"Yeah." Watkin's face appeared before him. "Poor guy looks half dead."
Calvin blinked and made a try at speech, but nothing came out but a flop-tongued drooling sound.
The two creatures remaining near them squatted down and observed them, making fragmentary noises to each other. Watkins started to walk after the third, which had escorted Mrs. Full across the wide room and was on the point of making her get onto a low platform on which were a number of structures of purple tubing and crimson boxes and varicolored small contrivances. One of the pair flicked its goad across his path.
Villa said, "Come back, you foolish, do you think you can take that stick?" He sounded furious, probably because he was afraid of the beasts becoming enraged.
Calvin made a wracking effort to say, "Let him go," for surely they couldn't stand callously by and see his wife undergo the Lord knew what tortures; but the sound he made was unintelligible.
Watkins said, "Blast it, Viva, we don't know what the thing might do to her."
"Come on back," said Summersby. "Do you want to get this?" He hefted the limp Full.
Calvin writhed and managed to move his hands up and down.
"He's gaining," said Watkins, coming back.
"Those rods pack a wallop," said Adam. "What sort of power can they have in 'em? Seems to me they're away beyond our science."