They were hours during which, with my lack of technical knowledge, I found myself often with nothing to do. Our camp was bustling with activity, but among the now idle girls and many of the young men, there was an air of gayety. They laughed, shouted, played games amid the rocks from which we had long since melted the snow. Once, in what would have been early evening had not the Sun in these latitudes held level like a burned-out ball near the horizon, Elza and I wandered from the camp to climb the cliffs nearby.
Beyond the circle of the camp's heat, the deadly cold of the region assailed us. We had not wished to equip with the individual heating, which for battle would leave us free of heavy garments; instead we swathed ourselves in furs, with the exercise of climbing to aid us in keeping warm.
It was wonderful to be again alone with Elza. Even with what was impending we were young enough to put it momentarily from our minds. Like young lovers clandestinely stealing away to a tryst, we left the camp and hand in hand, climbed up amid the crags. A few hundred feet to one side of the power house, and about the same distance above it, we sat down at last to rest.
The scene from here was picturesque in the extreme. Across the flat, shadowless snowy plain was the wall of ice with the city behind it. All in the far distance, this city wherein our enemy was entrenched; and there were no lights, no movement that we could see. In that drab twilight, it seemed almost unreal.
The plain too, was empty. A few palpably deserted huts, nothing else. Beneath us, snugly anchored there on the ledge, was our power house. No unreality here. Its aerials were mounted; its external dynamos were visibly revolving; from its windows blue shafts of light slanted out; and from it rose the low hum of active power.
Below it, spread over the slightly sloping area of foothill beneath us, lay our encampment. A ring of our tower vehicles, with their projectors mounted and ready, their colored search-beams slowly sweeping the white plain and the dead grey sky. Within their ring, the camp itself. Lighted by the blue-white tubes set upon quadrupeds at intervals; heated by strings of red-glowing wire and the red wire-balls used on Venus. The snow and ice on the ground within the camp had melted, exposing the naked rock.
