imple process
of turning off the ray which emanated from the tube in his hands. Then a
veritable legion of Orconites had come to the cavern in which the
cruiser rested, and we had been marched through the very heart of the
power rooms, with their hum and clack and dazzle of mighty machinery,
to the laboratory. That was all.

The Orconites had left us outside the heavy doors of the private room,
but, just as there had been no opportunity to attack while they marched
with us, Leider gave us no opportunity to harm him while we were alone.
Though he had forgotten once the damage we could do in a fight, he was
not going to be fooled again. He kept the great table of the box between
ourselves and him, and his wary hands were always closer to a certain
row of control buttons than ours were to his.

* * * * *

It was he who broke at last the silence which had fallen as we watched
New York from Orcon, and his voice was loud in the hushed laboratory
from which the noises of his subterranean power houses were shut out.

"Sit down," he commanded, "and keep away from the table and the
reflector."

Then, when we had taken chairs beside the table, he began to speak to
us.

"That little dog you saw--I have it in my power to withdraw from him in
one second all the energy which makes him run, jump about, live. That I
can do by touching controls here at my table without even leaving this
marvelous, marvelous room." A frown crossed his forehead above his
pop-eyes, and he exclaimed with swift anger, in a croaking voice, "And
what I do to the little dog, I can do as easily to the whole population
of your loathsome Earth!"

I looked up at him where he stood with the table between us, and at
length found my tongue.

"And of course you will do it, you swine!" I burst out.

His momentary anger had passed as swiftly as it had come, and, ignoring
my epithet, he rocked smugly on the balls and heels of his feet and
smiled.

"Ah, Herr Doktor," he answered contentedly, "I will destroy Earth, of
course! For who has better cause than I, whom Earth would not accept as
her master? All of the people there will lose the power to move, and
they will die. I am ready now, in the uttermost degree. After you so
neatly but uselessly saved yourselves from drowning last night, I
finished. As easily can I de-energize the peoples of Earth as I can
you--the four of you--if you should make the move to harm me."