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Updated: May 13, 2025
Tell them if they obey me all will be well, for I shall rule them wisely." I stood while Miela translated this amid dead silence from the crowd. As she finished I raised myself to full height and stared down at them threateningly. "But if there is trouble if any one defies my authority then, Miela, tell them I shall use the light-ray, for I shall brook no interference."
"There was no light-ray here then." Miela nodded. "It was what Baar's men had told them to say, I think." "And then what happened to the police?" "Then they left their posts about the city. Some fled; others went back and reported what they had heard." "And it never occurred to any of them to come up here and try to stop the disturbance? Curious policemen, these!"
The light-ray was set up near the river, on a metallic structure supporting a small platform some thirty feet above the ground. A ladder up one side gave access to this platform from below. The light itself came from a cubical metallic box, perhaps six feet square, suspended above the platform in a balancing mechanism that allowed it to swing in all directions.
This boat Mercer had come upon was intended to be Tao's first armed invasion of the Light Country some twenty of his most trusted men armed with the light-ray. Joining his emissaries in the Water City, and with the large following among the people there which they had already secured, they planned to seize the government and obtain control of the city.
She picked up a bit of driftwood, and, holding the end of the cylinder against it, pressed a little button. A curl of smoke rose from the wood, and in a moment a wisp of flame. "A light-ray!" Mercer exclaimed. "The ray but different." She tossed the blazing bit of wood aside, and held her hand a foot or so in front of the cylinder. "No danger! See?" She brought her hand closer.
Some of the men I knew at once it was those who had heard I possessed the light-ray scattered in terror at my appearance. I determined then, if no issue were raised that would demand my using this supposed weapon, I could continue to command the situation. I stood there a moment looking down. At the edge of the crowd I saw a few figures whom I took to be members of the city's police.
"Along that line," I said, "can you explain why this light-ray, which will immediately set anything on fire that is combustible, and which acts through metal, like those artillery shells, for instance, does not seem to raise the temperature of the ground it strikes to any extent?" "Because, like electricity, it is dissipated the instant it strikes the ground.
Baar's followers had for some time been talking quietly with the lower classes, and, finding they could count on their support, planned now to murder the king. Then with the queen and the little prince held as hostages, they expected that the men of science, threatened also with a revolt of the peons, would release the light-ray. The light-ray once in his control, Baar could make himself king.
We believed, from the reports our girls had brought us, that the enemy would have some twenty or thirty boats, most of them similar to that in which Mercer and Anina weathered the storm on the way to the Water City. We assumed that the men in the boats would be armed with the hand light-ray cylinders.
Flying low, we passed over the maze of bayous, and in what seemed an incredibly short time we were out over the sea. I had now no idea what we might be called upon to do, or how long we would be gone, for all my specific plans for the next day; so we started as well prepared as possible. The precious light-ray cylinder I held in my hand.
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