But it was not Thone; and this place that was clarifying to my vision was not the Big-City. The lolos field! I came—was dragged, sucked back to it! The lolos field—I was standing there where before I had been. And the menacing shape was Brutar—my captor standing there grimly confronting me.
But Bee and Eo were gone.
These two, escaping, came upon Thone, Will and Ala as I have related. Came upon them hovering nowhere in the void. Eo was stricken. Brutar, with what quickness and evil power of mind I could not conceive, had struck at Eo. A wound, a derangement not physical, but mental. His mind now—sick, stricken with disease. Almost wandering; yet not quite unhinged—for the power of his will was holding it. Bravely he clung to sanity. Fought for it. Yet those—his friends with him—knew then that he fought a losing battle.
They hung there in the void. Bee was sobbing, "I don't want him to die! He is my friend."
He held tightly to her. His eyes were very wistful. "They call you a girl—and now I know I love you!"
The void was moving. It seemed so to Will; seemed that the blackness was moving past them. Or was it that they—the little knot of their hovering shapes—was moving? Then Will realized that it was Eo—his stricken, wandering mind—dragging them somewhere. The void seemed moving—for how long Will did not know. And then, far away, in Space and in eons of Time, something became visible. A faint star-dust glow. A luminous patch. It broadened; spread to the sides, and up and down until everywhere before them lay its gleaming radiance.
The realm of disease! Will heard Ala murmur it in accents of sorrow and apprehension. Eo was rushing for it—and no power that they had could stop him.
The radiance intensified. A fear—a shuddering horror possessed Will. With every instinct within him, he recoiled from the approach. Revolted. But he held tightly to Thone and to Bee; told himself that they would lead him safely.
Everything was glowing; they were wholly within the glow now. A silvery glow that shone everywhere about them. But soon to the silver there came a greenish cast. It deepened. A green, with its sickly look of death. Green, with the silver turning to a pallid, flat, dead whiteness. And then a mingled brown; a murk, like a fog pervading everything.
Abruptly Will became conscious that Eo was no longer with them. His last despairing cry; and Bee's echo. He was going—floating downward; while they, uncontaminated, hovered above, at the edge of the realm, to see it but not to enter.