The fighting in the other sector had continued desperately. Our power house was hopelessly damaged; the towers, with their power gone, were using their batteries; soon they would be exhausted. But now we abandoned that sector; our remaining towers—all our flying forces—came to this melting area where the vanishing city lay defenseless before us.... We hurled ourselves into it, using only our heat-rays. Everywhere we added to the boiling torrent; even the interference heat of the fighting was to our advantage. This brittle city which owed its very existence to the congealing cold, lay enveloped in a cloud of steam.
Then Tarrano played his last card. The cubical building of metal with the cables depending from it, still hung motionless. It now burst into sound. A low electrical hum; then louder to a whine—a scream. Our men and girls were in the air around it. I too was there. Tarrano's men—the remaining few who were desperately fighting—had suddenly withdrawn.
And then we knew the purpose of this hanging room. A strange form of some tremendous electro-magnet. I could feel it pulling at me. My power to guide myself in the air was wavering.
From my height I could see down into this ceilingless rectangle. It was un-manned by humans. A room of whirling, flashing knives! Above it, even then some of our men were struggling in its magnetic grip ... being drawn down into it ... a girl's power must suddenly have collapsed; she was sucked in with a rush—torn to fragments by the whirling knives....
The area of magnetism seemed to spread for a helan or more. Everywhere around me I saw our men and girls struggling with it, fighting to keep away, but closing in a ring around it ... faster, continually more helpless until at last, their bodies out of control whirling end over end, they were sucked in like water rushing into a turbine.... One of our weakened towers attacked it; but some of the remnants of Tarrano's projectors caught the tower and darkened it.
Through the rising clouds of steam I could see the magnet vaguely now. But I could feel it pulling; and soon, in spite of myself, I was fairly close above it. I strove to keep my wits. The others who were meeting their death lost control of their bodies at the last and could not use their cylinders. I had some battery power remaining; I snapped on my disintegrating ray to test it. It was my last desperate recourse.
I righted my body, and yielding to the magnetic pull, ceasing to struggle, I dove head first at that yawning rectangle. A gleaming blur of knives ... blood-stained now ... within these rectangular walls horrible carnage....
A second of despair; but my ray struck true ... Around me was chaos; my senses reeled, went black for an instant. But I recovered, found myself whirling in the empty air....
The city was melting into a turmoil of boiling water and surging steam. The fighting everywhere had ceased. Wavering figures were rising—fugitives struggling away. With my senses still confused, I righted myself, undecided where to go or what to do. Above me two figures were still in combat. One of them—a man—assailed by a heat-ray, came hurtling down past me. The other wavered—a girl with her flying mechanism out of control. She was a hundred feet or more above me, wavering downward. Elza! I shot myself up to her, seized her in my arms, my own supporting mechanism sustaining us both. Elza, spent, but uninjured, I held her close.
"Elza dear! My Elza!"