A number of the space men had crowded into the room to watch the torture of an Earthman. Their eyes, small sadistic eyes, glistened with the interest of bad boys watching a fish drown with a stick propping open its mouth or the antics of a frightened dog with a can tied to its tail. Or maybe it stirred some hidden emotion within them that would drive a bad boy insane.
Winston Eberly had felt hideous insects swarming over his body and gouging at his flesh, had turned numb under heat extracting beams followed by heat rays that sent agony racing through his every nerve. They wanted him to scream with pain. They wanted him to be the perfect slave, bowing and scraping and speaking softly and obediently. He wouldn't give in, damn them! He hadn't yet given in and he wouldn't, ever! Let them torture him to the death, and then, what more could they do? What could they do except realize that Earthmen would fight to the end?
"You make good talk now?"
Eberly lifted his head weakly, stared his hate at the questioning eyes that pressed close in front of him, struggled to put unfelt strength into his voice.
"Don't you know an Earthman is ready to suffer anything for honor? Don't you realize that none of us will rest until an atomic bomb has sent all of you drifting with the wind? No! I will not bow to you! Kill me and you gain nothing."
His head drooped again as giddy grayness fogged his eyes. Faintly, he heard something akin to laughter from the hateful creatures around him. Laughing! What were they laughing about? What had he said?
"So! The little Earthdog has exploded the fine particle!" His torturer answered his unspoken question. "The childish scum of this world are done things that ours great science cannot do. Fools! You are base your hopes on a dream, a deception! Those enemy of us are reach you with message. Those enemy that drive us from home world are inform you that we come this way before we are come. Then you make many big explodes to scare us from here with thought of exploding particles atoms. Ha! We are not fool to come convince of the impossible!"
The import of the words cleared Eberly's head a little. What was this? Was it possible that the great science of this race had never discovered atomic power? Maybe there was some condition in their distant system that prevented nuclear fission or perhaps they had never found a suitable substance for experimentation. So the men from space thought nuclear fission impossible, did they?
His thought was almost a voice, and the voice said. "Here in your intestines lies a glass capsule and that capsule contains pure Uranium! enough to blast this city from the face of the earth, and the invaders are unsuspecting!"
The torturer had gone aside to talk to another. Eberly looked toward them. "Why not kill me and have it done with?" he shouted. "You know now that you can't subdue an Earthman. Your methods are all weak. Even the radiation with which you took Earth could not kill all of us. It's as weak and faulty as everything else you have."