"That's Manning's laboratory,” whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.
The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over, drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into the engines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined and screamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast of heat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of the frame creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines… but the ship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.
Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand began clawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were only two men in the cabin with him-Reg and Max. Pete had gone!
"He just disappeared,” Max jabbered. “He was standing there in front of us. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke. Then he was gone."
* * *
Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, no heat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind had become disembodied.
Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on a light. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split-second before, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound.
It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, a laboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery, lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illumination white as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day.
Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile on his lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. The smiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!
With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights came up and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heat that sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemed to strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with a flare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into the gangster's body.