But I saw the pallid hawk-nosed Bragg staring at Dora with a look that made my heart pound. And Torkine himself dropped back on the bench and murmured:
"Do not be surprised little Dora, if the Master decides not to give you to this fellow Ralston—"
He leered at me, and his arms went around Dora, drawing her to him. She gave a little cry of terror and repugnance. It was too much for me. I jumped up.
"Stop that!" I rasped. "You Torkine—take your hands off her!"
He turned his head, grinning at me, but he did not move. I would have been upon him in another second. Behind me I heard Johnny Blair give a cry to try and stop me. In the shadows of one of the circular walls, half a dozen of the little box-like Physicals, all identical, were ranged motionless in a line. They were muttering now—weird mutterings that popped from them like tiny explosions. And abruptly acting in unison, they came pouncing at me!
"Ralston, stand still!" Blair shouted. "Your only chance—stand still!"
I checked my advance and tried to get my wits; to master the frenzy that was upon me. It was a moment of horrible chaos; I knew that my life or death in that second hung in the balance. With hands at my sides I stood irresolute as the weird little creatures spread out and surrounded me. Little creatures? Still my brain would barely encompass the amazing fact that these were not individual little beings but merely the detached parts of one great Individual—one almost Omniscient Mentality. As though they were just arms and legs with a remote giant central Being to guide them in what they were doing now.
As I stood panting, waiting, with my heart pounding, for an instant it seemed that I would be seized, with the tentacle arms of the box-like little things pulling at me, like poor Blair's young wife, with arms and legs pulled until she came apart....
It was a breathless, horrible moment of suspense. All the humans here in the pallid turret stood breathlessly silent, tense, as helplessly we waited to see what the Supreme One would decide to do. By what weird method of nature were swift communications passing between these little things and their main Being so distant? Our human mind doubtless will never yield an answer to that. Yet perhaps it was no different in its essence from the swift orders which our own brain gives to our distant hands and feet. Ours is a transmission through nerves; this other a transmission through the ether. Each of these little parts had its subsidiary eye, to see these local happenings; a little subsidiary brain to record them, to amplify them with reasoning and to fling the result out to the Supreme One for decision.