Kleg turned slightly from the piano-like instrument, with its three separate keyboards, with a curiously fastidious motion, and on the strange thin face with its knife-like nose and chill, transparent eyes the barest semblance of a smile parted slightly the cruel curve of the faintly outlined lips. He let his four flexible arms with their slim hands and long, sensitive thumbs fall from the keyboards of the instrument, and rose to his towering height of over seven feet in one sinuous motion of faultless elegance. His exaggerated slenderness made Bill's superb physique seem primitive—barbaric.
Suddenly the Cinnabarian's transparent eyes went black and without warning a coruscating lance of living energy shot from his lips. But in the infinitesimal fraction of time, Freml, the Panadur, had acted. The awful energy potential he'd been generating in the involved processes of his being flashed like a thunderbolt of power and met the Cinnabarian's in mid air. A hellish flare of incandescence blinded them as the universe seemed to explode before their eyes. Reeling apart with dazzled eyes, they sensed the emergence of a new foe, and Bill's power rapier wove a vortex of electronic disintegration as he twirled it before himself and the Panadur; after a while, although their sight was ringed with a myriad rainbows and prismatic rings, they could see several ape-like homunculi at bay, darting before them, seeking an opening whence they might reach the Terran and the Panadur. The Cinnabarian stood back, leaning against the immense instrument, limp and deathly white, as if drained of energy, which indeed he was. He eyed the Aurean girl hungrily, but Bill was between him and the helpless slave.
Nardon's sword sang in his hand.
In a frenzy of fury, one of the homunculi made a wild leap, and impaled itself on the flashing blade. The sickening odor of disintegrating flesh and bone was a stench in their nostrils as the creature fell cloven to the floor.
Bill Nardon was mercilessly using the electro-flash on the taloned creatures now, as they redoubled their efforts to reach them. As several died, others rushed in, debouching from the ascensor, slithering from under the instrument, until the carnage was appalling. At last, Bill's electro-flash went dead. He had no time to recharge, but drew the less efficient and thunderous atomo-pistol from his belt, and aiming it at the foremost homunculi pulled the trigger. A starkly curious thing instantly happened even before the last roaring echoes of the discharge had dwindled.
The tall Cinnabarian with an involuntary shriek of mortal pain doubled over, much like warriors on Terra had doubled up and died when a dreadful Radite bomb fell too near and the devastating concussion snuffed out their lives. The vibrations of the atomo-pistol had killed him, although the tall being from outer-space was untouched. And over the embattled homunculi's faces a curious change came, as their eyes seemed to go blank, and they stood uncertain, bewildered, making no effort to attack. With one swift motion of his powerful arm, Bill gathered the unconscious form of the Aurean girl and retreated to the ascensor followed by the Panadur. Unheeded, the ethero-radio on his wrist flashed red and blue, as the others back in the spacer tried to communicate with them. They had heard what had happened in an incoherent fashion, but had no way of knowing the story in full.