"Oh—do you know what this Serono Zeburzac looks like?"
"We've never seen him," Crystal cut in grimly, "but my father did, over the sights of an atomic flame projector. Serono Zeburzac has no left hand."
"Oh—" The gray-haired man behind the desk was interrupted by a terrible scream of human agony.
"No ... NO—" The words rose in a tortured frenzy. "Oh, God!... Not that again.... AAAAaaaaa—"
Crystal leaped to her feet.
"Jim—that was Jim Thornton! What's happened—" Her eyes turned in startled question to the slight, calm figure behind the desk. His benign expression of quiet peace had not been disturbed in the slightest by the soul-rending cry. He placed his fingertips precisely together.
"Are you sure Zeburzac was missing his left hand?"—he flexed the fingers of his own left hand for emphasis—"and not—his right?" There was a sickening click in the sudden, dead stillness of the room as he twisted at his right hand. It came away at the wrist, the thumb dropped lifelessly down. The fingers of his left hand curled around it. The wrist of the severed member was pointed toward them. In fascinated horror they stared down the muzzle of a tiny, short-range, atomic projector concealed in the artificial hand.
Crystal recoiled, one faltering step.
"Serono—Grenville was trying to warn us!"