Elza was unhurt. She saw now, with clarifying senses, that they were plying along a narrow river. Banks of foliage on each side; the auroral lights in the sky; occasionally on the hillsides along the river, the dim outlines of a house. It was all a trifle unreal--like looking through a sunglass that was darkened--for around the boat hung always a vague pall of gloom. Tarrano spoke of it. "Our isolation barrage. It is very weak, but the best I can contrive. From these hills the naked eye, now at night could hardly penetrate it.... A precaution, for they will be searching for us perhaps.... Ah!..." A white search-ray sprang from a house at the top of a hill nearby. It leaped across the dark countryside, swept the water--which at that point had broadened into a lagoon--and landed upon the boat. It was a light strong enough to penetrate the barrage--the boat was disclosed to observers in the house. But Tarrano raised a small metal projector. A dull-red beam sprang from it and mingled with the other. A surge of sparks; then Tarrano's red beam conquered. It absorbed the white light. And Tarrano's beam was curved. It lay over the lake in a huge bow, bending far out to one side. Yet its other end fell upon the hostile house. The white search-ray from the house was submerged, bent outward with Tarrano's beam. From the house, the observer could only gaze along this curved light. He saw the image of the boat--not where the boat really was--but as though the ray were straight. Elza, staring with her heart in her throat, saw a ball of yellow fire mount from the house. It swung into the air in a slow, lazy parabola, came down and dropped into the lake. But it fell where the marksman saw the boat, a safe distance to one side. A ball of fire dropping into the water, exploding the water all around it for a distance of a dozen feet. Like a cascade, the water mounted. Tarrano chuckled. "A very bad marksman." Other bombs came. It turns me cold when I think how orders like this could have come from the Great City--these bombs which had they found their mark would have killed Tarrano, but at the expense of the life of Elza. They did not find their mark. Tarrano continually changed the curve of his beam. The image of the boat shifted. A few moments only; and riding the waves of the bomb-tossed water, they rounded a bend, back into the narrow river and were beyond range. Tarrano snapped off his ray. "Quite safe, Lady Elza. Do not be alarmed. I doubt if they will locate us again. They should be very busy now in the Great City. I'm surprised they could even think to notify this Station we have just passed." We were indeed very busy in the Great City during those hours, as you shall presently hear. Tarrano and Elza were not again disturbed. How far they went in the boat she does not know, but at last they landed in a sheltered cove. An air vehicle was there. Tarrano transferred Elza to it, and in a moment more they were aloft.