The Fire People

Miela proceeded to explain our plan in detail to these fifteen hundred enthusiastic allies. It was my idea to build several platforms similar to this one on which Mercer and I h...

However pleased the newcomer was to see me, I had no difficulty in assuring him with equal truth that my feelings matched his. The first surprise of the meeting over, we took hi...

"Be careful, Miela. Order every one in the castle to the roof. Here! Tell the queen before you go. Send every one up there with me. The mob may come in. We'll make our stand up...

The scene of desolation that met us in the Lone City was at once extraordinary and awesome. It seemed impossible that our rays, acting for so brief a period, could have done so...

There seemed to be five of our captors, all of them as evil-looking men as I think I have ever seen. They rummaged about the room, evidently in search for weapons they thought I...

As we came out of the valley I had my first view of the Great City. It occupied a huge, mound-shaped circular mountain which rose alone out of the wide plain that spread before...

With hardly more than a perceptible tremor our strange vehicle came to rest upon the surface of Mercury. For a moment Miela and I stood regarding each other silently. Then she l...

It had stopped raining; the sky overhead was luminous with diffused sunlight; the scene that lay before Mercer was plainly visible. The river had opened abruptly into a broad, s...

We swept out over the Great City, flying in the battle-formation we had used many times before on our trips about the country. Mercer's platform and mine were some fifty feet ap...

Our losses totaled nearly a hundred and fifty girls. We brought back with us on the platforms but six wounded. I shall never forget that hour we spent searching among the wrecka...

We were gathered in the living room after the evening meal, and I had given them my ideas of how we should start meeting the situation that confronted us. We had had no more tro...

Mercer sat on the rear end of the platform and waved good-by vigorously as he was carried swiftly up and out over the water. Under him was a pile of blankets and a coat, and bes...

The first of the new meteors landed on the earth in November, 1940. It was discovered by a farmer in his field near Brookline, Massachusetts, shortly after daybreak on the morni...

When I reached the little Florida town Alan was there to meet me. He would have none of my eager questions, but took me at once by launch to their bungalow. No one was on the po...

The Mercutians all regarded me curiously as we came among them. By the respect they accorded Tao, and his attitude toward them, I decided he was the leader of the entire party....

On the little stern seat of the boat Mercer and Anina sat side by side, the girl steering by a small tiller that lay between them. They were well out in the middle of the river...

The girl stood quiet beside the tree, watching Alan as he tied up his boat. She continued smiling. Alan stood up and faced her. He wondered what he should say--whether she could...

The news that Mercer and Anina had been left in the Twilight Country completely dumfounded Miela and me. "Something was wrong," Mercer had said. And then they had insisted on st...

When I recovered consciousness I found myself lying in the sand with Mercer sitting beside me. It was still night. The tangled wreckage of our airplane lay near by; evidently Me...

The men were just then breaking camp, and she had returned to wake up Mercer. They ate their last remaining pieces of bread, drank from the little pool of water, and were soon r...

There seemed to be no pursuit. In a few moments I was clear of the camp and hidden in the darkness of the desert. I ran perhaps half a mile, then I slowed down to a walk, comple...

As I saw Mercer fall to the floor of the porch a sudden rage swept over me. I struggled violently with the three men pinning me down. They appeared very much weaker than I, but...

March 8, 1941, was the date at which Mercury was again to be in inferior conjunction--at her closest point to the earth since her transit over the face of the sun on November 11...

Two days later Alan and Miela were quietly married in Bay Head. She still wore the long cloak, and no one could have suspected she was other than a beautiful stranger in the lit...

Professor Newland and his family were living in seclusion in their Florida home at the time the Mercutian invaders landed in Wyoming. The curious events in Florida, which connec...

The months that followed were the busiest, I think, of my life. I began by a complete reorganization of this government of which I found myself the head. For the doddering old c...

When, in February, 1941, Professor James Newland issued this remarkable statement, my paper sent me at once to interview him. He was at this time at the head of the Harvard obse...

There is but little more to add. With the death of Tao and the changing of the law concerning the virgins' wings, my mission on Mercury was over. But I did not think of that the...

I think I should explain now a little about the physical conformation of Mercury--the "lay of the land," so to speak--in order that the events I am about to describe may be more...