Even before Seaton spoke the first word his projection had acted. DuQuesne was fast, as has been said, but how fast are the fastest of human nervous and muscular reactions when compared with the speed of thought? DuQuesne's retina had not yet registered the fact that Seaton's image had moved when his pistol was hurled aside and he was pinioned by forces as irresistible as the cosmic might from which they sprang.
DuQuesne was snatched into the air of the room—was surrounded by a globe of energy—was jerked out of the building through a welter of crushed and broken masonry and concrete and of flailing, flying structural steel—was whipped through atmosphere, stratosphere, and empty space into the control room of the Skylark of Valeron. The inclosing shell of force disappeared and Seaton hurled aside his controlling helmet, for he knew that his iron self-control was fast giving way. He knew that wave upon wave of passion, of sheer hate, was rising, battering at the very gates of his mind; knew that if he wore that headset one second longer the Brain, actuated by his own uncontrollable thoughts, would passionlessly but mercilessly exert its awful power and blast his foe into nothingness before his eyes.
Thus at long last the two men, physically so like, so unlike mentally, stood face to face; hard gray eyes staring relentlessly into unyielding eyes of midnight black. Seaton was in a towering rage; DuQuesne, cold and self-contained as ever, was calmly alert to seize any possible chance of escape from his present predicament.
"DuQuesne, I'm telling you something," Seaton gritted through clenched teeth. "Prop back your ears and listen. You and I are going out in that projector. You are going to issue 'cease firing' orders to all your stations and tell them that you're all washed up—that a humane government is taking things over."
"Or else?"
"Or else I'll do, here and now, what I've been wanting to do to you ever since you shot up Crane's place that night—I will scatter your component atoms all the way from here to Valeron."
"But, Dick—" Dorothy began to protest.
"Don't butt in, Dot!"
Stern and cold, Seaton's voice was one his wife had never before heard. Never had she seen his face so hard, so bitterly implacable.
"Sympathy is all right in its place," Seaton went on, "but this is the showdown. The time for dealing tenderly with this piece of mechanism in human form is past. He has needed killing for a long time, and unless he toes the mark quick and careful he'll get it, right here and right now.