CHAPTER IX
Paralyzed!
The isolation barrage which Wolfgar had flung around us was dissolving. Someone—something—was in the room, breaking down the barrage, struggling to get at us. We stood huddled together; Elza clinging to me, Georg beside us, and Wolfgar, gripping the small cylinder which was glowing red in his hand from intense heat.
Georg muttered something; the snapping sparks of the barrage blurred his words. But I heard Wolfgar say swiftly:
"We're trapped! You, of all of us—you Georg Brende, must escape."
The rest of his words to Georg I did not catch. He was thrusting a weapon into Georg's hands; and giving hurried advice and explanations.
"Princess Maida ... she ... in that other tower ... you, so much more important than the rest of us...." Phrases I heard; but only phrases, for in those few seconds I stood dumbly confused, fascinated by watching the blackness in which we had enveloped ourselves now breaking into lurid, angry sparks.
A distant corner of the room became visible; outlines of the wall-beams; the growing glare of a wall-light in a tube over there. And through the brightening gloom—the figure of a lone man standing. Tarrano!
I heard Georg mutter: "Jac! Make a show of fight! Hold him! But careful—careful of Elza!"
Behind me there came an electrical flash; the pungent smell of burning cloth. Georg was no longer beside us!