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Russ Ferguson

Beginning JavaScript
The Ultimate Guide to Modern JavaScript
Development
3rd ed.
Russ Ferguson
Ocean, NJ, USA

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the

author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s
product page, located at www.​apress.​com/​9781484243947 . For more
detailed information, please visit www.​apress.​com/​source-code .

ISBN 978-1-4842-4394-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-4395-4

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4395-4

© Russ Ferguson 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the

Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned,
specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other
physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.

Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather
than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked
name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an
editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no
intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication
of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if
they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of
opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.

While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true
and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the
editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any
errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no
warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein.

Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business

Media New York, 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013.
Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail orders-
[email protected], or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media,
LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer
Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM
Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation.
This space is dedicated to my brother, Rodd, and my Dad.
If not for my Dad, none of this would be possible. Thanks, Dad.
—Russ
Acknowledgments
I need to thank everyone at Apress for working with me and keeping
me on course to get this book finished. Nancy, Toby, Louise, James, and
Jade, thank you.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:​Introduction to JavaScript
The Why of JavaScript
What Is JavaScript?​
JavaScript in a Web Page and Essential Syntax
JavaScript Syntax
Code Execution
Functions
Objects
Summary
Chapter 2:​JavaScript and Development Tools
Tutorials and Resources
Integrated Development Environments
Node.​js
Version Control Systems
Summary
Chapter 3:​JavaScript Variables
Declaring Variables in JavaScript
Reassigning Variables in JavaScript
Variables That Can’t Be Reassigned
Variables That Can Only Be Used in a Single Code Block
Variable Hoisting
Strict Mode
Summary
Chapter 4:​JavaScript Objects and Arrays
Host Object or Native Object
 Explaining Objects
Introduction to the Document Object
Arrays and Stacks
Getting the Length of an Array
Using Loops and Filters
Summary
Chapter 5:​JavaScript Functions and Context
Making a Function Declaration
Using Arrow Functions
How Does the Keyword this Work?​
Using the call, apply, and bind Methods
Understanding Closures
Summary
Chapter 6:​JavaScript and Events
Using preventDefault
Event Propagation
Creating Custom Events
Summary
Chapter 7:​JavaScript and Programming Paradigms
Object-Oriented Programming with JavaScript
Children of the Atom
JavaScript Classes and Prototypical Inheritance
Functional Programming with JavaScript
Pure Functions
Side Effects/​Shared State
Immutability
 Declarative Over Imperative Code
Summary
Chapter 8:​JavaScript and Debugging
The Console Panel
The Sources Panel
Summary
Chapter 9:​JavaScript and Client-Side Development
What Exactly Is NodeJS?​
Node on the Client Side
Using package.​json for Your Project
Adding Libraries to package.​json
Introduction to Module Bundlers (Webpack)
Adding webpack-dev-server
Adding Babel.​js
Adding HTML and CSS Loaders
Summary
Chapter 10:​JavaScript and Server- Side Development
Basic Express Setup
Adding nodemon and Routes to the Express App
Creating Routes with NodeJS
Setting Up a Local Instance of MySQL
Returning Data from MySQL Using NodeJS
Summary
Chapter 11:​JavaScript and Application Frameworks:​Angular
Installing Angular
What Is TypeScript?​
 Developing an Angular Application
Angular’s Architecture
Creating an Angular Service
Updating Your Angular Service
Creating a Proxy for Your Local Angular Application
Adding Twitter Bootstrap to Your Angular Application
Creating a Simple Form in Angular and Style It with Bootstrap
Passing Information from Angular to Node
Summary
Chapter 12:​JavaScript and Application Frameworks:​React
Adding a Proxy and Retrieving Data
Creating, Updating, and Displaying State in a React Component
Adding Bootstrap to React
Posting Data from a React Application
Adding Strong Types to Your React Application
Adding Types to Your React Code
Summary
Chapter 13:​JavaScript and Static Deployment
Developing an Angular Application and Connecting It to GitHub
Using the Angular Router
Using Angular Services
Deploying a Static Site to Netlify
Summary
Index
About the Author and About the Technical
Reviewer

About the Author

Russ Ferguson
is a freelance developer and instructor in the New York City area. He
has worked with companies of all sizes, from startups to some of the
largest organizations in the world. These companies have spanned
industries including cable television, book publishing, finance, and
advertising. He has worked on projects for companies like Bank of
America, General Mills, LG, Viacom, and DC Comics.

About the Technical Reviewer

Toby Jee
is software programmer currently located in Sydney, Australia. He loves
Linux and open source projects. He programs mainly in Java, JavaScript,
TypeScript, and Python. In his spare time, Toby enjoys walkabouts,
reading, and playing guitar.
© Russ Ferguson 2019
Russ Ferguson, Beginning JavaScript
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4395-4_1

1. Introduction to JavaScript
Russ Ferguson1

(1) Ocean, NJ, USA

JavaScript has changed a lot over the years. We are currently in a time
where there is a JavaScript library for just about anything you would
like to build. JavaScript lives both on the client and the server, on the
desktop and on mobile devices.
The goal of this book is to help you get an understanding of how the
language works, what can be done with it, the resources available, and
the some of the ecosystem around the language and tools. At times I
will point out things that may be asked on a technical interview, all in
an effort to help you get your arms around this growing community.
Some of the topics I will cover are
Understanding JavaScript syntax and structures
Creating scripts that are easy to understand and maintain
Using tools to debug JavaScript
Handling events
How JavaScript works on the server
The frameworks that exist to make JavaScript a strongly typed
language
JavaScript application frameworks and how they work
Retrieving data from the server
JavaScript is essential in modern web development; single page
applications (SPAs) make up the majority of sites being created.
Understanding JavaScript lets you add interactivity to your website and
lowers the learning curve for things like frameworks. This is not to say
that you need frameworks for everything, but to add any level of
interactivity to your site, you need JavaScript.
Enough introduction—you got this book to learn about JavaScript,
so let’s start by talking quickly about JavaScript on a high level before
diving right into it.
In this chapter, you’ll learn
Why JavaScript is important to you as a developer
How to add JavaScript to a web document
Objec t-oriented programming (OOP) in relation to JavaScript
Chances are that you have already come across JavaScript and
already have an idea of what it is and what it can do, so I’ll move quite
swiftly through some basics of the language and its capabilities first. If
you know JavaScript well already, and you simply want to know more
about the newer and more accessible features and concepts, you may
skip a head. However, there may be some information you’ve forgotten,
and a bit of a review doesn’t hurt, either.

The Why of JavaScript

As discussed, JavaScript is everywhere. It plus HTML and CSS are all the
tools you need to develop a website.
You can work on both the client side and the server using JavaScript.
This makes the demand for JavaScript developers very high. And high
demand means various job opportunities and competitive rates for
developers. As of this writing, the average salary of a JavaScript
developer is $110,841 per year in the United States according to
Indeed, a job website (
www.indeed.com/salaries/Javascript-Developer-
Salaries ). So not only is JavaScript a language worth taking a look at,
it can be a good addition to your toolset a developer. Let’s have a quick
discussion of what JavaScript is and then move onto writing some code.

What Is JavaScript?
JavaScript is an interpreted scripting language. The host environment
will provide access to all the objects needed to execute the code.
 The primary example for JavaScript is the ability to add interactivity
to a website. This works because the interpreter is embedded into a
web browser so you do not need to add any software.
This has made JavaScript a language that is easily accessible
because all you need is a text editor and a browser. On the client side,
you can add levels of interactivity like responding to button clicks and
validating the contents of a form. It will also allow you to take
advantage of the APIs (application programming interfaces) that are
built into a browser. Adding something like geolocation capabilities to
your site is an example of this.
Another use case is to execute JavaScript on the server, using an
environment like Node.js. An example of server-side JavaScript is the
ability to do things like make requests from a database and respond to
HTTP requests and create files.
The majority of this book will focus on the client side; however,
there is very little difference from a code perspective.

JavaScript in a Web Page and Essential Syntax

Applying JavaScript to a web document is very easy; all you need to do
is use the script tag:

<script>
// Your code here
</script>

While this is the simplest way of adding JavaScript to the page, it is

not recommended. This is an example of inline JavaScript. One of the
reasons not to build your site this way is that it becomes hard to
maintain over time. Imagine, as your website grows in size, how
difficult it would be to keep everything organized.
The preferred way to add JavaScript to an HTML page is to refer to
an external .js file:

<script src="js/myfile.js"></script>
 Note HTML 5 requires that the script tag have its own closing
tag. This will ensure backwards combability with older browsers. In
addition, adding the script tag right before the ending body tag is
considered a best practice.

JavaScript Syntax
Learning any programming language is very similar to learning a
foreign language. There are rules to follow and that may require a
different way of thinking.
There is a lot of problem solving in programming. You spend time
looking at a situation and trying to figure out how to use code to solve
the problem. With that in mind, let’s take that angle in how we discuss
JavaScript.
If you want to hold onto a piece of information to be used later, this
is called a variable . If you remember any high school algebra, there are
always examples where a word or letter represents a value:

5 + x = 10

In this example, x is a variable that represents a number. Using

JavaScript, you can declare a variable and give it a value and then use it
later:

var x = 5;
5 + x = 10;

The above code is not perfect JavaScript, but it illustrates the idea of
how variables work. The first line uses the keyword var; this is built
into the language and can only be used when declaring a variable. At
the end of each line is a semicolon, which can be thought of as the
period at the end of a sentence. The JavaScript interpreter does not
require you to have it. If you do not add semicolons, the interpreter will
add them for you. In order to have more control and to make it easier to
read, it is recommended that you add them on your own.
The keyword var is not the only way to declare a variable. Other
keywords like let and const can also be used. I will cover what
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 We had not yet been out for our audience with the king. Nothing
more had been said concerning it; the operation had become all-
absorbing to everyone. The city quite obviously was in an excitement
over it, an excitement only surpassed by our own publicly
unexplained presence.
They had taken little Dolores up to our roof-top, where, from
below, a curious throng gazed up at her. And then taken Loro. I
heard the wild cheering.
I had wondered why they would not take one eye only, that each
might see. But they had told me that it was impossible. In this
instance, a lone one transplanted could not survive. There were
technical, deeply medical reasons for this. I did not pry into these.
Then they brought Dolores back. Her eyes were bandaged.
Hours passed. The healing fluid they said was very swift. When
Dolores awoke we could remove the bandages. Alice and I sat
together.
Dr. Weatherby entered with Jim. Behind them, lingering near the
doorway, was the chief surgeon who had performed the operation.
He said softly, “You can awaken her. A little less light. Then you can
take the bandages off.”
We awakened her gently. She sat up weakly, in bewilderment.
“Oh, the bandage, yes, I remember now. They told me it was over. I
was all right. And then I went to sleep.”
We gathered around her. A flat gray twilight was in the room.
Dolores sat in the bed. Her long, dark tresses fell forward over her
white shoulders.
My breath came fast. To see the light, form, color, the world, for
the first time!
Very slowly, gently, Dr. Weatherby unwound the bandages. They
dropped from his trembling hands to the bed.
“Now, Dolores, open your eyes, just a little.”
The dark lashes on her cheeks fluttered up, and closed instantly
against the light. She could see!
Her eyes opened again, timidly, fearfully. But they stayed open,
glorious dark eyes, luminous, eyes that were seeing! Eyes with light
in them.
 They opened very wide. Surprised, wondering!
“I see! I see!” There were no words to express her emotion. Just
surprise and awe surging in her voice, stamped on her face. “I see!
Jim, is that you, Jim? Why, that’s Jim I see!” Her hand went to her
eyes as though to clear a blurring vision. “That . . . must be Jim.
Come here, Jim. I want to see you closer.”
He fell on his knees beside the bed, and her hands went to his
shoulders, his face, his hair.
“Jim, it is you! It looks like you!”

“When do you suppose this king will see us, Len?” Jim asked.
“How is Loro?”
“Oh, you weren’t here when Ren told us. More to it than he said,
of course but that’s none of our business and we’re not going to
make it our business. It was the end for Loro. It must have been
planned that way.”
“I surmised as much. It’s pretty tough. At least he carried out his
last wish and was able to make atonement for his crime by giving
Dolores her sight. Now to our problem: I wish the king would see us.
What did Ren say about that?”
I understood that our audience would be at any time. Ren was to
let us know. Dolores had again fallen asleep. From where Jim and I
sat I could see her bed, with Dr. Weatherby sitting there beside her.
Jim said, “When we once see the king and get out of here, things
will look different. Why’s the old doc sitting there so long? He acted
queer to me, Len. Did you see his face when he knew that Dolores
was cured?”
I never answered the question. We heard a sound from in there,
a choking cry, and saw Dr. Weatherby with a hand clutching his
throat.
“Len, what the infernal—”
We rushed in. Dr. Weatherby sat looking at us. He had torn the
collar of his robe with convulsive fingers. He stared at us. His hands
were groping for the sides of his chair. “Len! I can’t . . . can’t get
up!”
 Before we could reach him, his great head sagged to the high
hunched shoulders. He twitched a little, then slumped inert.
I swung on Jim. “Go pound on the door! Tell them to let you out!
Get Ren! Tell Ren to bring a doctor, someone to help us!”
“He’s . . . dead?”
“No! Unconscious. He may be dying. Get help.”

They believed that Dr. Weatherby was dying. He lay in a room off
our main apartment now, still unconscious, lying with closed eyes,
motionless save for the tiny stirring of his breath.
It was, by earthly standards of day and night, now late
afternoon, a soft, pale daylight. After another time of sleep the long
night would be upon us.
They could not say how long Dr. Weatherby would live. There
seemed nothing to do for him. The shock of his joy over Dolores, the
let-down of the tension under which he had been laboring, had
brought a collapse.
In hushed tones, with the awe of death upon us, we sat talking.
We were on the upper half-story of the apartment off which the
small bedrooms opened. I heard the sound of the door downstairs,
and heard Ren’s voice. “How is he?”
I leaned over the balcony. “There is no change. Come up, Ren.”
He mounted the incline stairs. With him was a young girl. He
introduced her gravely.
“The daughter of my uncle, who now is dead. She is named
Sonya; she is very proud that she has learned from me your
language. Hold out your hand, child. They shake it for the greeting,
you see?”
I took the girl’s extended hand. She was the first woman we had
seen of this new realm, and I regarded her curiously. She seemed of
an age before full maturity, a small girl, small as Dolores, slim,
almost fragile of body, garbed in a single short garment from neck to
knees.
It was a sort of smock, of soft dull-red pleats, gathered with a
girdle at the waist, high at the neck, with long, tight-fitting sleeves
to the wrist. Over it was a long cloak of a heavier material which she
discarded upon entering.
Her legs were bare. On her feet were leather sandals. Her hair
was long and black as jet. Parted in the middle, it partially covered
her ears, was caught by a thong at the back of her neck; and its
long tresses, hanging nearly to her waist, were bound by a
ribbonlike cord.
Her face was oval with expressive dark eyes and long black
lashes. Sensuous lips, I thought, but a mouth and chin that bespoke
a firm character. A beautiful young girl, intelligent, perhaps beyond
most of her race. And that she was modish was plain to be seen.
Her coat had a jaunty cut to it, a lining of delicate fabric and
contrasting color. Her smock was very tight at the throat, shoulders
and sleeves, and tight across the bust to mould her youthful breast.
It fell not quite to her knees and flared with a stiffly circular
bottom. Her face carried the stamp of youth and health.
She discarded her cloak and stopped to remove the skin sandals
from her feet. Upon her left leg, just above the knee, was clasped a
broad, white metal band.
“I am glad to know the strangers.” Her glance went to the room
where Dr. Weatherby was lying. “But I intrude at a very sad time for
you.”
She and Ren sat quietly down among us. Ren said,
“Our king, too, is ill. A very old man.” He shook his head
dubiously.
“Oh,” said Jim. “Well, then we—”
Sonya seemed to take the thought from him. “I have already told
my cousin,” she said quickly, “that you must swear your allegiance to
the king at once. We need you. You men look very strong, very
masterful.”
She said it frankly, merely as a statement of fact, but there was
an unconscious admiration in her gaze. “We need you and we . . .
perhaps we need the girls.” She said the last with a singular,
enigmatic emphasis.
“Right,” said Jim heartily. “You fix it up for us, get the audience. I
want to be out of here. We’ve been tied here like time-keepers in a
tower.”
“Our king will die. That is sure now. Our girls must act; it is now
or never!”
 VIII
REBELLING VIRGINS
It was from Sonya that we first learned any tangible details of
this new realm. She and I, with Dolores and Alice, were seated by
Dr. Weatherby’s bedside. Two days had passed. His condition was
unchanged. We were sure now that he would never regain
consciousness.
The old king too, was more gravely ill than before. He had sent
for us so that at his bedside we might take the oath of service. Jim
had gone with Ren. The rest of us remained beside the dying doctor.
The end would come soon, at any time now, doubtless.
Sonya was talking softly. I turned from the bedside to regard her
earnest face.
“This city,” she was saying, “we call Kalima. There was an ancient
tribe dwelt here; the chief, they thought he was a god, the god Kali.”
She was addressing Alice, but now she turned to me. “Our land lies
in a great depression of this globe’s surface. Once, perhaps, it was
the bottom of some great sea. It rises into mountains everywhere. It
is not large; we are less than a quarter of a million people. The
caves are at the foothills.
“You will hear more of them later.” She had waved aside a
question of Dolores’. “On the Great Island, not far from here, is what
we call the Village of the Virgins, where now about three hundred of
our girls are living in rebellion.”
“Rebellion against the government?” I asked.
“Yes. Against the man-made laws.” She smiled her quiet, grave
smile. “You have come, you strangers, at a time to find our nation in
what we girls think is a condition very grave. You, my friends, will
understand very well what we girls are protesting against. And now,
with our prince and princess vanished, and our king about to die, the
time has come to—”
She checked herself suddenly.
 Alice was regarding her with a blue-eyed gaze of quite obvious
admiration. Dolores moved over on the low couch; her hand plucked
at the hem of Sonya’s smock as it lay just above her knees and
touched the smooth white metal band that encircled her leg.
“Sonya, what is that? Just for ornament? It’s very pretty.”
“No,” she said. “Not altogether for ornament. Every woman
wears one.” She brushed her fingers across it; her smile was
quizzical. “It is, in fact, well . . . it had become almost a symbol of
what we girls are striving for. The virgins’ band. You see, it is quite
unmarked. No man’s name is engraved there. I’ll explain in a
moment.”
“Our king, with twenty of his counsellors—my cousin Ren is one
of them—rule the nation. They make no new laws. The old laws are
good enough for them. The guards, you would call them police, are
all the army we have.
“They are all men, young, sturdy fellows who have no thought
but to do what they are told. Which is right, of course. It is the laws
which are wrong, inhuman. They are very old laws. They have now
become customs, traditions, handed down from father to son.”
Her tone was suddenly bitter. She gestured with a slim,
expressive hand. “I must talk more calmly. These things against
which we have now come to open rebellion, were doubtless
necessary at the beginning. The laws were made by men who knew
no better.
“The difficulty is in the sex of our children. Out of three births,
two on the average are females and only one a male. We have,
therefore, twice as many females as males—twice as many women
as men. Or at least, there would be twice as many if—” She checked
herself again.
“Thus we have . . . I think Ren said that on earth it was termed
polygamy. A man may marry more than one woman.”
Dolores said impulsively, “Oh, I would not like that! It used to be
a custom in many parts of the earth, but there is almost none of it
now.”
“We girls of this generation do not like it either,” said Sonya.
 Her voice turned very grave. “What we are rebelling against is far
worse. Often our girl children, if they seem not destined to be
beautiful, are killed. The father does not wish the expense of too
many girls.
“Girls or women are never allowed to work. They must only strive
to be beautiful. And when they have at last reached the proper age,
to get rid of them by marriage, the father must pay a large tax to
the state.
“At the age of twenty a girl must choose one of the men who has
recorded his name as desiring her. Any man is legally eligible to do
that. He may have no wife as yet. Or he may have one wife, or
several. If he has the necessary money for the tax, and deposits it
with the government, his name is recorded.
“You see,” she was cynical now, “the government needs the
money. And it likes our girls to be beautiful. Fifty men may record
their names as desiring a girl who is very beautiful.
“She can choose but one man. But the government only refunds
half the money the others have deposited. It makes a lot of money
on a very beautiful girl.”
“A sort of lottery!” I exclaimed. “With women as the prizes.”
“I do not understand,” said Sonya. “But that is the way it is with
us. Beautiful girls are profitable to the government. No girl-child who
showed promise of beauty has ever been found murdered.
“But woman’s beauty fades, and there are many female mouths
to feed, and female bodies to clothe and house. It makes more work
for the men and the men do not like to work. And so—”
The cynicism had left her voice. A hush fell upon her tragic
words. “And so, when a woman can no longer bear children, when
her beauty is going, then she is considered a burden.
“She has never been trained to work. She is useless; an expense.
“Each year our old women are chosen—a certain number of
them, depending on the birth-rate—are chosen to die. They are
given a blanket, a little food, and are taken to a place we call Death
Island. Left there alone, they live a while. Then die.
“I’ve seen them draw the death number! I’ve seen, on the island,
their wasted bodies lying huddled!” Her voice choked. “But they go
away, start for the island so patient, so resigned.
“It is that for which we are in rebellion more than anything else!
We of this generation now cannot stand it. We will not stand it!”
To my mind had come memories of the savages of our earth, not
so many centuries ago. They too, had thought it expedient to leave
aged members of their tribes to die. The vision Sonya was invoking
to my imagination was horrible. I found my voice.
“Your men here, Sonya, surely they are not all against you girls?
Your cause?”
“No,” she said. “But how many are with us at heart, we do not
know. And men are very strange. You cannot talk with them; they
pretend you are not intelligent enough to be worthy of talking. My
cousin Ren—”
Ren! It seemed incongruous.
She went on, “He is like all the rest. It is not, from his viewpoint,
inhuman. It is the way things always have been. His mother died
that way. He says, ‘Her life was ended.’ He says that men, brave
men, meet death that way. Their life is over, the creator calls them
and they go bravely.”
“But,” said Dolores, “the man who hands out the death number is
not the creator.”
“Ah,” said Sonya, “but if you told that to a man he would say you
do not understand.”
Her hand went to her leg. “You asked me about this band. It is
placed upon us when we are just maturing. On it is engraved the
name of the man we are to marry.
“If he divorces us, that is written here, and the name of the man
who next takes us. Our marriage record: written plain that all may
see!” Her fingers touched the band’s smooth surface. “There is
nothing on mine, as yet. And there never will be, unless we win our
case.”
Alice said, “Are you one of the rebels?”
“I am at heart, and I’m working with them. Technically, legally I
am not. It is nearly a year yet, as you on your earth measure time,
before I am of the age when I can be forced to marry.”
“What have the girls done?” I asked. “Refused to marry?”
 “Yes. About eighteen hundred of them. Most are just about at the
legal age. They left the cities, went to the Great Island, and there
they have built themselves a village. They grow food there; they
work; they are self-supporting. To many old women and a few girl-
children, they have given sanctuary.”
“And the government does nothing about it?” I exclaimed.
“They did, at first. Men were sent to the Virgins’ Island to get
some of the old women; but the girls forcibly resisted them. Some of
the girls were killed. Nothing much has been done about it since.
The government, I think, does not know what to do.”
She was scornful. “Our girls are very beautiful. It would not be
profitable to kill them.”
Alice said, “You reach the marriage age in a year, Sonya? Have
any men recorded their names for you?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “There were eight, I think, when I last went
to the records.”
“But you wouldn’t marry any of them? Or perhaps I should not
ask.”
“Why not? There is no secret in such things. One man whose
name is recorded for me I love very dearly. Our prince.”
A sound from Dolores interrupted her. Dolores was sitting with
hands to her forehead and eyes closed. She murmured, “I caught
someone’s thoughts! Now they come again.”
We waited through a breathless silence. Then Dolores murmured,
“The prince. You called him Altho? It is he!”
Sonya gripped her. “What is he thinking? Tell me! Tell me
quickly!”
Then she too, received the thoughts. She sat tense. “Oh, the
princess is dead! Killed!”
“Killed!” echoed Dolores. Then her face went vague: she was
getting nothing more.
But evidently Sonya was still in communication. She cried aloud
involuntarily, “Altho! Dearest, dearest Altho! Where are you? Tell
Sonya. Oh, he does not know! Or he cannot tell me! He says—” it
was a stark whisper of horror—“he says soon he will be killed too.”
 She sprang to her feet, then abruptly sat down again. “Altho!
Altho, where are you?”
The communication broke. Her face went vague, puzzled, empty.
And then despairing.
Beyond the window, in the street below the balcony, a sudden
murmur of voices floated up to us. We went to the balcony. It was
night now, a night of pale stars in a cloudless sky. Shouting people
were coming up the street. They appeared in a moment at the
bottom of the hill, a crowd of men, a hundred or more. They came
forward, swept around the corner, and vanished. Above the babble
was a single sentence. A man called it. Others took it up.
Sonya murmured, “They say, ‘Our king is dying.’ And the princess
dead! And your grandfather. . . . Death everywhere!”
The man in the street shouted again. And Sonya sprang from the
couch.
“He says, ‘Our king is dead.’ ” She laughed hysterically. “Death
everywhere! I must go to the Island of the Virgins. Will you come? I
can take you. The virgins are ready! We must act at once!”

IX
THE NAMELESS HORROR
It was the first time we had had any freedom since our arrival.
Ren had not returned with Jim. If the king were really dead, there
would be a great confusion at the castle. They might be detained
indefinitely.
Sonya would not wait. “A few hours only,” she urged. “Then we
will be back. I will leave a message for my cousin and your friend.”
The first shock of Dr. Weatherby’s death was over. There was no
advantage in the girls remaining here.
We started finally. On the lower floor of the house we found long
dark cloaks and donned them, with a queerly flat, mound-shaped
hat for me and light scarfs to cover the girls’ heads. The lower door
was open. Ren had left it so, knowing that Sonya would stay with us.
 Technically we were prisoners. But Sonya paid scant ceremony to
that now. The king was dead: our oath of allegiance to the nation
would be taken for granted.
“My allegiance goes to you,” Dolores said naively. “You girls.”
Alice nodded.
“Yes,” said Sonya. “But do not say so openly. And you, my friend,
Leonard—you are a man—be careful what you say if you have any
sympathy for our cause.”
Sympathy! How mild a word, as again visions of what she had
told us sprang before me!
In this residential section of the city there was at this hour no
traffic in the street. The shouting crowd had disappeared. Sonya led
us to the main street level. The pedestrian bridges were above us.
An unnatural silence seemed to hang about the dark, somnolent
city, as though it only seemed sleeping and was wide awake. A
tenseness was in the air. The houses were dark, but in almost every
window I fancied that figures were watching, faces peering out.
We avoided the lights. Mounted the hill for a block or two, then
turned into a very narrow street of shadows.
The houses here, the back of houses, I assumed, were blank,
two-storied walls.
We passed each of them hurriedly. My heart was thumping.
Sonya had said that these were merely back entrances to inner
courtyards of the houses. But it seemed, to my sharpened fancy,
that in every one some horrible lurking thing was waiting to spring
upon us.
Sonya was leading. She was taking us through a back way to her
home, to get the vehicle that would transport us to the island. We
were nearing the end of the alley; it opened ahead of us into a
broad street with a dim glow of light illumining it. To our right, just
ahead, was a courtyard entrance: a yawning cave-mouth of
emptiness.
We had almost reached it when Sonya abruptly halted, checked
our advance as though she had struck some invisible barrier,
stopped, and shrank backward, pressing against us. And her hand in
terror was over her mouth to stifle a scream.
 I saw it then, what she was seeing. A thing, something
monstrous, lurking in the blackness of that cave-like house entrance,
a thing huge, of vague, grotesque outline, an upright thing, with a
great balloon-like head, bobbing from side to side, two eyes glowing
in the darkness. And below them, where a neck might have been,
two other smaller eyes, green, blazing points of fire.
In all my veins the blood seemed freezing, prickling needle-points
of ice exuding through my pores, my scalp prickling at the hair-
roots. I was stricken with fright and horror. But an instinct, so that I
scarcely realized what I was doing, made me pull Sonya soundlessly
backward, sweep all three of the girls behind me and downward.
And as they sank to the pavement, I crouched tense in front of
them.
The thing seemingly had not heard us, or seen us. It advanced
out of the darkness of the doorway; in the dimness of the outside
light I saw it more clearly, a thing like a great upright animal, ten
feet tall, perhaps, and monstrously cast in human mold, with thick,
bent legs. It had a long, thick trunk with wide, powerful shoulders
and a deep, bulging chest, and arms that dangled nearly to its
knees.
Its head, no wider than its powerful neck, was small, round, and
flat on top. There seemed a face; its tiny blazing eyes were plain in
the darkness.
A two-headed thing! The small head was bent forward. Behind it,
as though astride of the shoulders, was another head, balloon-like:
huge, wider than the shoulders, a head seemingly inflated,
distended. A large flat face. The thing took a step. Its large head
wobbled as it moved.
My hand behind me kept the girls motionless. The thing came to
the end of the narrow street, emerged into the glow of light there. It
did not pause—the light obviously was not to its liking—it bounded
sidewise, noiseless on padded feet, and was gone into the shadows.
But in that instant under the light, I had seen it more clearly. A
giant, gorilla-like figure. A man! Black hair seemed upon its body,
but the body was partially clothed. And I fancied I had seen a belt
strapped about its waist, with dangling weapons.
 The bobbling head astride upon its shoulders was very different
from the rest of the thing. A bloated membrane? I got that
impression. It seemed a smooth, dead-white skin; I thought I had
seen distended veins on it.
And as the powerful body leaped, I fancied I saw thin little arms,
four of them, hanging inert from the bloated head.
It was gone. I breathed again. Behind me the huddled girls were
shuddering. At my ear Sonya was whispering,
“The Nameless Horror!”

X
THE FLIGHT TO THE VIRGINS’ ISLAND
We did not continue down that street. Sonya took us back. We
turned another corner, and another. Soon we were near her home.
She had not swerved from her purpose to take us to the Virgins’
Island. This thing we had seen was one of many of its kind which
dwelt in the fastnesses of the mountains beyond the caves.
They never came out into the light; none, Sonya thought, had
ever been seen more clearly than we had seen this one. No man of
this realm, to Sonya’s knowledge, had ever ventured into the caves
to seek them out.
I could not understand such a condition. On earth, nothing had
ever been so fearsome but that man had sought to destroy it. But
these people were of a different cast of mind.
“Sonya,” I demanded, “how long have these things been in the
caves?”
“They were first seen only just before our prince and princess
vanished.”
We reached Sonya’s home, a low, oval stone building, dark in its
enshrouding garden of flower-trees. She led us aside, toward a small
outbuilding. I suddenly paused.
I was in sympathy with Sonya and her cause, but was not the
plight of the prince more important? Had I not better go and join Jim
now, and follow the course we had planned?
We reached the dark, single-storied outbuilding. Sonya touched a
switch. A soft glow showed inside. It was a square building of stone
and metal, windows barred by a metal screening, a doorway with a
hinged screen.
“Sonya,” I said, “just what is this you intend doing?”
She regarded me. Alice and Dolores stood beside her. I found
myself arrayed against the three of them.
“Why,” she said, “we are going to the Island of the Virgins. The
girls are ready; we have been waiting—” she hesitated, then
finished, “waiting for this chance which has come tonight.”
“What chance? The king being ill or dead?”
Her eyes flashed. “Yes. The girls are ready. They will come back
with us, now.”
She stood with shoulders squared, a defiant little figure before
me.
I said, more gently, “What are you girls planning to do, Sonya?”
I think she had already told Alice and Dolores. They moved closer
as though to defend her. Alice flashed me a defiant look.
I repeated, “What are you planning to do?”
Her eyes held level. “It is not my secret. You are a man. I have
no right to tell you.” She added very slowly, but wholly without
emotion,
“I think perhaps you had better go back.”
It struck me with a vague sense of shame. I felt like a deserter.
Alice said calmly, “Are you going back, Len?”
With what loyalty these girls already were banded against me!
Little Dolores clutched me.
“Don’t do that, Leonard! Sonya, you misunderstand him.”
I tried to explain myself. “It’s only because I thought the other
course would be better for the prince,” I finished. “How long will this
take us, Sonya?”
Sudden tears were in her eyes. “I believe you! But you must
know that I . . . least of all, would delay to help him I love! Mine is
the better way, and we won’t be long—a few hours at most.”
I yielded, “All right, Sonya. You know best.”
 We entered the building, a large room divided by the metal
screening into huge cages. A great commotion, the flapping of
wings, greeted our entrance. Travel in this realm indeed was
primitive. We were to go by air, on a gliding platform drawn by giant
birds trained to harness.
Sonya pulled down a swinging tube of light from the ceiling and
held it toward one of the cages. Eight giant birds were there, soft,
gray-white feathered bodies, heads small, round and bald with black
top-knots like plumes.
They stood upon short legs, yet were as tall as myself. They
seemed very gentle; they regarded us timorously, but curiously.
They knew Sonya; as she entered the cage, they nuzzled with their
beaks against her smock.
“Ah, Nana! They want sweets,” she laughed. One, more bold,
pecked at her pocket. She leaned, and with her shoulder heaved it
away. Then she produced small pieces of sweetmeat and made them
each take a piece decorously.
“They are well trained, you see?” She rested an arm against the
great curving side of one of them. I could well imagine that on its
soft back she could have ridden into the air. One had lazily opened
its wings; a feathered spread of fifteen feet at least, graceful wings,
gray-white, with tips that were solid black.
The platform was under an enclosure of the flat roof. Sonya
rolled it out, a platform some ten feet long, by six wide. Soft furs
covered its surface. It was mounted upon small wheels, with a frame
set in small cylinders of compressed gas as cushions against the
shock of landing.
Midway of the platform, underneath, was a cross rod. Sonya
extended its sections sidewise, each jutting out some six feet
beyond the platform edge. To each of the ends of this rod, a bird
was harnessed. The other six were in two strings in front, three in a
string, one in advance of the other.
There were reins for the leading birds to pull their heads gently
from one side to the other, a rein to pull downward on their feet,
another rein, which when drawn upon, raised a cushion to press
upward against the bird’s throat.
 It took Sonya only a few minutes to harness them. I had been
inspecting the platform. It was built of a light metal framework,
upon which a thin, strong membrane was stretched. The whole
seemed light as a kite.
Beneath it, set in the space between its landing gear, was a
system of small, flexible wings, and movable cones through which
the air rushed. And there was a horizontal and vertical rudder, with
flexible tips. Flying skill was needed. There were several controls
near the front of the platform, where now the reins were held in a
notched cross-bar.
“We are ready,” said Sonya. She stretched upon her side on the
fur covering of the platform with the reins and the controls before
her.
We took our places beside her and behind her, lying at full
length, arms crooked into leather straps to hold us. Sonya called to
the birds. Eight of them as one, leaped upward. The great wings
flapped. We moved, rolled across the roof. At its edge we lifted with
a jerk.
The low housetop, the dark trees, other roofs, the dim city lights
all slid downward into a blur of shadow. On a long slant, we headed
upward into the starlit night.
I lay on my side, clinging to that swaying, leaping platform. The
wind surged past, tearing away every sound save the flapping of
those giant wings. A graceful bird on each side of me, two strings of
them slanting upward in front, winged swiftly up into the night,
drawing me after them.
The dark world was lost and gone. The star encrusted dome of
the heavens encompassed everything.
This was not an air voyage. It was flying. The platform fluttered,
slid over the air like some swiftly drawn kite. The heavens swung
with a dizzy lurching. I gazed over the edge at the dark, moving
landscape far down.
The faint lights of the city showed a thinly-built, suburban area,
then the shore of a star-lit sea ahead. Primitive flying, with the first
startling strangeness of it gone, its romance swept over me, a magic
carpet upon which I lay, magically flying over reams of mystery, a
flight unreal—romantically miraculous.
I was brought back from roaming fancy. Dolores, lying beside
me, was pulling at my shoulder. I caught her words before the wind
snatched at them.
“Look, Leonard! There is the island!”
There was no fear of this flight upon Dolores’s face. Only an
eager wonderment, her mind struggling with these sights: romantic,
awing to me, how much more so to her so newly emerged from a
life-long darkness! “See the island, Leonard!”
We were, I suppose, no more than a thousand feet high. The
shore of the sea was nearly beneath us, a dark, curving shore of
gray sand with gentle white waves rolling upon it. Beyond the shore,
some ten miles out, a dark island showed. It seemed irregularly
circular.
As we swept closer its beach became visible, gray-white sand
with white rollers. A tangle of vegetation was behind the beach, a
forest jungle with the land sloping up over gentle foothills to a cone-
shaped hill which occupied the island’s center.
Along one shore of the island, yellow and blue spots of lights
were showing among the trees at the edge of the beach. It was all
dim in the starlight. Far ahead, where the sea unbroken reached the
horizon of stars, a yellow glow had come to the sky.
Sonya gestured, “The moon is rising.”
It came with a startling abruptness. A great yellow world swung
up, twice, three times the visual size of our moon: a glowing yellow
disk, marked with the dark configurations of its mountains. It rose
horn-shaped, mounted straight up, slowly, but with a movement
quite visible. The stars paled around it. A flood of yellow light lay
upon the sea in a broad path of rippling gold.
The island was bathed in the golden flood. We were much closer
to it now, swooping a few hundred feet above its beach which along
here was broad and hard. The jungle was beside us, a fairyland of
tropical verdure.
Warmed by the waters of the sea, and perhaps by hidden fires of
the cone-shaped hill, the vegetation grew to giant size.
 A giant forest edged with gold, mysteriously dark, romantic,
amorous, scented with spices and the heavy perfume of flowers.
We landed upon the beach where the warm waves were liquid
gold beside low, primitive, palm-thatched dwellings set like ground
nests in the verdure.
With the rush of our flight gone, I felt a new warmth in the air.
Upon my cheeks was the caressing breath of a warm breeze from
the sea; it stirred the palm-fronds to amorous whispering.
White figures were drawn back from the beach to watch us land.
They crowded forward into the moonlight, young girls, slim and
white, with long, flowing black hair.
As I stood up and stepped from the platform to the sand, some
of them scattered and fled with startled feminine cries into the
enshrouded foliage. Others came shyly forward, crowded around us
—golden nymphs in the moonlight, with a brief, veil-like garment
from shoulder to thigh.
They were surprised at me, a man, here upon their island. They
crowded around Sonya, talking seemingly all at once, casting
mistrustful glances at me, and glances of curiosity and friendliness at
Alice and Dolores.
What Sonya said to them I could only guess. It caused an
excitement; like fauns, many of them leaped away, running down
the beach, scattering over the village. In the distance I could hear
their cries, and other cries, shouts, a great activity beginning.
And presently there was heard the cheep of giant birds, the
flapping of their wings as they were released from their cages and
brought out to be harnessed. Far ahead down the beach in the
moonlight, presently a crowd of the girls began rolling out a huge
platform.
The few girls who remained with Sonya continued talking. They
were tense now, but wholly composed, beautiful, intelligent-looking
girls, most of them a year or so older than Sonya, and very much
the same type. Upon the left leg of each, just above the knee, was a
broad metal band.
The girls now were ignoring me. But Sonya called Dolores and
Alice over, and it was obvious they were welcomed.
 I saw presently, some of the older women. With a few little girls
among them, they came to the edge of the forest and stood timidly
regarding us—infancy and age, common fugitives.
Alice was gesturing toward the sky. I turned. Off there in the
starlight, in the direction we had come, was a lone bird flying. In a
moment I could see its wings.
Sonya called something; and added to Alice, “A girl arriving from
Kalima.”
The bird swooped in a great descending arc, a great white bird
like those which had drawn our platform. Mounted upon its back was
the figure of a girl, her arms clinging about its neck. It soared with
poised wings, descended to the beach near us.
The girl leaped to the sand and called, “Sonya! Sonya!”
They talked in their own language; then Sonya whirled to me.
Her face had gone white.
“Alta, this girl, lives very near Ren’s house in Kalima. I do not
mean my home, his and mine. I mean that other house of his where
you were living. Alta went there to see me.”
She was talking swiftly. Alice and Dolores drew me to one side; a
common feeling of disaster was upon us all.
“Alta found the door open and went in. She read my message to
Ren, that we had come here to the island. She was leaving. In the
street outside she heard voices. From the window she saw Ren with
your Jim. They were nearly to the house.
“Then . . . a great black thing leaped upon them, a giant, with a
great, wobbling head. What we saw, Leonard! The Nameless Horror!
It leaped upon them, and there were two or three others of its kind.
They seized my cousin and Jim. Lifted them up, carried them off!
She . . . Alta, took one of my birds, and came here to tell us!”

XI
A MAN, TO PLAY A MAN’S PART
 I stood a moment, transfixed with horror. Alice’s face had become
as white as Sonya’s. Dolores uttered a faint little cry, “Jim!”
“Sonya—” I began. But she had turned to give orders to the girls.
They sped away. I finished, “Sonya, get me back, at once!”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But you can do nothing—a stranger—you
cannot talk our language.”
“I can, with you to interpret for me.”
She whirled upon Alta with other questions, then back to me.
“More than ever now, I must go through with our plans. Alta says
the king is not dead. But dying, he will die at any moment. We must
get back.”
Down the beach the large platform was ready. A hundred girls or
more were loading upon it. With a great flapping of the wings of the
birds, it moved down the beach. Rose into the air. It had four strings
of ten birds each, with others harnessed in tandem all along its
sides. Magnificently, it sailed upward, turned in a broad arc, and
passed us high overhead.
From everywhere now the girls were rising. Another great
platform, and still another. A score of smaller ones; and from the
forest, a hundred or more individual birds, each with a lone rider.
They flapped up from among the palms; circled overhead, with
their numbers augmenting until they headed away. The first
platforms were now mere blobs in the starlight. A thousand girls, I
estimated, were up there in flight.
We hurried to our platform. Again we were in the air. Below us
still another platform was rising; around us, three or four mounted
birds circled like a convoy. We took our place in the line and sped
back to the city.
“Is the king dead, Sonya?”
“No. I do not think so.”
I waited a moment. “Sonya, you girls are not armed?”
She said impulsively, “No. But in the underground rooms of the
castle, the science weapons are stored. Once we get control of them
—” She checked herself, but she had told me what I wanted to
know. An arsenal under the castle! The weapons of a half-forgotten
science of this decadent race, stored there!
 I shuddered at the visions which surged to my imagination. Here
in the city—a government menaced by crusading girls! This was our
condition, pitiable indeed, to oppose a savage, outside enemy!
Yet what was I to do? I pondered it until a vague possibility came
to me. It gripped me. It seemed feasible. I believed I could
accomplish it. With swiftness of action, power, dominance, I could
carry it through. A grim exaltation was upon me. A man, to play a
man’s part.
We landed with a swoop upon the moonlit garden sward. The
girls crowded around us, with a fringe of curious, apathetic men
behind them. Sonya turned to speak to Alice and Dolores. Near by
was a dark path between beds of giant flowers. I slipped from the
platform. With my cloak held before my face, I avoided the girls and
plunged into the shadows of the flowered path.
The path was dark, cut off from the moonlight by a great bed of
flowers rising high above my head. A group of men came toward
me; I stepped between the flower stalks, stood enshrouded in my
cloak, my figure merging with the shadows, until the men had
passed.
I caught a near glimpse of them. Young men, stalwart fellows, no
doubt, according to the standards of their race. But not one of them
was taller than my shoulder, and beside me, they were frail, delicate
of build.
In a weaponless fight, I could doubtless have engaged two or
three of them, and come off the victor.
The path turned into a dim street that encircled the rear of the
castle, into the arsenal through some postern gate along here. The
arsenal was within this curving wall of stone. I passed such a gate
now, a small narrow opening, half the height of my upright body.
But it was blocked solidly with a metal door which I could see no
way of opening.
I passed on, heading back through the city to the house in which
we had been held since our arrival. Behind that house, with a
viaduct connecting them, was the laboratory room in which we had
arrived. Our space-vehicle was there. I could not operate the vehicle,
but it held a weapon I wanted.
 I remembered that Jim had brought it. In the excitement of our
arrival, the strangeness of everything, we had forgotten it, the
Frazier beam, brought out by an Aberdeen physicist in 1994.
I had left the castle behind me, and turned, somewhat dubiously,
into another street. I was sure if I could get to Sonya’s house, where
so recently we had been, I could retrace my way from there. I had
planned this while on the flying platform as we circled over the
castle. I had been able then to locate Sonya’s home, and to gauge
the lay of the streets in between. I turned another corner. The street
was brighter.
Another corner. I saw and recognized Sonya’s house. From there,
my way was sure. Within twenty minutes after leaving the castle
grounds, I was groping in the darkness back of the house where Dr.
Weatherby’s body lay.
It was near here that the Nameless Horrors had caught Jim and
Ren. But I saw no signs of them now. The viaduct connecting the
two buildings was a dark thin line against the stars. The building I
was hoping to enter was wholly dark. A two-story structure: the
viaduct extended from its upper floor.
I prowled around. The lower window openings were all barred.
The door oval was barred. A stairway led up from the ground to the
viaduct. From the viaduct’s platform I saw a cornice, too high for a
normal man to reach. But I leaped for it, pulled myself up upon the
dome-shaped roof of a turret.
A leap from here and I was upon the main flat roof. There should
be a door under a mound cover; most of the buildings had them. I
located it, wrenched at its bar. It yielded. I went down a curving
metal ladder, into the house.
In a moment I had located the laboratory room. Our vehicle in its
full normal size lay here, dead white, an end of it tinged yellow by a
shaft of moonlight.
I stepped within it, went to Jim’s cupboard, lighting a tiny battery
light overhead. The Frazier weapon I sought was here. Its copite
cone, with smooth glistening bone handle, copite headband, the tiny
pulse motor, the wires; it was all complete.
 A triumph swept me. I was unarmed no longer. Playing a lone
hand, here in this strange world, a man, comparatively of giant
strength and physical power. But I was more than that now. I had a
mental weapon, and the mental strength to use it.
I did not stop to adjust the apparatus. I wound it up in its wire,
and hastily retreated. I reached the street, with the weapon under
my cloak. I hurried back to the castle over the same route; I did not
want to chance losing my way.
But as I advanced, I had more than memory of the streets to
guide me. From the direction of the castle, a blur of cries was
audible, a hum, a murmur, which as I progressed resolved itself into
shouts. The shouting of a mob: heavy, angry voices of men, shrill
cries of girls, a single, long, agonized scream of a girl.
I was on a lower street that fronted the water. A side entrance to
the castle grounds was before me. Through the trees I could see the
frowning turreted walls of the castle. I stopped to adjust my
weapon.
It took no more than a moment. Around my forehead, with hat
discarded, I bound the headband, a narrow strip of finely woven
copite wire, with two small electrodes pressing my temples.
On the right side two finely drawn silk-insulated wires dangled
from the headband to my neck. I tucked them under my shirt, over
my shoulder, down my right arm to my wrist. A band at my wrist, to
which the wires were attached, held the tiny pulse-motor in place.
My heart set it in motion, to generate the necessary current.
The Frazier projector was a copite cone, this one some ten inches
long; its shape was a cone section, one end, the muzzle, with an
open diameter of six inches, the other end, one-fifth inch, across
which the diaphragm was fitted.
The bone handle screwed into place at the diaphragm. It was
hollow. Within it were amplifying tubes and a transformer, miracles
of smallness. The whole projector weighed some twenty Troy
ounces. I plugged the two connecting wires from my wristband to its
butt, gripped the handle with my index finger along its side, resting
on the trigger button.
 I was ready! My heart was racing. The tiny motor at my wrist
was racing. I could feel the hum of the current, the prickling of it
under the forehead band, its tiny stabbing throb at the electrodes
pressing my temples. There was power within me.
I had flung off my cloak. I stood in the white silk shirt, dark,
short, tight trousers, and high, heavy black stockings of my earth
costume, stood with outflung arms for an instant and exulted in the
wave of triumph which swept me. Against the people the power of
my weapon would be invincible.
Furtive no longer, I advanced with bold, open strides to the gate
of the castle grounds. A few men were there, evidently about to
enter. They stared at me. Before the strangeness of my aspect, the
boldness of my flashing glance, they quailed, cried with fear and
scattered before me.
I did not heed them. Beyond the gate, back from the water there
was a rise of ground. I mounted it, and from the thicket of flowers
that ornamented its top, gazed out at the moonlit scene.
Between the mound on which I stood, and the foot of the broad
staircase leading up the broad terrace to the castle entrance, a
throng of men were standing.
Spectators, standing idle. Occasionally a group of them would
surge forward in one direction or the other, milling about some
individual who seemed abruptly determined upon a course of action.
A mob without a leader. Excited, aimless, striving for points of
vantage to see what was taking place in front.
The girls were massed at the foot of the castle steps. Evidently,
just before I arrived, the girls had tried to mount them. The guards
were gathered in a group on top. Half way down, a girl’s body was
lying. It writhed, rolled down the steps. From the crowd of men a
murmur rose.
The scene was clear in the yellow moon-glow. The throng of girls
at the staircase bottom, were gathering their leaders, preparing
again to mount. The tense guards on top seemed confused, not
knowing how to deal with this unarmed attack.
On the castle balcony, at the head of the steep metal stairway, a
few other guards were standing. And on the rooftop, I could make
out the doddering figures of old men, gazing down in confused
terror.
There was, momentarily, a pause over the scene: a silence,
expectant.
But abruptly the hush was broken by a shrill, electrical whine. It
rose in pitch to a scream, a siren from the castle battlements. It
screamed for a moment, then abruptly was stilled.
I wondered what it meant. The crowd was stricken breathless.
But for an instant only. Then it broke into a roar of shouting.
The king had died!
I did not know it at the time, but I suspected it. On the rooftop,
the old men were waving their arms; one of them seemed trying to
talk to the throng. But his voice was lost in the din.
As though the siren had been a signal, the girls began swarming
up the staircase, unarmed girls—unarmed save for the shining armor
of their virginity and the desperation of their purpose. I stood
watching; it was necessary for me to know with what arms the
guards were equipped.
Some fifty young men, they stood in a group at the head of the
staircase. The girls came up in a throng. I saw then that each of the
guards seemed armed only with a long, curved knife, like a scimitar,
incased in a black metal sheath.
Some drew these knives, waved the naked blades. But the girls
were beyond intimidation. They came surging—a hundred of them in
the first rank, with other hundreds pressing from below. The guards
met them halfway down, a confusion of white figures with the black
forms of the guards struggling in their midst.
A man with twenty girls around him. He did not want to use his
naked sword. It was torn from him, the girls tearing at him savagely.
He went down; the white forms swept over him. A girl who had
secured his sword waved it with shrill cries.
Another guard, more desperate, was using his sheathed weapon
as a club. He had cleared a space around him. A girl leaped; the club
struck her head. She fell limp. But he too, was soon overwhelmed.
The girls presently were near the staircase top; the guards
remaining there were standing now, all with naked swords. I could
not doubt but that they would be driven to use them. The girls
momentarily had paused, a dozen steps below them.
Many now were armed with swords they had taken. The blades
were waving. A score of girls with the swords, pushed their way to
the upper rank, gathered for concerted, frenzied action. Then, with a
rush, started up the empty intervening steps.
I had been standing on that hillock, enshrouded by the flowers. I
had wanted to be sure beyond a doubt, how the guards were
armed, and had hoped vainly that I might locate Sonya. And a fear
had struck me for Alice and Dolores. Where were they in all this
turmoil?
I thought I saw Sonya now, her white-limbed figure, with the
dark, high-necked smock. She was creeping alone up the steep bank
of the terrace beside the staircase, trying, no doubt, to attain the top
unnoticed, and thus to surprise the guards from behind.
My time had come. I stepped from the shadows of the flowers
into a broad patch of moonlight. From the hillock here, I knew my
figure would be visible from all parts of the scene. I stood, drawn to
full height, with arms outstretched. And called with all my voice,
“Sonya! Sonya!”
The fighting did not stop, but the nearer men of the crowd
turned and saw me. A murmur went up.
“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”
I kept repeating it. The murmur spread; rose to a shouting,
shouts of wonderment, awe, and then fear. I strove to hold my voice
to dominate the noise.
“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”
The faces were turning my way. The shouting near me died into
a frightened silence. The men were milling about, with a surge away
from me. Over on the stairs I saw that the girls had paused in their
attack.
“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”
She had turned, was staring at me. I waved my arms.
“Sonya! I am Leonard; come here!”
I plunged forward down the hillock path. The crowd scattered
before me.
 “Sonya, come here!”
She had turned. She was coming! I advanced steadily, not
running, walking swiftly, with arms outstretched, menacing the
crowd with my unknown weapon. The throng was stricken
motionless with the strangeness of my aspect. From the staircase,
the girls were staring; the guards were staring, a sea of faces,
everywhere staring.
Calmly I advanced, and before me now a lane opened in the
crowd. For all my outward calmness, my heart was pounding. The
pulse-motor at my wrist was throbbing. I had not used my weapon
yet. But it would be effective.
“Sonya! Come here! Hurry! Sonya!”
My words, strange of language, awed the crowd further. The men
parted before Sonya’s running figure. She came up panting, white-
faced.
“Len!”
“Sonya, you are going to obey me! You understand? You . . .
everyone—obey me.”
She stared. I was speaking swiftly, grimly, imperatively. “You stay
at my side. I’ll want you to translate when I give orders. Was that
siren to announce the king’s death?”
“Yes, he . . . Leonard, what are you doing? That thing in your
hand—”
I silenced her. And then, fearing perhaps that she might not
follow me, I gripped her hand, jerked her forward as I ran with rapid
strides toward the crowd of girls at the foot of the stairway.
I think that Sonya believed at that moment that I had lost my
reason. Her face stared up at me with terror in her eyes—a
frightened child beside my bulk, whom I was dragging forward so
swiftly that she could hardly keep her feet.
A few men near us shouted at me, but when I turned ferociously
on them, they ran. Someone threw a missile at me, then another—
stones which they were picking up from the flower beds. One struck
my back; and one struck Sonya.
The crowd was beginning to take courage; a wave of it surged at
me. Struggling men shoving one another, shouted menacingly at
me; but the men in the front rank, shoved forward by the press
behind them, were pushing back, away from me.
Another stone hit me. I stopped short. I did not want to use the
Frazier beam yet—time enough for that.
“Sonya, tell them to stop!” I dropped her hand, stood away from
her. “Tell them that I won’t hurt you! Tell them to stop . . . or I’ll kill
them! All of them!”
The missiles stopped at the first sound of her voice. From the
stairway top a guard was shouting up to one of the old men on the
roof; at Sonya’s voice they both were silent to listen.
I added swiftly, “Sonya, you follow me! I don’t want to drag you!
Will you come?”
“Yes. I . . . I’ll come.”
I took her at her word and ran on. I had overawed an unarmed
crowd of spectators. But the girls were still ahead of me, a thousand
or more of them, jammed near the foot of the great stairway, and a
hundred or two more upon it.
I reached the first of them, with Sonya running fleet as a faun
behind me. The girls, unarmed, scattered to give us room. We
dashed through to the foot of the stairway, began mounting it.
The girls on it made way for me. But, halfway up, I saw above
me, three girls with swords. They stood their ground, and whirled to
oppose me.
Others with swords were near them and turned at me also, and
above them, I was aware that the guards were coming down from
the top to attack them from behind.
I stopped, and thrust Sonya in front of me. “You tell your girls to
get out of the way!”
She screamed it.
“Again, Sonya! Tell them to get off the stairway! Fools! Can’t they
understand I’m for them! Get them off here, I tell you! I’ll handle
those guards up there!”
It stung Sonya into action. She shouted my commands, rushed
up a few steps, waving the girls aside. Behind me, they were
retreating, clearing the stairway. Above they stood undecided, with
awkwardly brandished swords, undecided whether to oppose me or
to turn to defend themselves from the guards coming down from
above.
Then one girl came, passing me hurriedly along the edge of the
broad steps, then another. Then they all came with a rush.
And presently the stairs above me were empty, up to near the
top where the guards had retreated and now stood with drawn
swords gazing down at me. Empty steps, save for a girl’s white body
lying head down in a crimson pool.
I started slowly up. “Keep behind me, Sonya—careful! You’ll be
safe enough.”
In silence I mounted toward that line of swords. The guards
stood a moment in doubt. Then from the castle roof one of the old
men screamed a command. The guards answered it. With a leap
they came surging down the top steps to rush me.
I raised the Frazier muzzle, pressed its trigger. Its pale-green
beam sprang out through the moonlight. I waved it lightly, and it
spread, painting the oncoming guards with its thin, lurid color.
The first of them fell; his sword clattered; his body came hurtling
down. I swept Sonya aside to avoid it. Another fell, but held to a
step, lying huddled. Two others sank to their hands and knees,
stiffened, awkwardly propped against the steps.
A dozen more were standing frozen of movement, with swords
held stiffly outstretched. And a few retreated woodenly to the top
level where they stood swaying drunkenly, stupidly regarding me,
hypnotized by the power of my will which the Frazier beam had
intensified and thrown at them.
I snapped off the beam. Its effect, with my flashing glance to aid
it, would last five minutes or more. Hypnotized in the modern sense,
very much as the ancients claimed they could do it with the eyes
alone, and mysterious passes of the hands, these men here now, to
some extent, would do my bidding. Certainly, they were powerless to
move, save as I might direct them.
I swung on Sonya. “They’re not hurt! Not injured! Tell the crowd;
tell everyone it’s an evidence of power.”
Down in the garden the throng was pouring out the gates in a
panic, hundreds milling at the gates, trying to escape. They quieted