"I was only going to say ..."

"Say no more, Michael Kane!" She turned on her heel and left.

I may tell you, I had little stomach for further fighting just then.

Yet, scarcely three shatis later, I was part of a small body of warriors defending a breach that the Argzoon had made in the wall.

Steel clashed, blood spilled, the stench of death was everywhere. We stood on the broken masonry and fought off ten times our number of Blue Giants. Brave and ferocious as they were, the Blue Giants lacked our intelligence and speed—as well as our burning ideal to hold the city at all costs. These three advantages just seemed to balance the savage attacks which we somehow managed to withstand.

At one time I was engaging an Argzoon even larger than most of his kind. Around his huge throat he wore a necklace of human bones and his helmet seemed constructed of several large, wildbeast skulls. He was evidently some sort of local commander.

He carried two large swords, one in each hand, and he whirled them before him so that facing him was rather like facing a propeller-driven plane!

I stumbled before the force of his attack and my foot slipped on a blood-wet stone. I fell backwards and lay there while, grinning jubilantly, he prepared to finish me.

He raised both swords to hack at my prone figure, and then somehow I swivelled my body and cut at his calves, deliberately slashing at the muscles just behind his knees.

One leg bent and he opened his mouth wide in a great roar of pain. Then the other leg bent and suddenly he was falling towards me.

Hastily I scrambled up and flung myself out of his path. With a tremendous crash he fell to the broken stones and I turned and finished him with a single sword-thrust.

Luck, providence—perhaps justice—were on our side that day. I cannot explain how else we managed to hold the city against the invaders.

But we did. Then, just four shatis before sunset, I left the wall and headed for the aircraft hangars that had been pointed out to me the day before.

The hangars were domed buildings near the central square of the city. There were three of them, side by side. The domes were not of stone, but of some metallic substance, another alloy with which I was unfamiliar.

The entrances were small, barely wide enough or high enough for a man of my size to squeeze through. I thought this strange, and wondered how the aircraft could get out.

Shizala was in the first hangar I tried, supervising some male servants who were swinging one of the heavy aircraft round on davits. It was cradled in the davits, which swung slightly as they moved it.