And Miko: “Very well. We will try this.”
So Snap was captured, but not killed. Relief swept me. He was in the helio-room, and Miko was with him. But my relief was short-lived.
After a brief interval there came a moan from Snap. It floated down from the silence overhead. It made me shudder.
My Benson-beam shot into the helio window. It showed me Snap lying there on the floor. He was bound with wire. His torso had been stripped. His livid face was ghastly plain in my light.
Miko was bending over him. Miko with a heat-cylinder no longer than a finger. Its needle-beam played upon Snap’s naked chest. I could see the gruesome little trail of smoke rising; and as Snap twisted and jerked, there on his flesh was the red and blistered trail of the violet-hot ray.
“Now will you tell?”
“No!”
Miko laughed. “No? Then I shall write my name a little deeper....”
A black scar now––a trail etched in the quivering flesh.