The giant leaped at them. His bellowings shook the walls. He sprang for Lembken, caught him by the throat, and forced his head upward. I saw the loose spike in his hand. The monkey chattered, the parrot stretched out her neck and snapped, shrieking her phrases. Between the men the frail girl wrestled, dashing her weak fists into the giant’s face.
The roaring mob choked the narrow corridor on either side. “Death to him!” they shrieked. “Death! Death!”
The old man caught the words upon his tongue and screamed.
“Not death!” he yelped. “I’m Lembken. I can’t die. I never thought of death—dying—going nowhere—nowhere—nothing—I want to live—”
He cowered behind the girl, thrusting her between himself and his enemy. So furious were her struggles that she forced the giant away. She dashed her fists into his eyes again and again, until he turned on her and gripped her by the wrists, twisting her backward. He looked into her face for the first time.
“Let him go!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him. He is old—he is old—he has done no harm—he is the people’s friend—he has told me so—I love him—”
The giant dropped her wrists and staggered back. His horror-painted face became a tragic mask. He moaned, and his hands groped impotently in the air for something that he failed to find. It was not the blood in his eyes that blinded him. For this was she whom he had sought, torn from his home, the last to share Lembken’s favor, the child whom I had seen dragged from the Council Hall, her innocent child’s heart loyal in his last hour to the only lover she knew.
It wrung my heart, the pity of it: this blossom of love that sprang from that festering, rank soil of human baseness.
The next instant the mob swept over us. They seized their prey and stamped out the life beneath their feet. I saw the quivering body tossed high in the air and dashed from wall to wall, trampled on, hacked, and torn. I saw it poised against the crystal walls, saw the dark airplane swoop to safety amid a hail of Ray fire; and then the air was filled with zig-zag flashes of blinding light.