Dark, somber forests of luxuriant tropical vegetation. It was now nearing dawn; the auroral lights were dropping low in the sky; the great Venus Cross of Dawn was rising, its first two stars already above the line of hills to one side.
Then the sky out there flushed red; a limb of the glorious Sun of Venus came up. A new day. And even though the air was warm, within Elza was ashiver.
"It is very wonderful to me, my Elza, this being alone with you."
He sat beside her, gazing at her with his calm, impenetrable eyes. It was near noon of that day following their escape from the Water Festival. They had flown possibly two thousand miles. The Sun had risen, but after a time--since their enormous speed and change of latitude had affected the angle at which they viewed it--the Sun now was hanging almost level, not far above the horizon.
Beneath the platform--a mile below now--lay a tumbled waste of naked crags. The borders of the Cold Country! Tarrano's stronghold! The birthplace of his dreams of universal conquest.
Elza was staring downward. A barren waste. Rocks bare of verdure. Grey, with red ore staining them. A desolation of empty rock, with grey flat shadows. And far ahead, the broken, serrated ranks of mountains with rocky peaks, white-hooded with the snow upon their summits. The Cold Country. Bleak; forbidding.
This brittle air was cold; yet Elza and Tarrano were warm. Before the platform, a ray darted--a low-powered ray of a type that was to be so great a factor in the warfare into which we were all so soon to be plunged. It heated the air, so that the platform rushed always through a wind that was balmy.
"What did you say?" Elza looked up to meet Tarrano's steady gaze.
"I said it is wonderful to be thus alone with you, my Elza."
He persisted; but his voice was gentle and earnest. "Soon we will be at my home, Lady Elza. And now--there are some things I would like to say while I have the opportunity.... You will listen?"
"Yes," she said; and tried to keep from him the trembling within her. "I'll listen, of course."
He nodded. "Thank you.... My Elza, you have heard me talk of conquering the world. My dream--my destiny. It will come to pass, of course. Yet--" A smile pulled at his lips. "Do you know, my Elza, what you and I are doing now?"