They were all standing looking frightened and confused. Jim swept them with a glance and drew me past them. It occurred to me that we might use the three spacesuits in which we had escaped from Curtmann. With their anti-gravity mechanisms and tiny rocket-streams we could propel ourselves over the forest. But we found now that they were gone. Precious minutes were passing. We would have to go on foot. At the door we paused, appalled by the wind and a chromatic burst of glaring light. Meeta fluttered in the air beside my head, and as the wind hit her she was tossed back. "You can't fly out into that, Meeta?" "No, I am afraid it's not possible now. But you can carry me." She fluttered to my shoulder, crouching with a tiny hand gripping my coat collar. With Jim beside me we plunged out into the roaring riot of the rainbow storm. IV "Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer," Jim murmured. "But it seems to be easing, don't you think?" In a sheltered recess of the forest we were crouching, forced to wait for the weird storm to pass. There had been no possible chance of finding the fleeing Jahnt. We could only hope now that he would go on to the broken city. The storm seemed to be lessening but still it was a roar of wind which cracked through the spindly giant trees, often bringing down great segments of branches which it had torn loose. A lull came at last, and through a ragged, littered forest Jim and I pushed our tortuous way. Meeta could fly now. She guided us, and with little forays hummed ahead and to the sides, seeking some signs of Jahnt and Venta. But there were none. The storm had been a torture of delay. In my heart now I had no thought that we would be able to locate Jahnt and Venta. I could only hope that they might be in the broken city. Had Curtmann received news of the Venus weapons? My mind was upon Venta, but still I could envisage that bloodthirsty band of Earth cutthroats advancing upon the Forest City. "I say, is it much further?" Jim demanded suddenly of Meeta. "This is tough going for us." "Master, no. It is ahead, just down that slope." The dim forest glade was descending into a great shallow area of deeper shadow. And presently we could see the ruins of tumbled, broken buildings lying here, half buried by the rank forest growth. In the turgid dimness, with a faint orange luminosity that seemed inherent to the great trees, it was an eerie place of colored shadows. Great buildings were everywhere around us now, weird of shape and substance, some of them still partly erect with the spindly trees growing through them. It was a place of the ghosts of Venus' past. "It is down in here," Meeta said, pointing.