In a moment I had located the laboratory room. Our vehicle in its full normal size lay here, dead white, an end of it tinged yellow by a shaft of moonlight.
I stepped within it, went to Jim’s cupboard, lighting a tiny battery light overhead. The Frazier weapon I sought was here. Its copite cone, with smooth glistening bone handle, copite headband, the tiny pulse motor, the wires; it was all complete.
A triumph swept me. I was unarmed no longer. Playing a lone hand, here in this strange world, a man, comparatively of giant strength and physical power. But I was more than that now. I had a mental weapon, and the mental strength to use it.
I did not stop to adjust the apparatus. I wound it up in its wire, and hastily retreated. I reached the street, with the weapon under my cloak. I hurried back to the castle over the same route; I did not want to chance losing my way.
But as I advanced, I had more than memory of the streets to guide me. From the direction of the castle, a blur of cries was audible, a hum, a murmur, which as I progressed resolved itself into shouts. The shouting of a mob: heavy, angry voices of men, shrill cries of girls, a single, long, agonized scream of a girl.
I was on a lower street that fronted the water. A side entrance to the castle grounds was before me. Through the trees I could see the frowning turreted walls of the castle. I stopped to adjust my weapon.
It took no more than a moment. Around my forehead, with hat discarded, I bound the headband, a narrow strip of finely woven copite wire, with two small electrodes pressing my temples.
On the right side two finely drawn silk-insulated wires dangled from the headband to my neck. I tucked them under my shirt, over my shoulder, down my right arm to my wrist. A band at my wrist, to which the wires were attached, held the tiny pulse-motor in place. My heart set it in motion, to generate the necessary current.
The Frazier projector was a copite cone, this one some ten inches long; its shape was a cone section, one end, the muzzle, with an open diameter of six inches, the other end, one-fifth inch, across which the diaphragm was fitted.
The bone handle screwed into place at the diaphragm. It was hollow. Within it were amplifying tubes and a transformer, miracles of smallness. The whole projector weighed some twenty Troy ounces. I plugged the two connecting wires from my wristband to its butt, gripped the handle with my index finger along its side, resting on the trigger button.