"We are close to my country now," she murmured. "Too late for us to escape successfully, if we wait much longer." We did not need the pressure suits which Leh had hidden here, thinking he might find an opportunity for us to disembark while still above the atmosphere. The anti-gravity platform was an oblong, raft-like metallic thing, with its mechanisms under a hood in its bow. Nereid understood its workings. She lay flat upon it as I slid it through the porte and jumped beside her. We went like a sliding rocket, with a rush of wind that stopped our breath. But the hooded bow partially shielded us, so that presently we could breathe. Behind us, and over us now, the gleaming shape of the spaceship was seemingly sliding upward and backward. Beneath us the shining sea with a glowing shoreline off at the horizon seemed rocking with a crazy sway. And then at last we steadied. "Did it!" I gloated. "We made it, Nereid. Evidently they didn't see us rocketing off." There was no sign of any alarm from the ship and presently it had dwindled high above us and was gone. Amazingly swift, that downward glide. The wind whistled past us with a screaming whine. At five hundred feet Nereid leveled us as we headed for the glowing shoreline. I could see artificial illumination there now, a myriad little dots of colored lights. And then little colored beams were waving. "My city--the city of Arron," Nereid said. It was a few miles back in the forest, where a great shining lagoon opened. A riot of glowing, prismatic color burst upon us; and as Nereid saw it, she sucked in her breath with a little gasp. "The love festival," she murmured. "Oh why--why would they have that in times like these? With Tollgamo so ready to attack us?" I stared down with awed amazement at the scene of weird sensuous beauty spread now so close beneath us. * * * * * Allen's first sight of the country of Gorts, as he afterward told me, was a line of terraced hills that rose steeply up from the shore of the placid sea. He was in the controlroom of the Spaceship with Rhool, and with the grim woman Garga beside him. It had been a tense time for Allen, when the escape of Nereid and myself was discovered. But he had been allowed a measure of freedom, whereas I was locked in my cubby. Allen was not suspected, nor, fortunately, was Leh. Two of the Gorts came in for Rhool's wrath. "Tollgamo will deal with you," he said. Then Allen spoke up, denouncing me as a traitor to him; claiming that I had agreed to join Tollgamo. "That Peters girl bewitched him," Allen said. Whether it fooled the big, leering Rhool or not, Allen couldn't tell. Perhaps it did, for Allen now was taken more as one of them, than a prisoner.