A car awaited them, its dark blue hull gleaming and translucent. They crowded in. A propulsion beam hummed, and they rose straight up with sickening speed.
Again Curt spoke to Frane, "Where are you taking us?"
"To our Leader! The Zemmd!" Emotion came into Frane's voice, a tone of such awe that Curt was startled.
"The Zemmd," Curt repeated, not liking the sound of it. The car came to a halt. The door slid smoothly back.
They stepped into an area aglow with a gentle radiance, ineffably blue as a summer day on Earth. Curt glanced around. They were beneath the Electronic Curtain! It reached above them in a shallow dome of indeterminate diameter. The clang of metal on metal reached their ears, and a faint sound of atomic furnaces. A few buildings were seen, and groups of men at work—Martians and Jovians, Venusians and Earthmen alike.
The captives were hurried toward a central domed building that towered above the others. Before they quite reached it, Tor stopped dead in his tracks. Across his face came an indescribable look of hate as he uttered a word. A name.
"Jal Tagar!"
A group of men had come from a nearby building, and among them was Jal Tagar, the Martian Overlord! In that split second of recognition a bitter taste of hate seemed to rise up in Kueelo. He would have leaped forward. Only Curt's fierce grip held him back.
Impatiently, Frane motioned them on. They entered the central building, passed into a huge circular chamber that seemed alive with a violet color reaching from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Here there was utter stillness. Even the floor was soft and cushionly, absorbing the sound of their entrance.
Frane and his men seemed waiting for something. As their eyes became slowly adapted to this room they saw a patch of deeper color across the far wall. It moved. Gradually it changed size and shape. Purposeful, deliberate, it drifted slowly up. Then, somehow, as if by a mental as well as visual perception, they saw it clearly.