"No good, Mr. Ranson." Elath Taen lifted his hands from the keyboard, smiling thinly. "The flame is lit and cannot be put out! The red flame of revolt! Already my people are fighting! Loud-speakers in every public square have carried the sound of mad, blind fury! I am the mood-master!"
"Get back to that sound-box!" Ranson grated. "Play those sleep-producing notes! Play, or I'll blast your lovely daughter here to a cinder! You claim you're the mood-master! Well, if your damned supersonics started this, they can end it!" He swung his gun to cover Zeila's sleek figure. "Play, Dr. Taen! I've never killed a woman yet, but it's her life or those of all terrestials on Mars! Back to your sonovox!"
For a long moment Elath Taen stared at his daughter, then nodded his hairless head somberly.
"Again you win, Mr. Ranson," he said softly. "I should have killed you or won you to my side, long ago." Turning to the sonovox, he began to play.
Ranson stood tense, covering the girl with his gun. Soft, lulling music, supersonic notes that seemed to caress his brain, filled the room. The drowsy sound of rain on a roof, of rustling leaves, of a soothing night wind ... all these were bound up in the melody. Peace, rest, sleep ... every nerve seemed to relax, every muscle seemed limp, as the dreamy musical hypnosis took effect.
Elath Taen and the girl were watching him covertly. There was a thin smile on the doctor's dark saturnine face. Dully Ranson tried to reason out why Elath Taen should be smiling, but somehow his mind refused to function. Those cloudy mists rising before his eyes! Miles away Taen was speaking, above the soporific sounds.
"Too bad," he was saying. "You forgot that whatever these supersonics may do to my people, they also affect you. Zeila and I are protected from the short-wave emanations by our helmets. But you, Mr. Ranson, are not! Already you are helpless and in a moment you will sleep, as you did in our laboratory! Then, with you secure, I shall arouse my people once more!"
Ranson tried to move, tried to act, but the music was a silken noose binding him, and he had no will power left. Sleep ... nothing else mattered.... As in a dream he saw Zeila coming toward him, felt himself crumple to the floor. Vaguely he remembered bright flashes, shouts, and then all was grey oblivion.
"Ranson! Ranson!" The words beat like fists upon his drugged brain.
The T.I. man stirred restlessly; out of the whirling mists Captain Maxwell's face became a stern reality.