"By force of numbers; by sheer weight and strength. You can kill many of them with your weapons, of course, but not enough or quickly enough."
"You yourself would be the first to die," he cautioned her; and, since she was en rapport with his very mind, she knew that it was not a threat, but the stern finality of fact.
"What of that?" He in turn knew that she, too, meant precisely that and nothing else.
He had another weapon, but she would not believe it without a demonstration, and he simply could not prove that weapon upon an unarmed, defenseless woman, even though she was a Lyranian.
Stalemate.
No, the 'copter. "Listen, Queen of Sheba, to what I tell my boys," he ordered, and spoke into his microphone.
"Ralph? Stick a three-second needle down through the floor here; close enough to make her jump, but far enough away so that you won't blister her. Say about fifteen feet or so back—Fire!"
At Kinnison's word a narrow, but ragingly incandescent pencil of destruction raved downward through ceiling and floor. So inconceivably hot was it that if it had been a fraction larger, it would have ignited the Elder Sister's very chair. Effortlessly, insatiably it consumed everything in its immediate path, radiating the while the entire spectrum of vibrations. It was unbearable, and the auburn-haired creature did indeed jump, in spite of herself—halfway to the door. The rest of the hitherto imperturbable persons clustered together in panic-stricken knots.
"You see, Cleopatra," Kinnison explained, as the dreadful needle beam expired, "I've got plenty of stuff if I want to—or have to—use it. The boys up there will stick a needle like that through the brain of anyone or everyone in this room if I give the word. I don't want to kill any of you unless it's necessary, as I explained to your misbarbered friend here, but I am leaving here alive and all in one piece, and I'm taking this Aldebaranian along with me, in the same condition. If I must, I'll lay down a barrage like that sample you just saw, and only the zwilnik and I will get out alive. How about it?"