"He stole the ship, and killed your uncle?" I murmured.
"Yes. He told me that, while we were coming here."
I could understand so much more of this weird thing now! It was no chance that had directed Bragg to Dora and me as we sat listening to the concert. Torkine had sent him to lure us to some spot where we could be seized without creating an alarm. And it wasn't chance which enabled us to be attacked in Dora's home. Torkine knew where her home was located.
"Was it Bragg, or Torkine himself who came with the Physicals and caught us?" I demanded.
"Torkine," she said. "He told me they killed Mrs. Holten just before we arrived."
My mind leaped back.... My little laboratory there in which I had just completed the small ray-weapon. The paralyzing ray. In our frightened haste when we had arrived and found Mrs. Holten gone, I had glanced into the laboratory, but had not thought of my ray-model. Had Torkine forced Mrs. Holten to tell her what work was being done there? She knew about the weapon. Had Torkine taken it?
The little brown-skinned, brown-clad Martian girl, Setta, was at one of the windows now, standing there with Johnny; and they motioned us silently to come. The guarding Physicals on this side of the house had drawn back a little, but still we could see them, a line of gruesome motionless shapes. Their eyes glowed like points of fire in the darkness. Behind them there was a dark area of open rocks between the house of the monster and the Earth Village. Humans were moving about, always with little groups of Physicals guarding them.
The bustle of activity out there was growing. For half an hour past we had been aware of the sound of men's voices; the voices of girls, sometimes laughing, sometimes with little cries of terror.
"Look," Johnny murmured. "The dais for the wedding couples. They're lighting it."