"Perhaps you would like to see the future ruler of the world," he said, so very softly that it seemed as if everyone else stopped breathing while he spoke.
Simon heard the girl beside him catch her breath, and Nordsten said quickly: "Surely we've troubled you enough already—"
"I should like to see it," said the Saint quietly.
Sardon's tongue slid once over his lips. He put his hand up and moved a couple of levers on the glittering panels of dials and switches beside the door. It was to the Saint that his gaze returned, with that rapt expresssion of strangely cunning and yet childish happiness.
"You will see it from where you stand. I will ask you to keep perfectly still, so as not to Dr.aw attention to yourselves — there is a strain of Dorylina in this one. Dorylina is one of the most intelligent and highly disciplined species, but it is also the most savage. I do not wish it to become angry—"
His arm stretched out to the handle of the door. He slid it aside in one movement, standing with his back to it, facing them.
The girl's cold hand touched the Saint's wrist. Her fingers slipped down over his hand and locked in with his own, clutching them in a sudden convulsive grip. He heard Ivar Nordsten's suppressed gasp as it caught in his throat, and an icy tingle ran up his spine and broke out in a clammy dew on his forehead.
The rich red light from the chamber beyond the door spilled out like liquid fire, so fierce and vivid that it seemed as if it could only be accompanied by the scorching heat of an open furnace; but it held only a slight appreciable warmth. It beat down from huge crimson arcs ranged along the cornices of the inner room among a maze of shining tubes and twisted wires; there was a great glass ball opposite in which a pale yellow streak of lightning forked and flickered with a faint humming sound. The light struck scarlet highlights from the-gleaming bars of a great metal cage like a gigantic chicken coop which filled the centre of the room to within a yard of the walls. And within the cage something monstrous and incredible stood motionless, staring at them.
Simon would see it sometimes, years afterwards, in uneasy Dr.eams. Something immense and frightful, glistening like burnished copper, balanced on angled legs like bars of plated metal. Only for a few seconds he saw it then, and for most of that time he was held fascinated by its eyes, understanding something that he would never have believed before…
And then suddenly the thing moved, swiftly and horribly and without sound; and Sardon slammed the door shut, blotting out the eye-aching sea of red light and leaving only the austere cold whiteness of the laboratory.