carry the Venus-weapons from here to the Forest City. In a moment a dozen were here, then a hundred. They came in little groups, males and females, keeping separate in the flight. Like huge insects they thrummed around us, and then settled and stood awaiting our commands. Then Meeta was among them, telling what had happened and explaining that they must fight for the lives of the Forest City people.

For a moment there was awed silence; then a tiny blended chorus of voices, and little shapes humming away to get the thorns.

Jim gripped me. "By the Lord, it's our only chance! You can see that, Art."

"Yes. You and I in the spacesuits, if we can maneuver them. An army in the air—the Midges and you and I to plan their battle—direct them."

"And I shall be with you," Venta cried.

Vaguely I had thought to leave her here, or send her off to the Forest City on foot. She persuaded me at last.

"You talk of planning the battle," she cried. "But almost none of the Midges speak your language. I shall give your commands to them."

Once we had decided, a desperate haste was on us. Midges were arriving here now from the Forest City. Some of them had seen the oncoming columns of Curtmann's men, down in the forest. They were more than half way from Shan. Occasionally their Earth-flash weapons would stab into the forest ahead of them.

Within ten minutes or so we were ready. I had sent a few of the swiftest-flying Midges back to the Forest City to tell Prytan what had happened. His young men were to arm themselves as best they could, and take position. In a ring around the city, prepared to make a last stand, if we should fail. All the Midges now in the Forest City were to arm themselves with the poisoned thorns, and come to join us in the battle as fast as they could.

Then Venta, Jim and I had donned the spacesuits. No need to inflate them now; we only needed the anti-gravity mechanisms, and the rocket-streams for balancing and for lateral movement.

We rose presently into the air, up into the starlight with the ruined piles of the broken buildings and the forest dropping away beneath us. At five hundred feet we poised. In thrumming groups the Midges, more than two thousand of them now, circled around us. Then, with Jim, Venta and me leading, our bodies in the baggy spacesuits poised almost horizontal in the air and the Midges strung out in long 

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