lens just passed me.” “Yes. But it shows nothing yet.” “I’ll send one beyond it.” “Good luck, Leonard.” I nodded and disconnected. Sonya was calling me. “Can’t we go forward?” “No.” From the boats down there I caught Alice’s voice, but her image did not register; it was dark in the boat behind the black shields which enshrouded it. “Len, have you seen Talon’s rafts yet? Mett says he wants to know what our boats are to do?” “Nothing. Stay as you are.” “Be . . . very careful of yourself, Leonard.” “Yes,” I said. I cut off, urged my birds upward. At nearly ten thousand feet I hung poised. Far up the Warm Sea, on the west road Talon’s approaching force was visible. And on the water, I saw the black blobs of his rafts, four of them, evidently huge affairs, crowded with men and apparatus. One of them was in the yellow moonlit path. I could see the swimming figures in the water, harnessed, drawing the raft slowly forward. The pink ball I had sent out passed Maxite’s. It sped toward Talon’s rafts. On my grid I caught a glimpse of the wooden raft, with dead black beams standing up from it vertically in the air. Hundreds of figures crowded there. A black beam caught my whirling lens, burned it. The grid went dark. Talon’s land force was almost to the Virgins’ Island channel to the north. The rafts were over near that shore. It was what I wanted to know. Talon would use the west channel. I dropped my platform downward, and adjusted my helmet, though I kept its visor open. Talon’s land force would reach the channel before mine could get there. I had hoped that Jim would be able to set up our wind projector on the bluff there to command the narrow water. But Talon would be there first unless I could halt him. I turned to my aerial and gave the order for a general attack. I rose again, high in the air, and urged my birds forward. Beneath me, the scene of battle spread out like a map of three dimensions. Far down, our boats showed as tiny blobs speeding through the west channel. They were fast, but not so fast as the squadron of flying girls.