The dor-abasa was the organ of communication, but it worked in combination with the tri-abasa in order to transmit and receive sensory effects. So it was that the two of them in combination could transmit not only ordinary communication, but could convey the actual sensations of heat, cold, light, sound.
And these same two organs were capable of dispensing swift and silent death.
How this happened was the greatest mystery Underwood had to solve. He experimented by hurling the powers upon an artificial nervous system rigged up from a network of wires. A strong electric field was definitely measured within the wires, but it had properties that were not within the physicists' prior experience. Regardless, Underwood continued with his practising and found that he could increase the strength of that field more each time. If necessary, a full understanding of how it destroyed nerve tissue could wait until they reach their objectives upon Earth.
The third organ, the seaa-abasa, was the strangest of all. Interconnected intimately with the other two through nerve channels, it nevertheless had no obvious functions. Jandro had referred to it as the receptacle of life. It appeared to be the belief of the Dragbora that everything representing the individual could be drawn into the seaa-abasa when death approached.
Eons ago, the art of artificially reconstructing new bodies into which the organ could be placed, a process constituting literal resurrection, had been lost, but the Dragbora lived in hope of recovering the forgotten knowledge. This was their explanation of the preservation of the seaa-abasa, each family possessing the vast collection of its ancestral organs back to the time of the expulsion from their parent world.
What basis in fact there was to this theory, the scientists did not know. Apparently, such resurrection had never been accomplished, yet with each death, the seaa-abasa was religiously removed and preserved.
Underwood felt like some ancient gladiator training for an arena battle, but never had any gladiator fought for such a prize. No one knew better than he that at the moment he faced Demarzule and challenged the Sirenian, he might face equal and perhaps superior powers of destruction, for Demarzule was old in experience.
There was a defense against it, and to this Underwood turned his attention, for it was difficult in function. The dor-abasa had the power to absorb and store the destructive energies. Underwood discovered it almost by accident when Mason's technicians set up equipment for duplicating the destructive force as nearly as possible. It was weak and wholly ineffective, but it acted upon the dor-abasa, and the organ absorbed it involuntarily.
He was absolutely confident that they had succeeded in finding the great weapon for which they had come. The ancient Dragboran-Sirenian culture had obviously possessed the force shell as a protection. Toshmere's words made that plain, but they had misunderstood the implications when he had said, "They have found a way through the barrier. Our men are falling one by one."