The robot sprang toward Rab Crane and the Venusian girl. Lalla Dee fired at it. The beams hit the robot squarely, splashed off. It was made of some rare metal impervious to ordinary atomic beams. In the next instant it had seized Rab Crane and the girl, was holding them helpless in its huge metal arms.
"Now you know how the men in Doctor Alph's house were killed," Kark Al exclaimed triumphantly. "Also Kin Nilga, the Saturnian spy who had learned I had the brain and whom I had to kill for that reason. This robot, Thoh, whom I smuggled aboard as machinery samples, can be operated by direct order or remote control.
"And now he and I and the brain — and you two prisoners, also — are going to leave the Vulcan! A Martian naval cruiser has been secretly trailing this liner, waiting to pick me up when I leave the ship. I'm leaving now and taking you two with me. If I left you here dead, someone might read from your brains the nature of our new secret weapon. Aboard the cruiser, I'll torture valuable information from you, then destroy you completely. And then-"
The eyes of Kark Al expanded in blazing emotion that held the helpless man and girl paralyzed.
"Then the deadly culture and the secret of Doctor Alph will go to Mars. And some day ships of Mars will go forth and drop a death vial like this one on each of the other planets! We'll sweep all the rest of the Solar System clean of life. Then our people can go forth and take every world from Mercury to Pluto for ourselves. Everything — all the Universe for Mars!"
Rab Crane struggled wildly in the robot's inflexible grasp.
Then he opened his mouth to shout for help. Better anything than that Kark Al keep the secret.
"No! You do not give an alarm!" Kark Al hissed, and sprang forward with pistol raised butt foremost.
It crashed down on Crane's head in a stunning blow and the TSS man knew nothing more.
When he returned to consciousness he found himself wearing a heavy flexible metal suit. A spacesuit! Its glassite-fronted helmet was on his head and he breathed tangy oxygen from the tank inside the airtight suit.