The room had the door through which we had entered, and two windows. Both were open. In the glowing dimness outside we could see other Physicals ranged in a line, watching us.
"The house is surrounded," Johnny whispered. "No way of getting out—any break would be instant death. But a little later, when they're getting ready for the marriages there's just a desperate chance. There's generally a hundred Physicals guarding the spaceship, but not so many tonight, if they are needed other places. Did he take Bragg in there?"
"Yes," I agreed. "Bragg looked pretty frightened. Good Lord, if that damned monster ever gets really angry—"
The words brought a terrified cry from Setta. "If only Bragg will be brought here to us," she murmured. "I think I can get us outside to watch the marriages. The Master has never been angry at me. And once we are outside with a chance to run for the ship—"
Futile, desperate plans. But they were all we could devise. We huddled now on the sofa, waiting for Bragg. All of us were unarmed. Even if we had been armed, of what use would a knife or a bullet-weapon be against this multiple monster? A thing impregnable to human attack....
Then I was questioning Dora about that strange thing the Supreme One had said—that Torkine had known her many years ago.
"After my father and mother died," Dora was telling me now, "before I met you, Tom, I lived in that home with my Uncle. Mrs. Holten was our housekeeper."
Dora had always seemed reticent about her young girlhood; I had known her only about a year. When she was about twelve, her uncle had been working to give the secret of spaceflight to the world. It was he who had, in secret, constructed the space-disc. Dora had known about it only vaguely; and had been warned to keep secret what little she knew. Torkine had been her uncle's assistant; and him, as a little girl, she had hated and feared.
"He—he tried to kiss me one day," she was telling us now. "You, Tom—you understand? It terrified me so that I screamed, and then my uncle came and I told him."
Torkine had been discharged by her uncle; and later her uncle had heard that he was in prison. Then there was the jailbreak, and shortly after that her uncle's experimental ship, and himself also, had vanished.