"To jail!" Margaret exclaimed. "But suppose they put us—I hope they put us in the same cell!"
"Don't worry about that. If my hunch is right it won't make a bit of difference—I'll have you back before they can get you out of sight. Everything around here is thin almost to the point of being immaterial, you know—you could whip an army of them in purely physical combat, and I could tear this whole joint up by the roots."
"A la Samson? I believe that you could, at that." Margaret smiled.
"Yeah; or rather, you can play you're Paul Bunyan, and I'll be Babe, the big blue ox. We'll show this flock of prop-tailed gilliwimpuses just how we gouged out Lake Superior to make a he-man's soup bowl!"
"You make me feel a lot better, Dick, even if I do remember that Babe was forty-seven ax handles across the horns." Margaret laughed, but sobered quickly. "But here we are—oh, I do hope that he leaves me with you!"
XII.
They had stopped beside a metal grill, in front of which was poised another hyperman, his propeller tail idling slowly. He had thought that he was to be Seaton's jailer, and as he swung the barred gate open he engaged the Terrestrial's escort in optical conversation—a conversation which gave Seaton the mere instant of time for which he had been waiting.
"So these are the visitors from outer space, whose bodies are so much denser than solid metal?" he asked curiously. "Have they given you much trouble?"
"None at all. I touched that one only once, and this one, that you are to keep here, wilted at only the third step of force. The orders are to keep them under control every minute, however. They are stupid, senseless brutes, as is of course to be expected from their mass and general make-up. They have not given a single sign of intelligence of even the lowest order, but their strength is apparently enormous, and they might do a great deal of damage if allowed to break away from the trident."