At first only the confused tone of it. Then the consciousness of words. Two reiterated words:
"Danger! Jac! Danger! Jac!"
I waited no longer, but rushed to Georg and Maida—beautiful Maida in her robe of sleep with her white hair tumbling about her. Georg half awake—yet almost at once he could understand me, and explain.
Natural, instinctive telepathy! It had not occurred to me. I had never bothered to develop telepathy; and indeed with any degree of fluency—or even of surety of reception—the phenomenon is difficult to perfect. Yet, as I knew, with a loved one absent upon whom one's thoughts dwell constantly—in time of stress telepathy is occasionally automatically established.
It was so in Georg and Maida's case, back there in the Mountain Station on Earth. Telepathy was the explanation of Georg's mysterious actions as he stood there before the sending mirrors, crossed the room in confusion, and like one in a dream leaped from the window to be seized by Tarrano's spies. Maida had been abducted a moment before. Georg's brain became aware of it. Her danger, the appeal she sent to him.
So it now seemed to be from Elza to me. Georg, out of bed now beside me, urged me to greater efforts of concentration, that I might understand what message Elza was sending.
"Elza! Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"
I murmured the words to myself as with all my power, I thought them over and over, flinging out the thoughts like radio waves into the night. Mysterious vibrations! In an instant, from here—everywhere in the universe. Who knows their character? Their speed? The speed of light a laggard perhaps beside the flash of a thought! Waves of my thoughts, speeding through the night, with only one receiving station in all the universe! Would Elza's brain capture them?
"Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"
"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"