"You dog!" grated Lark O'Day. "You filthy, conniving scoundrel! I'm coming after you. I'll break your neck with my bare hands if it's the last thing I—"
"Back, corsair!" snarled Borisu. "I assure you—take another step forward and it will be the last thing you ever do. You see this object I hold in my hand?" He dangled a bit of metal before them tauntingly. "You are space trained men. Do you recognize it? It is a governor. Ah, yes! A small governor controlling the speed of the instrument upon whose platform I now stand.
"Until this moment the machine has always operated at an inexorable and never-changing rate. But no more. From this moment henceforth the machine will gain speed ... and speed ... and speed—" His voice broke in a shrill cackle, "And you know what that means, my friends?"
O'Day said stoutly, "I know it means your death, Borisu. Here and now, or elsewhere and later, but surely your death."
"Perhaps so," laughed the diminutive kraedar. "But more than that ... it means the swift and final death of your universe. For this on which I stand, gentlemen, is the instrument we of Magog have for years been playing upon your system. The ultrawave cannon! And now I have speeded its action to such an extent that the length of your world's existence may be measured no longer in weeks or months—but in hours!"
A pang of fear drove deep into Gary's heart. Mad the little man might be, but staring into his red-rimmed eyes Gary knew he spoke the truth. The ultrawave cannon, speeded a thousand-fold, was hurling its destruction ungoverned upon a universe which even now was dwindling to the breaking point!
This then was the end of their adventure. It did not matter that they had come afar and conquered many hazards. Here at the last moment, with triumph within their grasp, was to be torn from them all for which they had fought and labored and—his eyes sought Dr. Kang—and died.
What if their mission were a success and Magog's power overthrown, the children of Gog returned once more to look upon the sun? The children of Earth within a matter of hours would be obliterated in what to them would be a horrendous holocaust of flame, but would to observers from this far vastness seem no more than the flickering of a momentary candle in lost distances.
He cried in a choked voice, "Borisu! Stop! For God's sake—"