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Always this same dim twilight here and eternal darkness on ahead. "Good Lord, what a place to live!" he muttered. They crept on cautiously until they were within sight of the camp. A large fire was burning briskly. Most of the men were wrapped in their blankets, apparently asleep; three were sitting upright, on guard. Mercer and Anina crept away.
"We might want to get out of here in a hurry," Mercer whispered with a grin. "You never can tell, Anina." He stood stock still. The sound near at hand was repeated. It was unmistakable this time a low, stifled moan. Mercer stepped lightly out of the boat onto the platform. A few boxes, a coil of rope, and other odds and ends stood about.
After a moment he stopped abruptly. "Anina, that little song you sang in the boat that day you remember the day we went to the Water City? Sing it again, Anina." She sang it through softly, just as she had in the boat, to its last ending little half-sob. Mercer laid his guitar on the sand beside him.
You say good-by to Alan and your mother and sister for me if " He fell silent a moment, then said softly: "And, Anina, if that should happen, I want you to know that I think you're the sweetest, most wonderful little girl I ever met. And, Anina dear " The girl gripped his arm with a cry of joy. "See, Ollie! There, ahead, the cliffs end. That is the Water City river! See it there?"
Why should they not use these few hours of waiting to see it? "We might get a line on how things stand up there to tell Alan when we get back," Mercer said when he explained his ideas to Anina. "It won't take long." Very probably it was the light-ray cylinder in his hand which influenced his decision, for he added: "We can't get into any trouble, you know; there's no light-ray here yet."
Miela sat in the stern, steering and operating the mechanism. I sat with her. Mercer was farther forward, beside Anina, talking to her earnestly. Our prisoners lay huddled in various attitudes frightened, all of them, and obviously in no condition to give us further trouble.
Then, using it as a base, they could spread out for a conquest of the entire nation. Mercer listened with whitening face while Anina told him all this as best she could. "But but why does he want to attack the Light Country, Anina? I thought he wanted to go and conquer our earth." "Very big task your earth," the girl answered. "Light Country more easy. Many light-rays in the Great City.
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.
I saw Anina a moment later soaring over the bayou just above the treetops. I sighed with relief, for it was a signal to us that everything was all right. We continued to wait until the men had all come into view. They went at the boat with a sudden rush. Several of them climbed into it, with shouts to the others. With a significant glance to Mercer I leaped suddenly to my feet.
The situation, as Mercer understood it from what Anina told him when she returned, seemed immeasurably worse even than he had anticipated. Tao had been making the Water City the basis of his insidious propaganda, rather than the Great City, as we had supposed. He had been in constant communication by boat with his men in the Water City; and now affairs there were ripe for more drastic operations.
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