"A tale calculated to amaze me. I do not believe you."
"I told you how his body is different, that it can sop up solar energy and translate it into terms of human energy without wear or tear on his system. That he is future man, man in a body fitted to venture out in space, far beyond where we have gone."
"I still do not believe."
A man came and looped the noose around the woman's neck. She shook her head when he would have covered it with a purple mask.
"I tell you now, Commander Mason, that the only one who can renew the Glows is Tyr. Our electro-astrogines have informed us that the elements needed to make new Glows exists only on the planets close to the great suns. Every expedition we sent to those planets perished of heat before they reached them.
"One man could make such a trip—Tyr."
Mason grinned at her. "You're mad, Katha. Executioner, throw the bolt." The executioner put his hand on the lever and swung it over.
Tyr climbed the black rock swiftly. Hands and feet felt for and found niches in the rough surface. Up and up he went. Once he stood on a narrow ledge and craned his neck, staring at the blackness where the carborungsten cables gaped their dark orifices. He was going up there, to those cables, and rip them out. He would smash the dynamos, and nothing could stop him.
Over the lip of a metal cable-mouth he went, and his hands showed bright in the darkness as he seized the wires and pulled, ripping them from welded sockets. He tore and broke with his glowing hands, passing them under and over the cables, and tearing.