"A few miles west of here. I can't tell how far--Azeela does not know just where we are, either." "Does Toroh know we're after him?" "No." George tried to think coherently. "Can't we overtake them, Dee? Before they reach Orleen?" "I don't know. Azeela says not. Their dogs are very fast--perhaps faster than ours." Suddenly George had an inspiration. The other plane--the one he and Rogers had come in! It was back in the cavern in Anglese City. He and Dee could get that, and he could operate it--he'd have to, now. Then they could fly to Orleen, and perhaps by that method get there before Toroh and Azeela. He explained this swiftly to Dee. "We're not so far from Anglese City, are we?" "No," she agreed. "It's the best thing to do." They turned the dogs, starting back over the road they had come. A new thought occurred to George. "Dee, what does Toroh want with that plane? Is he going to take Azeela north in it?" The dogs were already at a run, but he caught her answer. "No. He will take the plane back into time! He wants to get greater weapons with which to conquer us!" * * * * * Fahn, Loto and Rogers hurried through the city streets. The faint distant cries of the mob ahead drifted back to them. There were no Arans to be seen, but the Bas men and women were everywhere, most of them moving in the direction of the palace. As Fahn and his two companions advanced, the turmoil ahead grew louder. The palace stood on a rise of ground in the midst of a lavish garden, with its swimming pool, its trellised pergolas and its graceful palms. The building was a two story rectangular, with huge white columns from the ground to the roof. A broad balcony ran the length of the second story. The roof was flat, with palms growing upon it. A crowd of Bas was surging up the hill toward the palace; in the gardens, the armed mob was already massed, shouting, threatening, but lacking, as yet, the courage to advance upon the building. Fahn had turned into a side street at the foot of the hill. "Where are we going?" Rogers demanded. "We've got to get into the palace unseen, so we'll go through the tower," Loto explained. "There's a secret way into it that the Bas don't know." The tower, which rose like the skeleton of a lighthouse, stood close beside the main palace building; a covered bridge connecting the two as the level of the second floor of the palace. Swiftly Fahn led the two men to the beach that lay behind the bluff on which the palace and its tower stood. The moonlit strand was deserted. They came to a thick clump of palmettos in the heavy sand at the foot of the bluff--a green tangled clump higher than a man's head. Into this Fahn plunged unhesitatingly, forcing the fronds aside, pushing his way in with the others after him. Inside the palmetto thicket was a small tunnel mouth, leading downward.