He was alone.
This brought him to his feet, wide-eyed and alert. He felt the weight of his own gun again in his belt, examined it, found it still loaded. Strange!
Where were the guards? Why should they be sending him somewhere alone? A glance at the crystyte window revealed a flashing panorama of the city. He knew he was moving at terrific speed, probably on a special "right-of-way." To attempt an escape now would be suicide.
He shrugged, settled down in the seat. His capture had been well planned, but he failed to see what the Council hoped to gain by it! Ketrik felt a surge of cold fury at this treachery—a treachery in which Mark Travers must have had a hand.
Presently a braking signal flashed green. The tiny car sighed, as though exhausted from its headlong route across the city. It came to a stop against the forward cushion of air, and doors of duraplon slid smoothly back.
Hand near his gun, Ketrik emerged into a long empty corridor of black and silver. Black marble walls reached sheerly up, to curve away into a filigreed ceiling. Priceless tapestries adorned the walls, caught a hidden overhead glow and shattered it into lances of silver radiance. Ketrik frowned, looking at these tapestries. Their design was interwoven with thousands of Kra plumes, those priceless silvery plumes for which he'd risked his life many times among the wild peaks of Ganymede. Only the very elect could afford them. He knew now, that he must be in Earth's Council Chambers.
Again he felt a tingling awareness, knew that unseen eyes were upon him. He straightened his shoulders and walked unhurriedly toward a massive door at the end of the corridor. As he neared it, there came a tiny click and the door slid back.
It was a large room but startlingly bare. A huge table of Martian majagua wood, with a dozen surrounding chairs, occupied the center. The only other article was a magnificent Ethero-Magnum, with screen reaching nearly to the ceiling—an instrument powerful enough for communication with Venus, Mars, even the Callistan colonies.
To Ketrik's surprise, only one Member of Council was present. This man had risen as Ketrik entered. Ketrik stared and it took him fully a minute to recognize this man. It had been four years since he had last seen him, out there at Perlac—but now Mark Travers seemed to have aged twenty years!
Mark came slowly around the table, hand thrust out in greeting.