Then the other two comrades heard. It was a voice from the farther end of the corridor, a distant, monotonous, strangely metallic voice speaking on and on.
"Erebus — won't think of Erebus — think of anything but Erebus — won't think of Erebus—"
Thorn started wildly. “Erebus? That must be Lana talking! Come on!"
"It didn't sound like a human voice,” Gunner muttered, as he and the Venusian raced after Thorn.
They leaped over the scorched bodies of the dead Saturnians, and on down the corridor. The voice came from the last cell in the passage. Now they heard it more clearly, and it was not a human voice. It spoke in cold, metallic, inflectionless tones, on and on without stopping.
"I mustn't think of Erebus — mustn't think of the secret! Keep my mind on something else—"
Thorn reached the door of that last cell. He peered through the little grating in the inertrum door. And his brown face froze, his eyes widened wildly, at what he saw.
"Good God, it's Lana!” he whispered hoarsely. “They've got a psychophone attached to her!"
The cell into which Thorn wildly gazed was a windowless cubicle, lit by a single krypton lamp in the ceiling. Under the uncanny blue glow, in a metal chair to which her arms and legs were tightly strapped, sat Lana Cain. The girl's slender little figure was sagging in her bonds, her eyes were closed, her white face infinitely weary and exhausted. It was not Lana who was speaking, but the complex machine that was attached to her head.
Tiny, needlelike incisions had been made in the base of Lana's skull. From them, two thin black wires ran upward to the mechanism suspended above her, a compact complexity of transformers and vacuum tubes, upon which was mounted an audio-speaker.