Looking upward, Larkin expected to see the flashing radiance blast through the group of humans like a smashing thunderbolt, searing and destroying them, leaving in its wake chunks of charred and writhing flesh that had once been men.
No such thing happened. The blinding radiance swirled around the men. It formed a coating around each of them. In a split second each of them was encased in a plastic cocoon that looked like ice, a covering that held them helpless. They still retained their guns but the plastic force covered the guns too. The guns were silent. Either they could not fire into the plastic coat or the men who still grasped them could not move their fingers to press the triggers.
Like statues frozen in motion, the group stood at the top of the coliseum, on the highest row of seats of that vast circling arena.
A cry of rage sounded near Larkin, then was suddenly stilled.
At the sound of the cry near him, Larkin turned, saw that his son and the men with him were likewise encased in plastic envelopes. He saw that his son's eyes were bulging from terror, his throat pulsating from the effort of trying to scream. But no sound was coming forth.
Radiance pouring from the tip of the staff of one of the elders had accomplished this effect.
The torture of that moment must have been a terrible thing for Roy Larkin. To be held helpless by a force that stilled all motion, to want to scream but be unable to hear the blessed sound of your own voice, to see the consequences of your own acts coming home upon your head—this was torture.
Malovar and his elders had not been helpless. They had retained in the metal rods some of the vast forgotten science of old Mars, a science that they rarely used, and rarely needed to use.
Malovar, his face still like thunder, was standing erect and was directing what was to happen next.