A scream of terror rang out in the chamber, and there on the floor a dozen paces from the dais the thing that had been Ianito wriggled under the heap of whirring black things that suddenly covered the invisible form. He wriggled and then lay still as the angry buzzing of the black destroyers rose in triumphant, discordant song.
"Ianito!" the Zara exclaimed, thunderstruck. "He was here?"
"He was," Blaine assured her in an awed voice, "invisible, oh Zara, in a cloak contrived by Dantor, the Rulan scientist." Then blind rage overcame him. She had tried to kill Ulana; before his eyes! "You she-devil!" he roared. "I've half a mind to choke the vile life from your tainted body. Damn you! May the heat devils of Mercury burn and sear and shrivel you in everlasting torment."
She cowered as if he had struck her, and, unaccountably, he was ashamed. Cursing her like a schoolboy and using the language of the lower class Venerians!
"Please, Carson, please," she moaned; "do it. Choke me if you will and release me from my torment. I am yours to do with as you please." Throwing back her proud head, she bared her throat.
Blaine took a step forward, his knees weak beneath him.
"Carson!" It was Ulana, her hand soft on his arm.
He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. This was madness! But was ever a woman so deserving of death? Incomprehensible half-animal creature, she sat there rocking to and fro, waiting.
"No!" he said. "No! Only let us go in peace, Clyone. Your sins be on your own head. Your realization of them is punishment enough."
"Wait!" Controlling herself now, she rose once more, and her face was transfigured. Almost it seemed that she was happy. "Wait!" she repeated. "You are free to go when I have finished, but first Clyone wishes to bid you farewell."