"A bluff," I exclaimed. "He would lose everything himself. It's suicide--" "Not suicide," Georg said soberly. "Propaganda. Can't you see it? He knows the Earth Council will make no move until the ultimatum time has expired. Hours yet. And in those hours, he is working upon the publics of the three worlds." The announcer was silent again. Below us, in our tower, we heard a footstep. The barrage had been lifted to admit someone, then thrown on again. Measured footsteps were coming up our incline. We stood motionless, breathless. A moment; then into the room came Wolfgar. He did not speak. Advancing close to us as we stood transfixed, he jerked an instrument from his belt. It whirred and hummed in his hand. The room around us went black--a barrage of blackness and silence, with ourselves and Wolfgar in a pale glow standing within it as in a cylinder. The isolation-barrage. I had never been within one before, though upon drastic occasion they were in official use. Wolfgar said swiftly: "We cannot be seen or heard. I have been in charge of the mirror observing you--I have thrown it out of use. The Princess Maida--" "You are--the friend?" Georg whispered tensely. Elza was trembling and I put my arm about her. Wolfgar's face lightened with a brief smile; then went intensely serious. "Yes. A spy, trusted by Tarrano for years--but my heart is with the Princess Maida. We must escape--all of us--now, or it will be too late." He stopped abruptly, and a look of consternation came to him. The black silence enveloping us had without warning begun to crackle. The metal cone in Wolfgar's hand glowed red with interference-heat--but he clung to it, though it burned him. Sparks were snapping in the blackness around us. Our isolation was dissolving. Someone--something--was breaking it down, struggling to get at us! CHAPTER IX _Paralyzed!_ The isolation barrage which Wolfgar had flung around us was dissolving. Someone--something--was in the room, breaking down the barrage, struggling to get at us. We stood huddled together; Elza clinging to me, Georg beside us, and Wolfgar, gripping the small cylinder which was glowing red in his hand from intense heat. Georg muttered something; the snapping sparks of the barrage blurred his words. But I heard Wolfgar say swiftly: "We're trapped! _You_, of all of us--you Georg Brende, must escape." The rest of his words to Georg I did not catch. He was thrusting a weapon into Georg's hands; and giving hurried advice and explanations. "Princess Maida ... she ... in that other tower ... you, so much more important than the rest of us...." Phrases I heard; but only phrases, for in those few seconds I stood dumbly confused, fascinated by watching the blackness in which we had enveloped ourselves now breaking into lurid, angry sparks.