Holbrook felt himself shoved onto a metal plate in the floor. He braced himself for death, for enlightenment, for God. But the machine only blinked and muttered. A technician stepped up with an instrument, touched it to Holbrook's neck, and withdrew an unfelt few cubic centimeters of blood. He bore it off into the twilight. Holbrook waited.
The machine spoke. It was hard to tell its voice from the sweet Zolotoyan trills. The guards leveled their guns. Holbrook gasped and ran toward Ekaterina. Two black giants caught and held him.
"By heaven," he found himself howling, foolish and futile melodrama in the twilight, "if you touch her, you bastards—!"
"Wait, Eben Petrovitch," she called. "We can only wait."
Hands felt over his garments. An instrument buzzed. A Zolotoyan reached into Holbrook's pocket and took out a jack-knife. His watch was pulled off his wrist, the helmet off his head. "Judas priest," he exclaimed, "we're being frisked!"
"Potential weapons are being removed," said Grushenko.
"You mean they don't bother to look at our spaceship, but can't tell a watch isn't a deadly weapon—hey!" Holbrook grabbed at a hand which fumbled with his air compressor.
"Submit," said Grushenko. "We can survive without the apparatus." He began to point at objects, naming them. He was ignored.
CHAPTER V