Tarrano the Conqueror, page 168 by Raymond King Cummings
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instrument room.
We massed upon a broad hilltop near the city. In the grey twilight of dawn with a flush of pink in the sky where the sun in a few moments would rise, I stood in the outer doorway of the instrument vehicle. Around me was the confusion of departure. Eager young men; laughing girls, flushed with excitement. The gayety of youth going to war! Young as I was myself, I was struck with the drama, the pathos of it. What would the home-coming be?
Georg, Maida and Elza were with me. Geno-Rhaalton stepped up to us. Bare-headed. A solemn little man, heavy-hearted.
"Good-by," he said simply. "I know you will do your best."
"Jac! Look there!"
I followed Elza's startled gesture to the soft, white clouds which were massed in the sky above us. By what magic of science the thing was accomplished, I know not; but up there in the clouds a gigantic image of Tarrano was materializing! His head and shoulders. Arms folded; his face with a sardonic smile leering down at us! Lips moving. And out of the air about us came his audible, broadcasting words.
"Do your best, my friends!" Ironic mockery! "Coming to conquer Tarrano? Hasten! You are keeping Tarrano waiting most impatiently!"
The giant voice died away into silence; the huge image melted into the clouds and vanished.
Rhaalton looked at us again, expressionless. "Good-by," he repeated. "Do your best."
He turned away abruptly. And then as he walked with a despondent droop, I saw his shoulders suddenly straighten. He flung a hand into the air. The signal to start! From a tower in Industriana a puff of violet light shot up to magnify the signal.
The girls, all in their places, rose into the air. Draperies fluttering, like graceful birds they rose, circled over us in an arc; and then in a long, single line, with officers apart to one side marking them in squads of twenty, they sped into the dimness of distance.
The tower vehicles now were rising. Then the larger platform; the pow