But to disobey the order in the older man's eyes was impossible. Again he manipulated the machine deftly. Again the pulsation of light swam from the depths, and the silver sphere emerged, swinging upward. Again he found the city, the room--and again the beautiful savage moved in its depths, humming a song on corraline lips that made Ilon's head swim. Even to look at her made his heart thump and race madly. Nyo looked, noting the symmetrical trim of a supple body, the barbarian grace of her. He nodded in reluctant approval. "They'll be back, Ilon," he said. "You'll have to stand them off while I work. Think you can do it?" Ilon nodded grimly. Nyo had withdrawn from his robe a tiny cylindrical object that was like a rod of sheer light. He held the filament before him. Now he looked directly at the girl's image, distant across star-worlds, and his eyes narrowed to mere slits. The muscles of his body knotted with exertion. Lambent light leaped from the white sliver in his hand, darted like lightning to his temple, splayed out again toward the distant barbarian world. Inside the room--the spy-ray danced. It leaped and throbbed, a living thing, moving quickly here and there, and Ilon built up his desperate force of mental resistance. He felt an outer demand for entrance, but denied it. Then overwhelming power blossomed from all sides, cascading down upon him. It was a white heat applied to his brain fibre, a furnace of unknown forces fanned to utmost intensity. His mind reeled from the impact. Shock raced through his being. He shuddered, feeling the forces breaking into the barrier of the room. Hopelessness against greater powers overwhelmed him. The sight of old Nyo, kneeling now, brought a vibration of despair from Ilon's inner being. If they discovered his father, the Galax-Mentor, breaking the law.... Energy came back out of nothingness. Again he flung himself into the struggle with forces interlocked in the etherical strains of matter. For a long moment he tensed, denying them any thought entrance. And he held! He held! And the lightning forces that had leaped from Nyo's brain across the universe were creating a white nimbus entirely around the girl--the girl of the silver sphere. And suddenly-- Suddenly she was no longer in that distant barbaric world. She was here--standing before them. No longer light-years away, but swung across a space-warp created by the mind pulsations of old Nyo. And as abruptly-- Crimson lips lost their curve of happiness. A scream burst from her lips and went shuddering through the air. Her eyes opened--but blindly. Unseeingly. Her hands reached up to clutch at--blindness! One moment--of utter fantastic horror. One moment when her body swayed and fell and writhed and twisted in unutterable pain. One moment when her beauty was crushed by a sledge-hammer of unspeakable anguish.