“I know!” he whispered, bitterly.
“I was a dupe, a fool!
But come! I’ll lift you.”
“I was the fool—to trust an Ulnar!”
“Come! We’ve no time.”
“You must be more clever than Eric, if you have the confidence of my loyal men.
You Purples! Are you trying, John Ulnar, to get the better of them and the Medusae too?”
“Don’t———” It was a pained cry.
“Please be quick!” urged Jay Kalam from above.
She came to him, then, still doubtful.
John Star slipped an arm about her slight body, lifted her foot, and swung her upward into Hal Samdu’s reaching arms; then leaped, himself, to catch them.
They stood hi the cavernous hall, tiny in its gloomy silent vastness.
Aladoree was thin, John Star saw, and pale, her white face drawn with anxiety and suffering; her gray eyes were burning with a fire too bright, and ringed with blue shadows.
Her startled outcry at sight of the hideous mountain of the dead Medusa showed nerves strained to the point of breakdown; yet her erect bearing revealed courage, decision, proud determination.
Torture had not conquered her.
“We’re here, Aladoree,” said Jay Kalam.
“But we’ve no ship to leave in.
No means, even, to get out of the city.
And no proper weapons.
We’re depending on you. On AKKA.”
Disappointment shadowed her worn face.
“I’m afraid, then,” she said, “that you have sacrificed your lives in vain.”
“Why?” Jay Kalam asked apprehensively.
“Can’t you build the weapon?”
Wearily, she shook her head.
“Not in time, I think.
Simple as it is, I must have certain materials. And a little time to set it up and adjust it.”
“We’ve the thing they used for communication with Eric Ulnar.”
He pointed to Hal Samdu’s mace.
“Rather battered now.
It was electrical.
A sort of radio, I think.
It would have wires, insulation, maybe a battery.”
Again she shook her head.
“It might do,” she admitted. “But I’m afraid it would take too long to straighten and arrange the parts.
These creatures will soon find us.”
“We must take it along,” said Jay Kalam.
Hal Samdu unfastened the device from the head of the tripod, slung it to his body by the connecting wires.
“We must do—something!” cried John Star.
“Right away.
Eric must have gone to give the alarm.”
“We must somehow get outside the city,” agreed Jay Kalam.
“Aladoree, do you know any way———?”
“No. That way,” she pointed, “the hall leads into a great shop, a laboratory, I think.
Many of them are always there, working.
Eric went that way, I suppose, to tell them.
The other end is outside.
A mile high!
There’s no way to get down, without wings.”
“There might be,” mused Jay Kalam.