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I decided that I was in Leider's headquarters, a closely guarded prisoner. It was to be supposed that Leider had brought us here, as Hargrib had said he might, to interview us before he finished us off. Fear for the others laid hold of me, but I was still too dazed and giddy to get up and look for them. I lay still, trying to remember everything.
The instrument through which we gazed was like a metal box with a ground-glass top and a mesh of slender wires leading away from the table on which the box rested. Leider touched a button amidst a long row of buttons on the table. All we had to do after that was to look at the ground-glass plate, and the picture was there.
"If your secret service detail was right, and Leider is on Orcon, we've got to stop talking and get going. Tell me more about your expedition." "Do you know," she said presently, "I rather thought you would make quite a leader and fighter if you could ever be aroused. As for the expedition, we have only this one ship. It's that kind of a job." "Oh, suicide party, eh?"
"We needed you, and I, for one, was not going to see your egotistical ideas about an unimportant piece of work your cosmological chemistry jeopardize the safety of the world. Oh, I know the government wanted you in your laboratory. But with Ludwig Leider loose on Orcon, and you the only one in our Zone who knew much of anything about the planet, what could you expect?"
What had happened was that Leider had simply readjusted the forces of his damned power houses so as to yank us to him, ship and all, without the medium of a magnetic cable. What he had done was to direct at us a magnetic current so terrific that, taking hold of the few odds and ends of metal on our persons, it had snatched us bodily through space. And the ship, too! It was stupendous; incredible.
I concluded that we had missed an unpleasant fate by a narrow margin. Quickly Hargrib confirmed our belief that it was Leider who had wrecked our ship while it was still approaching Orcon through space. A ray which had crippled the magnogravitos had been used.
I stood still, thinking of the things which had happened after our capture, when the cruiser had already seemed to be in our grasp. First of all, Leider had restored our energy to us by the simple process of turning off the ray which emanated from the tube in his hands.
Therefore I made no attempt to bind him, but simply shoved him into a seat in the main cabin of the flier the room in which Forbes' body still lay and began to try to make him talk. I knew that Leider must have some way of communicating with his allies, and I was determined that if he could, I could. But it was uphill work. The creature closed his mouth, assumed a sullen look, and sat tight.
What began it was a long shout which came echoing from LeConte back on the ship. The instant I heard the cry I knew, somehow, that trouble had started. Leider had kept off us as long as we had remained quiet, but at our first move he had gone into action. While LeConte's cry still echoed in my ears, I swung to face the ship and saw him waving frantically from the deck.
Up and out they swept, out into the intense blackness which overhung the sea behind us. In another moment the whole crew had vanished, and I was glad enough of it. "Come on below," I said to my two companions. "There's no telling how long Leider will keep his hands off us, and we've got to find out from our prisoner whatever we can."
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