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authority, ruled by nothing save his own scientific drivings and the almost equally powerful urges of his desires and passions! She must have fought with every resource at her command. She must have wept and pleaded, stormed and raged, feigned submission and played for timeā ā€”and her torment had not touched in the slightest degree the merciless and gloating brain of the being who called himself Roger. Now his tantalizing, ruthless cat-play would be done, the horrible gray-brown face would be close to hersā ā€”she wailed her final despairing message to Costigan and attacked that hideous face with the fury of a tigress.

Costigan bit off a bitter imprecation. ā€œHold him just a second longer, sweetheart!ā€ he cried, and the power room door vanished.

Through the great room the two Lewistons swept at full aperture and at maximum power, two rapidly-opening fans of death and destruction. Here and there a guard, more rapid than his fellows, trained a futile projectorā ā€”a projector whose magazine exploded at the touch of that frightful field of force, liberating instantaneously its thousands upon thousands of kilowatt-hours of-stored-up energy. Through the delicately adjusted, complex mechanisms the destroying beams tore. At their touch armatures burned out, high-tension leads volatilized in crashing, high-voltage arcs, masses of metal smoked and burned in the path of vast forces now seeking the easiest path to neutralization, delicate instruments blew up, copper ran in streams. As the last machine subsided into a semi-molten mass of metal the two wreckers, each grasping a brace, felt themselves become weightless and knew that they had accomplished the first part of their program.

Costigan leaped for the outer door. His the task to go to Clioā€™s aidā ā€”Bradley would follow more slowly, bringing the girlā€™s armor and taking care of any possible pursuit. As he sailed through the air he spoke.

ā€œComing, Clio! All right, girl?ā€ Questioningly, half fearfully.

ā€œAll right, Conway.ā€ Her voice was almost unrecognizable, broken in retching agony. ā€œWhen everything went crazy heā ā€Šā ā€¦ found out that the ether-wall was up andā ā€Šā ā€¦ forgot all about me. He shut it offā ā€Šā ā€¦ and seemed to go crazy tooā ā€Šā ā€¦ he is floundering around like a wild man nowā ā€Šā ā€¦ Iā€™m trying to keepā ā€Šā ā€¦ him fromā ā€Šā ā€¦ going downstairs.ā€

ā€œGood girlā ā€”keep him busy one minute moreā ā€”heā€™s getting all the warnings at once and wants to get back to his board. But whatā€™s the matter with you? Did heā ā€Šā ā€¦ hurt you, after all?ā€

ā€œOh, no, not thatā ā€”he didnā€™t do anything but look at meā ā€”but that was bad enoughā ā€”but Iā€™m sickā ā€”horribly sick. Iā€™m fallingā ā€Šā ā€¦ Iā€™m so dizzy that I can scarcely seeā ā€Šā ā€¦ my head is breaking up into little piecesā ā€Šā ā€¦ I just know Iā€™m going to die, Conway! Ohā ā€Šā ā€¦ oh!ā€

ā€œOh, is that all!ā€ In his sheer relief that they had been in time, Costigan did not think of sympathizing with Clioā€™s very real present distress of mind and body. ā€œI forgot that youā€™re a ground-gripperā ā€”thatā€™s just a little touch of space-sickness. Itā€™ll wear off directly.ā ā€Šā ā€¦ All right, Iā€™m coming! Let go of him and get as far away from him as you can!ā€

He was now in the street. Perhaps two hundred feet distant and a hundred feet above him was the tower room in which were Clio and Roger. He sprang directly toward its large window, and as he floated ā€œupwardā€ he corrected his course and accelerated his pace by firing backward at various angles with his heavy service pistol, uncaring that at the point of impact of each of those shells a small blast of destruction erupted. He missed the window a trifle, but that did not matterā ā€”his flaming Lewiston opened a way for him, partly through the window, partly through the wall. As he soared through the opening he trained projector and pistol upon Roger, now almost to the door, noticing as he did so that Clio was clinging convulsively to a lamp-bracket upon the wall. Door and wall vanished in the Lewistonā€™s terrific beam, but the pirate stood unharmed. Neither ravening ray nor explosive shell could harm himā ā€”he had snapped on the protective shield whose generator was always upon his person.

When Clio reported that Roger seemed to go crazy and was floundering around like a wild man, she had no idea of how she was understanding the actual situation; for Gharlane of Eddore, then energizing the form of flesh that was Roger, had for the first time in his prodigiously long life met in direct conflict with an overwhelming superior force.

Roger had been sublimely confident that he could detect the use, anywhere in or around his planetoid, of ultra-wave. He had been equally sure that he could control directly and absolutely the physical activities of any number of these semi-intelligent ā€œhuman beings.ā€

But four Arisians in fusionā ā€”Drounli, Brolenteen, Nedanillor, and Kriediganā ā€”had been on guard for weeks. When the time came to act, they acted.

Rogerā€™s first thought, upon discovering what tremendous and inexplicable damage had already been done, was to destroy instantly the two men who were doing it. He could not touch them. His second was to blast out of existence this supposedly human female, but no more could he touch her. His fiercest mental bolts spent themselves harmlessly three millimeters away from her skin; she gazed into his eyes completely unaware of the torrents of energy pouring from them. He could not even aim a weapon at her! His third was to call for help to Eddore. He could not. The sub-ether was closed; nor could he either discover the manner of its closing or trace the power which was keeping it closed!

His Eddorian body, even if he could recreate it here, could not withstand the environmentā ā€”this Roger-thing would have to do whatever it could, unaided by Gharlaneā€™s mental powers. And, physically, it was a very capable body indeed. Also, it was armed and armored with mechanisms of Gharlaneā€™s own devising; and Eddoreā€™s second-in-command was in no sense a coward.

But Roger, while not exactly a ground-gripper, did not know how to handle himself without weight; whereas Costigan, given six walls against which to push, was even more efficient in

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