The machine set the girl down gently. She looked scared, her blonde hair was awry, as though, maybe, she'd struggled with the robot; but otherwise she was still all right. She looked about in wondering terror; for what she saw was still a complete mystery to her, just as it had been to her brother and Evan Harwich a little while ago. No one had told her anything yet. "Paul--Evan!" she stammered "What is all this here? This pyramid, and Bayley? What's happened? Tell me, somebody!" "Take it easy, Clara," Harwich responded, trying to sound reassuring. "Everything will be all right!" he ended a little unconvincingly, trying to shield the girl from grim truth. "Everything's all right already, Clara," Bayley assured her mockingly. "I've got these two men of yours just where they can do the least harm! How would you like to see 'em squirm a little? I've got a special device for that purpose, something very refined and painful! And I've got just about everything else! In a month's time I could give you the planet Earth, to wear in a ring around your finger, if I happened to want to." "What's he talking about, Evan?" the girl pleaded again, the shadow of fear in her face deepening. "It sounds sort of awful! Please tell me. Why are those flat monsters holding you and Paul to the floor?" "I told you to take it easy, Clara," Harwich returned with a trace of sternness. "This maniac, Bayley, has got the upper hand now, but I said everything would be all right, didn't I?" The patrol pilot was trying again to reassure the girl, with a show of truculent bravado this time. He hoped that truculence would make his words sound true, as though he had a trump card up his sleeve, or something. "All right in the end, Harwich?" the fat printer chuckled wickedly. "Well, the end's pretty close. In another minute you'll be too tortured to do anything but scream. Right now I'm thinking and wishing. Look, the automatons are getting that agony tripod ready again!" It was true. Metal tentacles were whipping about, adjusting the torture rods to touch Harwich's and Paul Arnold's skulls again. Everything will be all right! That statement was a mocking memory to the patrol pilot now. An empty, rash challenge to the man whose petty ego yearned to control even the solar system. Harwich had never felt so completely helpless in his life before, not even when he had been suffocating out there on the deserts of the Forbidden Moon. If he could only somehow knock Bayley out of that little, pillared structure that served as a receiver for telepathic orders to the machines; if only he could replace him there for a second, then everything might be very, very different! But Harwich was held helpless to the pavement of the tower room. His massive muscles were useless against machine might!