Lynne became aware of a lifting from her brain, of a cessation of pain that she had never actually felt. She opened her eyes, discovered she was still lying on the floor of the tower-room. But she was no longer surrounded by terror.
The patched portion of the wall had been smashed through and beyond it hovered the well-lighted outlines of a small aircraft. With her in the room was Rolf Marcein—and he was sweeping the apparently empty air about him with an odd-looking weapon. No flash or beam came from its squat muzzle but briefly, all around her, Lynne was aware of alien anguish, alien drainage, alien flight.
"That should do it for awhile, honey," he told her, helping her to her unsteady feet. "Crehut! What a show those blasted marlets put on this time. They tried to knock out the whole system simultaneously. Check the other stations, will you, honey?"
Automatically she did it. Cathayville came in clearly, as did New Walla Walla and Zuleika. Save for a few stations on the other side of the planet the communications network was clear once again. Lynne informed Rolf of the fact.
"Good," he said, pulling a skinless cigarette from his pocket and letting it ignite itself. "I guess we're solid now. The purt of it is they almost got us, before you could find out enough about them to knock them out for awhile."
"What sort of gun is that?" Lynne asked him. He had called her honey, he had saved her life, but so casually had he done it that she still felt definite constraint between them.
"We had to put it together in a hurry, once we got your message," he told her, patting it fondly. He held it up so that she could examine it better, added, "It isn't really a gun at all. We've been using the damned things for space and planet-ship external repairs for years now—you know how their outer skins pile up positive electricity...."
"I don't," she said. "Tell me." He shook his head, put an arm around her, scowled at her fiercely. "How come I managed to acquire such an ignoramus?" he asked rhetorically. "I'm not going to explain it all now but space-ships do pick up positive charges on their outer hulls and this thing is an anion gun that attracts and discharges negative juice.
"Our unseen visitors with the gone bodies are mostly positive electricity in their present form, honey," he went on. "This blaster of ours gives them a negative charge that wipes them right out." Rolf put an arm about her, led her unprotesting to the hovering vehicle outside. "I imagine they're beginning to wonder what in purt's been going on, down below."
But before he pressed the buttons that lowered the hovering pinnace to the planet's surface he drew her into the circle of his arms, kissed her, then said, "If you hadn't given us the clue to what these horrors were we'd never have had sense enough to know what to do. We couldn't conceive of the dominant species turning into this kind of force. But their pets, with the multiple bodies...."