Despite the quietness of his manner, she was becoming more and more frightened. Her heart fluttered; she remembered again that voice of warning which she had not heeded; and felt suddenly too weak and helpless to make the attempt--the obviously futile attempt--to call out to the driver. From an inner pocket he had pulled a little vial filled with a dark-brown fluid. And, from another pocket, he drew a hypodermic needle. "Lucky for us both that, being a chemist, I can prepare my own formulas," he went on, with an oily drawl. "Now this won't do you any real harm, Eleanor, so I'd advise you not to struggle. That will only make it harder for you, and not help at all in the end." "For God's sake," she screamed, "what are you going to do?" Wildly she stared out of the taxicab, with some vague idea of yelling for help or jumping. But they were speeding along an almost houseless suburban road, with not a person in sight; and to attempt to jump, even if she should succeed, would be mere suicide. Meanwhile he had dipped the needle in the brown fluid, and she saw its thin, sinister point approaching. "Just hold out your arm," he advised. "It will be all over in a second." She was to remember hazily that she attempted a shriek, which was muffled by his throttling hand. She was to remember that she struggled spasmodically; beat at her oppressor with blind, self-protective fury. But this was all that she did recollect ... aside from the fact that there came a sharp stabbing sensation just above her wrist ... followed by a shooting pain in her head, an overwhelming dizziness, a reeling and swaying, and, suddenly and mercifully, a black, dreamless unconsciousness. CHAPTER VII Prisoners' Progress Lethemaz, the paralyzing drug of the Saturnians, had one quality for which Gates was sometimes thankful, and which sometimes he bitterly cursed. Despite the total incapacity of his body, his brain, as we have seen, was able to work with new keenness and clarity. Yet his increased mental awareness only added to his agony. For it made him see the horror, the helplessness of his plight in even more pitiful sharpness. Eleanor had been right in supposing that his eyes had glowed with recognition as he dangled in air above her. She had been right in believing that he had glared at the sight of Dunbar. But she could not have known what torment seethed behind that rigid brow of his. She could not have known the tantalizing madness of one who, hour after hour, realizes that he is being used as a tool for the furies of destruction, yet is powerless to speak or act. Nor could she have guessed what dire new discoveries the captive had made.