“But what do they want?” she persisted. “What do they intend to do? I saw those horrible creatures through the magnascope when they came swarming out of the inside of that thing on the water and I thought, at first, that they were going to kill you all.”
“No, they seem to come in peace,” Dirk replied. “Teuxical, their leader, seems to be gracious and kindly.”
“We are all doomed,” asserted Stanton, “unless something happens. They can crumble our cities with heat and bury us under the ruins of them.”
“Keep your silence!” breathed Dirk, quietly but tensely. “We will find a way to destroy those creatures if it becomes necessary.”
“That man who keeps staring at me, who is he?” asked Inga in a voice that betrayed her nervousness.
Dirk turned and saw that Zitlan was still standing where he had paused and that he still was looking with searching eyes in the direction of the girl.
He returned the insolent gaze of the young Lodorian with an impatient and threatening stare and the countenance 405 of Zitlan at once became stern and menacing. He came striding in the direction of Inga, Dirk and Stanton and paused within a few feet of them, his rapacious eyes still fixed on the girl.
“My lady,” he said, “your beauty pleases me. I have walked on many worlds but never before have I seen one as lovely as yourself. Of the spoils of this world, all that I crave possession of is you. When we return to Lodore,” he added with an air of finality, “I will take you with me and place you with my other women in the Seraglio of the Stars.”
Dirk swiftly stepped close to Zitlan and the latter quickly clasped a tube that hung at his side, a tube of the sort that the soldiers had carried.