"I'd like to see Eartheye," he said, musingly.
"Oh, Asia's too far!" she quickly protested. "I'm only giving you an hour or so."
"Let's have something on the vision screen from Earth–eye, then," he suggested. "How about Mars?"
"Well, it's night over Asia." She snapped the screen on with a negligent hand and said, "Eartheye." In a moment a bearded face appeared with a respectful salute. "Put on Mars," she drawled. "The central region of Solis Lacus."
In a moment a rosy glow suffused the screen, resolving into focus as a ruddy plain with a greenish center. Connor gazed spellbound. The planet of mystery at a distance of two miles!
Enigmatical dark spots of strangely suggestive regularity were distinguishable, a lacy tracery of cabalistic lines, the flash of something bright that might be water. A pygmy civilization? He wondered dizzily.
"I'd like to see that at first hand!" he murmured.
"So would I," said Margaret of Urbs. "I've tried to talk my esteemed brother into permission to make the attempt, without success so far."
"You?" He remembered his conversation with Evanie and Jan Orm. "But it's two and a half years there and back!"
"What's two and a half years to me?" She snapped off the screen. "Come on," she said rising.
"Where now?"
"For a little flight. I'll show you a Triangle"—she glanced at him with a mocking smile—"since you know their secret—and yet live!"
"No thanks to you!" Connor flashed at her.
"No. Were you frightened?"
"Did I seem so?"
She shook her head.
"Are you ever afraid?"
"Often. I try not to show it."
"I never am," she said, pulling a beam–pistol from a table drawer and snapping it to her waist. "Since we're leaving the Palace," she explained. "I intend to bring you back."
He laughed and followed her through the Throne Room and up to a portion of the vast Palace roof below the South Tower. A Triangle stood there on a metal flooring. He noticed the pitting and excoriations where the blast had struck. The vehicle gleamed silver, far smaller than the giant ones he had seen in flight. Connor glanced curiously at the firing chamber at the apex, then at the name "Sky–Rat" engraved on the wall.
"My Sky–Rat," said Margaret of Urbs. "The swiftest thing yet made by man. Your bullets are laggards beside it." She hesitated, and for a moment he could have sworn that there was a touch of shyness in her eyes. "I took one trip in this—not so long ago," she said softly, "that I will never forget. The woods of Ormon are—lovely—don't you think?"
He made no answer to that, and followed her in. The tubular chamber was luxuriously fitted, with deep cushioned seats and room enough for comfortable sleeping quarters. When they were seated she depressed a lever and the throbbing roar of the blast began.
Through the floor–port he watched the Palace drop away. Urbs Major unrolled beneath. There was a sensation of weight as the vehicle shot upward like an errant meteor.
"Frightened?" laughed the Princess.
Connor shrugged. "I've flown before," he said laconically.
"Oh—airplanes! Wait!"
Death Flight?
Minute by minute the Earth receded. It seemed not so much to drop as to diminish, as if the surface were condensing like a deflating balloon. Urbs Minor slipped smoothly into the square of vision and the whole panorama of the mighty city was below—Greater and Lesser Urbs with the gash of the canal between them, tiny as a toy village in the Swiss Alps.
Kaatskill slid into the square, and a dozen other previously unseen suburbs of the vast metropolis. The aspiring towers of the Palace were small as pins in a carpet, and already a little east of them, as their radial flight permitted the Earth's rotation to gain on the craft.
The Earth began to seem hazy, and off to the north a snow–white plain of clouds glistened. The vast bowl of the planet began slowly to hump in the center. It was inverting, beginning to seem spherical.
Tom Connor jumped violently as a spark crackled off his thumb. A second stung the tip of his nose. The black silken hair of the Princess rose queerly in a cloud about the perfection of her face, and sparks raced along the metal of the hull.
"The Heaviside ionization layer," she murmured. "Scared?"
"No."
Margaret of Urbs glanced at a dial.
"Thirty thousand now."
"Feet?"
She laughed. "Meters."
About twenty miles. And they were still accelerating. The surface below flowed continually inward. The sky darkened; a star appeared—another. Fifty stars; a thousand—all glistening in a black sky where the sun blazed blue–white. The Earth was decidedly globular now. The vast, inconceivable slope of the planet could be seen in all directions.
Unconsciously Connor jumped as suddenly there came a sharp patter like hail.
"Meteoric particles," said the girl, turning a knob. "Paige deflector," she explained.
"For meteors as well as bullets, eh?" he suggested. "For the iron ones. A stone might get through." Uncomfortable thought. Minutes passed—half an hour.
Suddenly the Princess moved something. Connor was nearly lifted from his seat by the sudden lightness. "Deceleration," she said, glancing down at the colossal
convexity below. "Three hundred miles. Are you frightened?"
"Do you think so?"
She smiled a taunt. "I'll turn off the deflectors," she murmured.
There was a pattering roar. Something crashed glancingly above him and the floor tipped and spun like a juggler's platter. Margaret of Urbs laughed.
"Might 1 ask the object?" he queried.
"Yes," she said gently. "I'm going to commit suicide!"
As he caught his breath sharply, unbelievingly, she moved the lever before her, and the throbbing roar of the blast died suddenly. The sensation of dizziness that followed was a thousand times worse than that Connor had experienced in the swift Palace elevators.
He was utterly weightless. They were in a free fall!
The Princess was laughing at him. Deep in those lustrous, inhumanly lovely sea–green eyes of hers was the glint of mockery.
"Scared?" she whispered, as she had done repeatedly, and gave a low rippling chuckle at his silence. "Three hundred miles!" she jeered. A timeless interval. "Two hundred!"
He couldn't shift his gaze from the Satanic beauty of her face, but he grimly fought his quivering lips to firmness. There was a low whine outside that rose abruptly to a screaming shriek that went gibbering across the world. The air! They had struck the atmosphere.
The floor grew warm, almost hot—it burned. At last Connor tore his eyes from the face of the Princess and gazed down at the up–rushing planet.
They were over ocean. What matter? At that speed it might as well be concrete. How high? Two miles—a mile? Less each succeeding second. The scream was a great roaring now.
"We're going to crash," he said evenly, knowing she couldn't hear him.
Margaret of Urbs kicked a lever with a daintily casual foot. The blast roared out—too late! Or was it? Irresistible weight oppressed Connor as the sea rushed upward. So close it was now that he saw the very waters