"Good Lord!" Carr gasped. "A human sacrifice!"
A quick push, a piercing scream immediately drowned out by the cries of the multitude, and the girl was flung headlong into the welcoming folds of the white-hot ghost-mantle which hovered there like some greedy monster of the lava pools of Mercury. The thing closed in around the wildly struggling body, enwrapping it with exultant constrictions of its hell-born substance and diving, flapping, smoking heat devil, into the flame from whence it had sprung. Mado touched a lever with quick trembling fingers and the rulden's disk went blank.
Sickened by what they had seen, the two friends stared at one another, white-faced.
"No place for us," Mado said, after a moment. "Not with Ora."
"Right!" Carr agreed grimly. "But I'd like to get in close enough to see more of Titan. How high is this cloud layer?"
"About a mile above the surface. We can dive through and look them over; perhaps give them a taste of the disintegrator."
"Attaboy! You took the words out of my mouth. The devils! Who'd ever dream of such a horror in the twenty-fourth century—even out here?"
"What's the reason for this serious discussion?" The voice of Detis broke in on them from the door of the control room.
"Plenty!" Carr exclaimed. And the Europan listened gravely as he described the awful thing they had witnessed.