There were half a dozen a.s.sistants with Tharlano at the observatory at all times, one of them in charge of the great file of plates that were kept on hand. Every plate made was printed in triplicate, to prevent their being destroyed in a raid. The original was kept at the observatory, and copies were sent to two of the largest cities on Nansal. It was from this file that Tharlano had gathered the data necessary to show Arcot his own galaxy.
Tharlano was proudly explaining the telescope to Arcot, realizing that the telectroscope was far better, but knowing that the Earthmen would appreciate this triumph of mechanical perfection. Arcot and Morey were both intensely interested in the discussion, while Torlos, slightly bored by a subject he knew next to nothing about, was examining the rest of the observatory.
Suddenly, he cried out in warning, and leaped a full thirty feet over the rock floor to gather Arcot and Morey in his great arms. There was a sharp, distinct snap of a pneumatic pistol, and the thud of a bullet.
Arcot and Morey each felt Torlos jerk!
Quick as a flash, Torlos pushed the two men behind the great tube of the telescope. He leaped over it and across the room, and disappeared into the supply room. There was the noise of a scuffle, another crack from a pneumatic pistol, and the sudden crash and tinkle of broken gla.s.s.
Suddenly, the figure of a man described a wide arc as it flew out of the supply room and landed with a heavy crash on the floor. Instantly, Torlos leaped at him. There was a trickle of blood from his left shoulder, but he gripped the man in his giant arms, pinning him to the floor. The struggle was brief. Torlos simply squeezed the man"s chest in his arms. There was the faint creak of metal, and the man"s chest began to bend! In a moment, he was unconscious.
Torlos pulled a heavy leather belt off of the unconscious man and tied his arms with it, wrapping it many times around the wrists, and was picking the man up when Tharlano arrived, followed by Arcot and Morey.
Torlos smiled broadly.
"This is one Satorian spy that won"t report. I could have finished him when I got my hold on him, but I wanted to take him before the Council for questioning. He"ll be all right; I just dented his chest a little."
"We owe our lives to you again, Torlos," Arcot told him gravely. "But you certainly risked your life; the bullet might well have penetrated your heart instead of striking a rib, as it seems to have done."
"Rib? What is a rib?" The thought concept seemed totally unfamiliar to Torlos.
Arcot looked at him oddly, then reached out and ran an exploratory hand over Torlos" chest. It was smooth and solid!
"Morey!" Arcot exclaimed. "These men have no ribs! Their chest is as solid as their skulls!"
"Then how do they breathe?" Morey asked.
"How do you breathe? I mean most of the time. You use your diaphragm and your abdominal muscles. These people do, too!"
Morey grinned. "No wonder Torlos jumped in front of that bullet! He didn"t have as much to fear as we do--he had a built-in bullet proof vest! You"d have to shoot him in the abdomen to reach any vital organ."
Arcot turned back to Torlos. "Who is this man?"
"Undoubtedly a Satorian spy sent to murder you Earthmen. I saw the muzzle of his pistol as he was aiming and jumped in the way of the bullet. There is not much damage done."
"We"d better get back to the city," Arcot said. "Fuller and Wade might be in danger!"
They bundled the Satorian spy into the ship, where Morey tied him further with thin strands of lux cable no bigger than a piece of string.
Torlos looked at it and shook his head. "He will break that as soon as he awakens, without even knowing it. You forget the strength of our people." Morey smiled and wrapped the cord around Torlos" wrists.
Torlos looked amused and pulled. His smile vanished. He pulled harder.
His huge muscles bulged and writhed in great ridges along his arms. The thin cord remained complacently undamaged. Torlos relaxed and grinned sheepishly.
"You win," he thought. "I"ll make no more comments on the things I see you do."
They returned to the capital at once. Arcot shoved the speed up as high as he dared, for Torlos felt there might be some significance in the attempt to remove Arcot and Morey. Wade and Fuller had already been warned by radio, and had immediately retired to the Council Room of the Three. The members of the Investigation Board joined them to question the prisoner upon his arrival.
When they arrived, Arcot and Morey went in with Torlos, who was carrying the struggling, shackled spy over his shoulder.
The Earthmen watched while the expert interrogators of the Investigation Board questioned the prisoner. The philosophy of Norus did not permit torture, even for a vicious enemy, but the questioners were shrewd and ingenious in their methods. For hours, they took turns pounding questions at the prisoner, cajoling, threatening, and arguing.
They got nowhere. Solidly, the prisoner stuck by his guns. Why had he tried to shoot the Earthmen? He didn"t know. What were his orders from Sator? Silence. What were Sator"s plans? Silence. Did he know anything of the new weapon? A shrug of the shoulders.
Finally, Arcot spoke to the Chief Investigation Officer. "May I try my luck? I think I"m powerful enough to use a little combination of hypnosis and telepathy that will get the information out of him." The Investigator agreed to try it.
Arcot walked over as if to inspect the prisoner. For an instant, the man looked defiantly at Arcot. Arcot glared back. At the same time, his powerful mind reached out and began to work subtly within the prisoner"s brain. Slowly, a helpless, blank expression came over the man"s face as his eyes remained fixed on Arcot"s own. The man was as helplessly bound mentally as the lux cable bound him physically.
For a full quarter of an hour, the two men, Earthmen and Satorian, stood locked in a frozen tableau, staring into each other"s eyes. The onlookers waited in watchful silence.
Finally, Arcot turned and shook his head, as if to clear it. As he did so, the spy slumped forward in his chair, unconscious.
Arcot rubbed his own temples and spoke in English to Morey. "Some job!
You"ll have to tell them what I found out; my head is splitting! With a headache like this, I can"t communicate.
"Torlos was right; they were trying to get rid of all four of us. We"re the only ones who can operate the ship, and that ship is the only defense against them.
"He knows several other spies here in the city, and we can, I think, practically wipe out the Satorian spy system all over the planet with the information he gave me and what we can get from others we arrest.
"Unfortunately, he doesn"t know anything about the new weapon; the higher-ups aren"t telling anyone, not even their own men. I get the idea that only those on board the ships using it will know about it before the attack.
"An attack is planned, and very soon. He didn"t know when. We can only lie in readiness and do everything we can to help these people with their work."
While Morey relayed this information to the Investigating Board and the Council, Wade was talking in low tones to Arcot.
"They had a lot of workmen bring twenty tons of lead wire on board this evening, and the distilled water tanks are full. The tanks are full of oxygen, and they gave us some synthetic food which we can eat.
"They have it all over us in the field of chemistry. They"ve found the secret of catalysis, and can actually synthesize any catalytic agent they want. They can make any possible reaction go in either direction at any rate they desire.
"They took a slice of flesh from my arm and a.n.a.lyzed it down to the last detail. From that, they were able to predict what sort of food we would need to eat. They can actually synthesize living things!
"I"ve tried the food they made, and it has a very good flavor. They guaranteed it would have all the necessary ingredients, right down to the smallest trace element!
"We"re fully stocked for a long trip. The Three said it was their first consideration that we should be able to return to our homes."
"How about their armament?" Arcot asked. He was holding his head in his hands to ease the throbbing ache within it.
"Each city has a projector supplied by the regular power station on top of their central building. The molecular ray, of course; they still don"t have enough power to run a heat beam.
"We didn"t have time to make more than one for each city, but this one will give the Satorians a nasty time if they come near it. It works nicely through the magnetic screen, so it won"t be necessary for them to lower the barrier to shoot."
Morey had finished telling the Council what Arcot had discovered from the prisoner, and the Councilmen were leaving one by one to go to their duties in preparing for the attack.
"I think we had best go back to the _Ancient Mariner_," Arcot said. "I need an aspirin and some sleep."
"Same here," agreed Fuller. "These men make me feel as though I were lazy. They work for forty or fifty hours and think nothing of it. Then they snooze for five hours and they"re ready for another long stretch. I feel like a lounge lizard if I take six hours out of every twenty-four."
They asked Torlos to stand guard on the ship while they got some much needed sleep, and Torlos consented readily after getting the permission of the Supreme Three. The Earthmen were returned to their ship under heavy guard to prevent further attempts at a.s.sa.s.sination.
It was seven hours after they had gone to sleep that it came.