I grasped it with my hands. It pulled me from the floor. I clung to it, striving to get my feet upon the rungs. It drew me to the level of the window, but I would not let go. It pulled me through the window-gap, and I swung far out above the Airscouts’ Fortress. Over me I saw the dark outlines of an unshielded scoutplane, high in the air.
I swung by my hands at the rope’s end, like the weight of a pendulum, making great transverse sweeps that carried me high above the bridge, from end to end of the fortress roof. I saw the courts revolve beneath me. I swept from the crystal wall out into nothingness, and London was a reeling dance of phosphorescent maze. Then the ladder began to descend. I felt the roof of the fortress touch my feet, wrenched my numbed hands away, and fell. A moment later the airplane dropped beside me as noiselessly as an alighting bird, and two men sprang from it and seized me.
One was the airscout Jones. He caught me by both arms and forced me backward. But the other leaped at my throat. It was David; and he would have strangled me, had not Jones pulled him away.
Then, to my vast relief, Elizabeth ran forward, interposing herself between us. “Arnold is not to blame!” she cried. “He tried to save me!”
It pulled me through the window-gap, and I swung far out above the Airscouts’ Fortress
David’s hands fell to his sides. The airscout caught me by the arms and pulled me toward an elevator entrance. He forced me into the cage, the others following, and we descended a few feet, emerging into a small, bare room with walls of unsquared stone.
Jones sent the elevator up and pulled the door of the shaft to.
“Now you can speak. You have five minutes to explain yourself,” he said. He pulled a Ray rod from his tunic and looked at David, who nodded.