The grid-wires glowed. A tingle of energy pulsed through Burke's body.
The laboratory disappeared....
CHAPTER IV
Burke heard the voices first—strange voices, speaking in a strange language.
The room came clear a moment later, cool and shadowy. Burke recognized it by its shape, and by the distinctive relief in painted stucco on one wall.
So his calculations had been correct. He'd landed in the apartment off the Queen's Megaron.
Cat-like, he moved towards the room's doorway, the voices.
The speakers were man and woman, apparently. And when Burke flicked the switch of the computational translator strapped tight to his belly, he found he could understand them almost as well as if they'd been talking English.
"... and you're a pretty thing, you know," the man was saying. "As a matter of fact...."