"No one knows the exact mass of the Tane Jewel. Probably around two hundred million tons, it is thought. Naturally it is not safe to approach too closely—the inverse square law, you know. Within a few meters the attraction is so tremendous that we have great difficulty in anchoring the power drain machinery. But you will see for yourself in the Jewel Chamber."
The mono-car sighed to a halt and Selzi-Narfid ushered them graciously into a tapestried corridor. Glayne noticed that the gravity was just about Terran Standard. He also noticed that Selzi-Narfid, in spite of his flow of suave conversation, was worried. Suddenly a peculiar sensation of wrongness flared up in Glayne's mind and he knew that his battle-trained, preternatural intuition was at work. His hand tightened on the Cardy and his eyes flickered everywhere but could discover nothing.
At the wide entrance stage the Admiral held back, gesturing for Ganser, Glayne, and the others to precede him. The small hairs on the back of Glayne's neck arose as they entered the luxurious suite of the Tjadlinn commander. Something was definitely very wrong.
Then sick dismay scalded up in the pit of his stomach. He saw what was wrong. It was Gort Bro-Doral who faced them, a Cardy gun in his hand.
Calmly the Delban Overlord fired at Ganser. The energy beam lashed into the pseudo-Guardian, making a big, ragged hole where his belly had been.
Glayne could do nothing more than stare helplessly. He did not even think to resist when the room filled with armed Delbans who went about the job of disarming them in a very silent and efficient fashion.
"Such a pity," remarked Gort Bro-Doral, glancing down at Ganser's charred and crumpled body. "Hoteh was my right hand, but the poor wretch was just too thorough. His own mind-conditioning device caught him in the end." He produced his sickly, explosive laugh and inclined his head to one of the armed Delbans. "Take it away," he murmured.
"How did you get here so quickly?" Glayne said, asking the question uppermost in his mind. He was bewildered to think of the incredible acceleration the low-gravity Delban must have undergone to have beaten the Guardian ship.
"Another of the wonders of the glorious Tane Jewel," replied Bro-Doral with amused condescension. "Theoretically it was always possible to project material bodies into sub-space directly from planetary mass in the same way that the immaterial waves of an interstellar telephone message are cast directly into sub-space. Heretofore, however, there has never been sufficient power to form a shield around the material object strong enough to prevent its being completely crushed by the brutal space warp in the presence of mass. That difficulty vanishes when one has the unlimited power of the Tane Jewel at his disposal."