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Lights were appearing everywhere.... The murmurs of gathering people ... excited crowds ... an absurd woman leaning down over a far-away parapet and screaming ... an ignorant, flustered street-guard on a nearby upper terrace swinging his pencil-ray down at Georg.... Fortunately it fell short.

His face in the mirror glared at me as I accepted connection. He ordered me down, Inter-Allied or no. Argo was at my elbow. His pencil-ray dug into my ribs. Had I made a false move it would have drilled me clean with its tiny burning light. I told the pilot we would descend.

Someone swung a pencil-ray wildly. It seared Georg like a branding-iron on the flesh of his arm as it swung past. He pulled Maida toward the head of an escalator a dozen feet away. Its steps were coming upward from the plaza at the ground level. Half way up, the first of an up-coming throng were mounting it. But Georg again turned aside.

The music and the mirth of the fete, the fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet, bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting.

He saw below him the figure of Argo come running out. A weapon in each hand. The burning pencil-ray swung at Georg, but missed him as he came down. Had it struck, it would have drilled him clean with its tiny hole of fire. Then Argo must have realized that Georg should be taken alive.