He picked up his brief-case from the floor and laid it on the corner of the writing table at his elbow. "The lift I promised you still goes, if you want it, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow."
The old man took the black box eagerly and threw back the cover. His fingers flickered over the controls with practised familiarity.
"I shall not need your assistance—now," he said. His pale eyes met Winant's triumphantly. "Now that I have the Bubble again I have a means of return to my ship better than any Earthly conveyance could offer. Watch!"
From the black box swelled a pulsing radiance, a misty rose-tinted sphere that grew swiftly until it enveloped Yardana in a six-foot bubble of iridescent light. Through its wavering envelope the old man's face showed taut and purposeful, its pleading replaced by grim determination.
From the black box swelled a pulsing bubble of iridescent light.
"Print your story," he said. "Tell your people about Yardana and his mission. Tell them too that their days are numbered from this minute, for in their savage perversion of natural principles to warlike uses they have forged a menace that threatens the peace of the Solar System and, eventually, of the universe itself."