She was silent; and after a moment, he added: "Enough of this. I would ask you just one thing. You are not afraid of me, are you?"
"No," she said; and at that moment she meant it.
"I would not have you ever be afraid, Lady Elza. Love is not conceived by fear. And you must know I could never force my love upon you. For if I did--I should withhold forever the birth of this love of yours which is all I seek--this love I am trying to breathe into life.... Enough!"
He did not mention the subject again. For hours--eating what meager stock of tabloid food with which their vehicle was provisioned--they flew onward. Rising now to top the line of jagged mountains. Over them the platform swept. In the crisp air the snow down there gleamed blue-white; the ice with an age-old look filled the valleys between the peaks.
The arctic! It was nothing like the Polar regions of Earth. Stark desolation. A naked land seemingly upheaved by some gigantic cataclysm of nature, lying tumbled and broken where it had fallen in convulsive agony; and then congealed forever in a grip of ice.
The Sun hung level as the vehicle advanced. In these latitudes it would swing side-wise in a slow, low arc, to dip again below the horizon and vanish. Here in the Cold Country it was morning of the Long Day. Summer!
On over the crags and glaciers Tarrano guided their frail flying platform. Houses occasionally showed now--huts of ice, congealed dwellings, blue-white in the flat sunlight.
And then at last, over the horizon came the ramparts of a city. The City of Ice! The size of it--the evidences of civilization here in this brittle land of deadly cold--made Elza gasp with wonderment.
I must take you back now to the Water Festival and the events in the Great City which followed it. _Slaans_ in murderous frenzy were plunging through the throng of erstwhile revelers. Maida could not quell them. The revolt which she had started against Tarrano seemed now a self-created monster to destroy us all.
But there were Earth men among us. A hundred of them, no more. They had come from Washington that same day; had landed, I learned later, secretly near the Great City, sent with our Earth Council's plans to communicate with Maida. Beneath the water, coming individually, they had entered the festival; and helping Maida's girls (the diving girls whom I had encountered) they had made away with most of Tarrano's guards.