Things suddenly went black, and with the abrupt darkness that fell over his eyes, Farr stumbled and fell face forward in the grass. Panic-stricken, he clambered to his feet and passed a hand across his face. He saw only blackness.
"My Lord!" he cried in horror. "I'm blind!"
Farr could feel his lips moving, knew that his frantic brain had commanded the vocal organs to speak the words—but he could not hear them. He was deaf, too. Blind and deaf! Walking through the glade, his footsteps had set in action machinery buried deep in the earth, machinery that emitted a penetrating ray, blanking out the senses of sight and hearing. Now, surely, his quest would end in blind groping through the forest, till some ravenous denizen would put a stop to his misery.
Flinging his head back, Farr laughed shrilly, madly. Facing the guns of the planetary police, he had never known the feel of fear, but he knew it now; fear of the darkness, fear of the silence that pressed in on him. He cried out again, but not the least sound pierced the stillness in his brain.
He suddenly lunged forward and ran screaming through the glade. He did not stop until he felt the undergrowth of the jungle whipping about his legs, then he sank to the ground in a cringing heap, sobbing out his despair and beating his fists against his temples.
For an hour he sat there, staring sightlessly into space. Frenzy gave way to apathy, and he no longer strove to fight off the implacable blackness and quiet that filled his world. Death would come soon, creeping and crawling through the brush, and he could do nothing but sit and wait for it, without hope of defending himself.
Despite his despair, Farr was not the least bit penitent. He had played the game and lost, and now he was ready to pay the price of failure. His only regret was that he had fallen short of his goal, had been cheated of it by the infernal ray device, one of the many traps that had been placed throughout the jungle by the now long-dead ancients of Saturn.
His features hardened as he thought again of the secret those pitfalls guarded—the secret of immortality. If only he could yet reach it! Fumble his way through the jungle somehow and take the treasure from its cursed temple. He could still be master of the world, if he could accomplish that, master of all worlds, in fact, for who would not prostrate himself for the chance of possessing eternal life?
But it was hopeless, Farr knew. He could wander around in here until he dropped, and still be no nearer his destination than when he started. Nor could he find his way back to the ship, navigate the distance to Earth and have his eyes and ears operated on by some unprincipled, yet skillful surgeon. No, he would never have another chance at the life secret, never return to civilization with the power that he—