That horror came over me in a vast, overwhelming wave! It seized my body! My hand moved unwillingly, and cut off the current of the great arc! And then my body was struggling to its feet, opening the manhole, and clambering out of the machine. But still the thing did not have me! I was still an independent entity, that sat apart and watched.
I knew that I had succumbed to the hypnotic control of the alien power that dwelt in that vast metal cylinder. I was another of the slaves of the Lord of Flame—of the Sleepers of Mutron!
CHAPTER XXIX
Xenora's Sacrifice
I was moved out of the machine like an automaton by the terrible force that controlled me. My body was no longer my own! It was swept along as if by a mighty wind. That force of horror roared and throbbed in my brain. Red flames of fear flickered before my eyes. I was sick and faint with terror. But my body did not collapse—it was relentlessly moved by that terrible force from the violet cylinder. I was utterly helpless—I felt the hopeless horror of one chained before a loathsome monster!
Suddenly I wished fiercely for death, for only death could bring me freedom from the horror that swept in a throbbing torrent through my brain. But even death was beyond my reach, for my hands were not my own!
For a moment that power left me standing on the side of the overturned machine. The Omnimobile lay on the sandy floor of the crater, which may have been a hundred feet in depth and as many yards across. Against the red sky, above the black cliffs of the pit's farther rim, towered the violet metal cylinder—the flaming metal brain whose hypnotic control ruled my body.
For a moment I was left standing there, and then my body was springing down and running across the rock-strewn sand toward the cliffs. It ran like a machine—beyond my control! In vain I tried even to stumble and fall! In a few moments it reached the rim. It clambered wildly up. I know that in my normal self I could never have surmounted that sheer wall. But the telepathic force from the flaming brain seemed to give my limbs superhuman strength! Soon I was at the top, with bleeding hands and tattered clothing!
And my body ran on toward the violet monostyle!