Carston's murmur echoed eerily against the shrill hum of the atomomotors in the upper scales. The phantasmal glow of the selector screens suffused the chamber. Selenic cells poured additional power into the trans-telector beam as Cynthia's fingers trembled over the shining dials. Carston, standing beside her, was white-faced and tense.
Slowly a shifting blur materialized on the huge televise of the ethero-magnum. It focused, and the thin-lipped, ascetic features of the Earth Coordinator materialized in the immense Council room of Earth. The Council in full session surrounded him. All were intent on their receiving screens, on which Carston and Cynthia were reflected.
Cynthia stepped nervously aside, and Carston came forward. He bowed low. Then his voice, hoarse with uncontrollable elation, rose in greeting.
"Your Beneficence, and Elders of the Council! I am speaking from Vulcan, the long-sought base of Captain George Marnik, where I have been a prisoner for many months! But no longer. This," he gestured hesitantly, "is Cynthia, George Marnik's daughter, for whom I beseech the Coordinator's and the Council's clemency for the service she is about to do."
Then in slow and measured words Carston told in detail all that had happened, beginning with his own release from the Swamp by Cynthia, relating Luhor's murder of Marnik, and finally telling of the asteroid where Luhor's space cruisers were being assembled, and of the new allotropic metal being mined on Vulcan. Then he motioned for Cynthia to come forward.
The Coordinator had listened in silence, his grim face impassive. Every eye in the Council room was unwaveringly on the screen, and the silence lay heavy between two distant worlds. Slowly, Cynthia walked toward the ethero-magnum sender, a sheaf of note paper in her hand. She smiled wanly, but confidently at Carston. Then in a colorless voice she read her mathematical figures giving the position of the asteroid in space, and the formula for the shortest approach from Vulcan, as the key for computation of the trajectory from Earth. Without animation, she gave the formula for the allotropic metal process, and the secret of the entrance to Vulcan.
Then she fell silent. As if she didn't know what to do, she turned to Carston and caught for a fleeting instant the smug smile of triumph on his lips; but before she could comprehend its meaning, it was gone.
"Will ... will I be pardoned?" Cynthia questioned aloud, more to Carston than to the Coordinator on the screen.
But the silence in the Council room of Earth persisted, as busy mathematicians already were furiously computing the mathematical formulae. A thin, contemptuous smile had parted the Coordinator's lips. It was the first time Carston had ever seen him smile, and the room where he and Cynthia stood, although millions of miles distant, seemed colder suddenly as that glacial glimmer came through the screen.
Carston opened his lips to speak. "Your Beneficence," he began—