The unholy wizardry of the Forbidden Moon was proven beyond all doubt. And in this weird Tower room, air-conditioned against the cold thinness of the atmosphere beyond its wall, the pyramid still throbbed a shrill portent of more to come.
A second robot mechanism soared into the chamber from a tunnel mouth. It bore a curious tripod-like instrument. The flying automaton spiralled down like a bubble, and came to rest beside Harwich and the youth. Pinioned by the tendrils of the other automaton, they were helpless to do anything but watch and submit. They were pushed flat on their backs, and held firmly. The tripod instrument was set up between them.
"The discomfort device, this must be!" Bayley gloated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "In just a few seconds there's going to be some fun, I'll bet! Now, Harwich and Arnold, I'm wishing you bad luck. Just a little foretaste of what I might wish later! Okay, pretty machines! Give my beloved enemies the works, just for a second."
Two rods of metal, projecting down from the tripod, were set in position by one of the automatons. One rod touched Harwich's skull, the other Paul Arnold's. A switch was moved.
There was no sound; but all of the patrol pilot's body seemed suddenly and maddeningly afire. To the very center of his mind, agony stabbed, viciously. No searing pain of any injury he had ever received, could have equaled this. He writhed, longing to scream his lungs out, as that moment of sheer hell seemed to last an age.
"God!" Paul gasped when it was over.
Both men were sweating and limp, and yet no visible harm had been done to their bodies. Artificial sensation, the torture must have been. Nerve impulses transmitted directly to the brain. A devilish, perverted achievement of superscience! Such agony might conceivably go on, in Satanic refinement, for months, without bringing death.
"You see, boys, I'm boss here as long as I stay in this little telepathy coop, where the old Ionians used to give their orders!" George Bayley hissed triumphantly. "All the wonders of the Forbidden Moon are mine to use, just as I see fit! There were just a bunch of machines here, waiting for somebody to control them. A pistol doesn't ask who pulls its trigger! And I got here first!"
"I was afraid of something like this when we were still on Ganymede, before any of us knew," Paul Arnold muttered raggedly.
And Evan Harwich understood very well what the youth meant. George Bayley was feeling that touch of power here. A sense of omnipotence was flattering his shallow ego, raising him in his own estimation to the level of some ruthless god. He, who had been a petty business man, a printer, a repairer of instruments, a loan shark! Just a crumby, fat little human being, ridiculous, small and conceited. Pathetic, too, stubborn, and lacking in judgment. There were many like him on Earth, and among the scattered spheres of Earth's interplanetary empire.