lack of intelligence.
The chief of the council, who had been conducting the examination, released the forces
of his mechanisms and directed his flashing glance upon the eyes of the Terrestrials’
guard, ordering him to put the specimens away… and see to it that they are watched
very carefully,” the ordering eye concluded. “The Fellows of Science will be convened
and will study them in greater detail than we have been able to do here.”
“Yes, sir; as you have said, so shall it be,” the guard .acknowledged, and by means of
the trident he guided his captives through a high-arched exit and into another labyrinth of
corridors.
Seaton laughed aloud as he tucked Margaret’s hand under his arm and marched along
under the urge of the admonishing trident.
” `Nobody ‘ome-they ain’t got no sense,’ says his royal nibs. `Tyke ’em awye!’ ” he
exclaimed.
“Why so happy all of a sudden, Dick? I can’t see very much change in our status.”
“You’d be surprised.” He grinned. “There’s been a lot of change. I’ve found out that they
can’t read our thoughts at all, as long as we don’t express them in muscular activity. I’ve
been guarding my thoughts and haven’t been talking to you much for fear they could get
my ideas some way. But now I can tell you that I’m going to start something pretty quick.
I’ve got this trident thing pretty well solved. This bird’s taking us to jail now, I think, and
when he gets us there his grip will probably slip for an instant. If it does he’ll never get it
back, and we’ll be merrily on our way.”
“To jail!” Margaret exclaimed. “But suppose they put us! hope they put us in the same
cell!”
“Don’t worry about that. If my hunch is right it won’t make a bit of difference-I’ll have you
back before they can get you out of sight. Everything around here is thin almost to the
point of being immaterial, you know-you could whip an army of them in purely physical
combat, and I could tear this whole joint up by the roots.”
“A la Samson? I believe that you could, at that.” Margaret smiled.
“Yeah; or rather, you can play you’re Paul Bunyan, and I’ll be Babe, the big blue ox. We’ll
show this flock of prop tailed gilliwimpuses just how we gouged out Lake Superior to
make a he-man’s soup bowl!”
“You make me feel a lot better, Dick, even if I do remember that Babe was forty-seven
ax handles across the horns.” Margaret laughed, but sobered quickly. “But here we are-
ob, I do hope that he leaves me with you!”
They stopped beside a metal grill, in front of which was poised another hyperman, his
propeller tail idling slowly. He had thought that he was to be Seaton’s jailer, and as he
swung the barred gate open he engaged the Terrestrial’s escort in optical conversation-a
conversation which gave Seaton the mere instant of time for which he had been waiting.
“So these are the visitors from outer space, whose bodies are so much denser than solid
metal?” he asked curiously. “Have they given you much trouble?”
“None at all. I touched that one only once, and this one, that you are to keep here, wilted
at only the third step of force. The orders are to keep them under control every minute,
however. They are stupid, senseless brutes, as is of course to be expected from their
mass and general make-up. They have not given a single sign of intelligence of even the
lowest order, but their strength is apparently enormous, and they might do a great deal
of damage if allowed to break away from the trident.”
“All right; I’ll hold him constantly until I am relieved,” and the jailer, lowering his own
trident, extended a long, tentacular arm toward the grooved and knobbed shaft of the
one whose teeth were already imbedded in Seaton’s tissues.
Seaton had neither perceived nor sensed anything of this conversation, but he was tense
and alert; tight-strung to take advantage of even the slightest slackening of the grip of the
grappling fingers of the controller. Thus in the bare instant of transfer of control from one
weird being to the other he acted-instantaneously and highly effectively.
With a twisting leap he whirled about, wrenching himself free from the punishing teeth of
the grapple. Lightning hands seized the shaft and swung the weapon in a flashing arc.
Then, with all the quickness of his highly trained muscles and with all the power of his
brawny right arm, Seaton brought the controller down full upon the grotesque head of the
hyperman.
He had given no thought to the material character of weapon or of objective; he had
simply wrenched himself free and struck instinctively, lethally, knowing that freedom had
to be won then or never. But he was not wielding an Earthly club or an Osnomian bar;
nor was the flesh opposing him the solid substance of a human and three-dimensional
enemy.
At impact the fiercely driven implement flew into a thousand pieces, but such was the
power behind it that each piece continued on, driving its relentless way through the
tenuous body substance of the erstwhile guard. That body subsided instantly upon the
floor, a shapeless and mangled mass of oozing, dripping flesh. Weaponless now, holding
only the shattered butt of the ex-guard’s trident, Seaton turned to front the other guard
who, still holding Margaret helpless, was advancing upon him, wide-open trident to the
fore.
He hurled the broken stump; then as the guard nimbly dodged the flying missile, he
leaped to the barred door of the cell. He seized it and jerked mightily; and as the anchor
bolts of the hinges tore out of the masonry he swung the entire gate in a full-sweeping
circle. Through the soft body the interlaced bars tore, cutting it into grisly, ghastly dice,
and on, across the hall, tearing into and demolishing the opposite wall.
“All right, Peg, or did he shock you?” Seaton demanded.
“All right, I guess-he didn’t have time to do much of anything.”
“Fine, let’s snap it up, then. Or wait a minute, I’d better get us a couple of shields. We’ve
got to keep them from getting those stingarees into us again-as long as we can keep
them away from us we can do about as we please around here, but if they ever get hold
of us again it’ll be just too bad.”
While Seaton was speaking he had broken away and torn out two great plates or doors
of solid metal, and, handing one of them to his companion, he went on: “Here, carry this
in front of you and we’ll go places and do things.”
But in that time, short as it was, the alarm had been given, and up the corridor down
which they must go was advancing a corps of heavily armed beings. Seaton took one
quick step forward, then realizing the impossibility of forcing his way through such a
horde without impalement, he leaped backward to the damaged wall and wrenched out a
huge chunk of masonry. Then, while the upper wall and the now unsupported ceiling
collapsed upon him, their fragments touching his hard body lightly and bouncing off like so
many soft pillows, be hurled that chunk of material down the hall and into the thickest
ranks of the attackers.
Through the close-packed phalanx it tore as would a plunging tank through massed
infantry, nor was it alone.
Mass after mass of rock was hurled as fast as the Earthman could bend and straighten
his mighty back, and the hypermen broke ranks and fled in wild disorder.
For to them Seaton was not a man of flesh and blood, lightly tossing pillows of
eiderdown along a corridor, through an assemblage of wraithlike creatures. He was to
them a monstrous being, constructed of something harder, denser, and tougher than any
imaginable metal. A being driven by engines of unthinkable power, who stood unharmed
and untouched while masses of stone, brickwork, and structural steel crashed down
upon his bare head. A being who caught those falling masses of granite and concrete
and steel and hurled them irresistibly through rank after rank of flesh-and-blood men!
“Let’s go, Peg!” Seaton gritted. “The way’s clear now, I guess-we’ll show those horse-
faced hippocampuses that what it takes to do things, we’ve got!”
Through the revolting, reeking shambles of the corpse littered corridor they gingerly
made their way. Past the scene of the battle, past intersection after intersection they
retraced their course, warily and suspiciously at first. But no ambush had been laid-the
hypermen were apparently only too glad to let them go in peace-and soon they were
hurrying along as fast as Margaret could walk.
They were soon to learn, however, that the denizens of this city of four-dimensional
space had not yet given up the chase. Suddenly the yielding floor dropped away beneath