Dark seized the copter with his mind. He tried to drag it back.
It hesitated. It quivered. Then it jerked forward and went on. He felt his mental grasp slipping from it.
Suddenly he was completely in the big room in Ultra Vires, the room with its roof open to the sky. He could no longer touch the copter. He could no longer be in it. He could no longer touch Maya's mind.
He tried. He reached out again. But he failed. He was where he was.
He realized he was almost exhausted. The tremendous drain of his efforts on his energy told on him at last. He no longer had the strength to try any more, and Nuwell and Maya were gone away from him into the Martian sky.
Wearily, he turned back and went through the airlock, down the corridor and down the stairs.
There was nothing more he could do now. Nuwell undoubtedly would take Maya to Mars City. And then?
Maya would refuse to marry Nuwell now, and Dark doubted that Nuwell could force her. What Nuwell would do with her, he did not know. Probably some sort of confinement, eventually perhaps a trial. But Nuwell had no ground or reason to do her any real harm.
He would have to try to get to Maya as soon as he could, and that meant intensification of his efforts. But there was only one course he could hope to follow successfully, and that was the course he had planned when he started out for Ultra Vires.
Only now he could speed it up.