We started now to raise an army of young men, which we proposed to transport across the Narrow Sea for land operations in the Twilight Country. Before a week had passed I saw, by the response that came from my various proclamations, that conscription would be unnecessary. With this tangible evidence of the coming war the patriotism of the people grew by leaps and bounds. The fact that the girls of the Great City were not only in favor of it, but were actually already in service--a thing unprecedented in the history of the nation--brought the sympathies of all the women with us strongly. Through the governors of each city I raised a separate army of young men, officered by the older men, most of whom had taken part in past fighting. Each of these little armies, as yet without arms, was drilled and held in readiness for orders from the Great City. I had, during all this time, selected as many able men as possible from among the Great City's population, and given them over to Fuero and his associates for training in the use of the light-ray rockets, the larger projectors, protective measures against the ray, and many other appliances which I understood only vaguely myself. It was after our return from the tour of the different cities, and before the recruiting of the young men was fairly under way, when like a bombshell came the news from our flying patrol that a fleet of armed boats was coming down the river from the Lone City. The attack from Tao was at hand, and our preparations were still far from complete. We had our army of girls in active operation, and that was all. Tao's boats would reach the Light Country shore in a few hours. There was no time for anything but the hastiest of preparations. We decided then to call the army of girls and meet the boats in the Narrow Sea, turning them back if possible. I have now to explain the method of defense against the light-ray. In theory I only vaguely understood it. In practice it was simple and, like most defenses, only partially effective. Bob Trevor, has already mentioned it--the suits of black cloth he saw in the Mercutian camp in Wyoming. It was not, as he had afterward supposed, a dye for fabrics. Instead, it was the thread of a worm--like our silk worm--which in its natural state was black and was impervious to the ray. By that I mean a substance whose molecules increased their vibration rate only slightly from a brief contact with the ray. It was only partly efficacious, for after an exposure of a minute or more the intense heat of the ray was communicated. It then became partly penetrable, and anything close behind it would be destroyed. We had under manufacture at this time a number of protective devices by which this substance might be used. Boats had, in the past, been equipped with a sort of shield or hood in front, making them more or less impervious to a direct horizontal beam of the light.