The scene from here was picturesque in the extreme. Across the flat, shadowless snowy plain was the wall of ice with the city behind it. All in the far distance, this city wherein our enemy was entrenched; and there were no lights, no movement that we could see. In that drab twilight, it seemed almost unreal. The plain too, was empty. A few palpably deserted huts, nothing else. Beneath us, snugly anchored there on the ledge, was our power house. No unreality here. Its aerials were mounted; its external dynamos were visibly revolving; from its windows blue shafts of light slanted out; and from it rose the low hum of active power. Below it, spread over the slightly sloping area of foothill beneath us, lay our encampment. A ring of our tower vehicles, with their projectors mounted and ready, their colored search-beams slowly sweeping the white plain and the dead grey sky. Within their ring, the camp itself. Lighted by the blue-white tubes set upon quadrupeds at intervals; heated by strings of red-glowing wire and the red wire-balls used on Venus. The snow and ice on the ground within the camp had melted, exposing the naked rock. A scene of blue and red lights and shifting shadows; bustling with activity--figures, tiny from this height, hurrying about. The sounds from it rose to us; the low hum and snap of the weapons being tested; the shouted commands; and sometimes, mingled with it, the laughing shout of a light-hearted girl. Elza clung close to me. "Everything will be ready soon." I nodded. "They're going to mount a ray up here on the cliff. Grolier was telling me, for permanent protection--to stay here with the power house when we go out to the attack." Silent with her thoughts she did not answer me. Sidewise, I regarded her solemn little face encased in its hood of fur. And then clumsily, for our furs were heavy and awkward, I put my arm about her. "I love you, Elza. It's worth a great deal to be here alone with you." "Jac, what will he do?" Her gaze was to the far-off City of Ice. "It seems so--so sinister, Jac, this silence from him. This inactivity. It is not like him to be inactive." "He's there," I said. "Rolltar the Mars man--boastful fellow, blow-hard--he was telling some of us that in his opinion Tarrano had already run away." "Never!" she exclaimed. "This is his last stand. He'll make it here--defeat us here--" "Elza!" She glanced momentarily at me, smiled a queer smile, and then gazed once more over the distant plain. "I do not mean I think he'll defeat us, Jac. I mean, that is his reasoning--make his last stand here--" "He hasn't run away," I repeated. "I told Rolltar so. We got an outlaw connection into the Ice Palace today. For a moment only, and then it was discovered and broken off. But we had the image for a moment--it chanced to show Tarrano himself. But he's isolated now. Bretan said his isolation power--around the Ice Palace and the wall anyway--is greater than any image-ray we can send against it."