Tommy had forgotten everything save his interest in the mechanism of the car. He and Dantus were fast friends already.
Chin in hand and eyes avoiding the pain of mourning in Tiedus' fixed gaze, Carson lost himself in gloomy meditation. As he thought back over the events of the past few days he could scarcely believe they had actually occurred or that he was sitting here in a mystery car, speeding through the rank atmosphere of an enclosed world a half billion miles from his own. Home seemed incredibly remote and desirable just then, and the future dark and forbidding.
CHAPTER V
The Tritu Anu
Before the car came to a stop Tiedus rummaged in a locker and stretched forth his hands as if carrying something delicate and fragile.
"It will be necessary for you to put this on," he said: "it will be unsafe otherwise."
Blaine stared, mystified. Was this Rulan kidding him? "Put what on?" he asked.
"A thousand pardons. I had forgotten that you do not know. I hold in my hands a cloak, an invisible thing that will hide you from the guards and from the Zara's crystal. Another secret of my father's. Dantor developed it for him only recently."
Blaine felt the texture of the stuff then; crumpled it in his fingers as its gossamer-like weight dropped in loose folds around his body. But there was nothing there: to the eyes. It simply did not exist except to the touch, and he felt no different with it on than he had before.
"Where's Tommy?" he asked suddenly, seeing that Dantus now sat alone at the controls.