trickled like liquid fire down my throat. It was like no wine I knew. A pulse rose swiftly in me, of warmth; and the beautiful hangings, the low, odd furnishings with their hint of the East, the inviting eyes and half-revealed bodies of the two women took on a new and greatly enhanced beauty. It was a potent drink. I asked for more.
TANIL'S low, almost eery voice began again to weave its spell. Kyra brought me another goblet of the potent blue wine. I listened to Tanil talking, and her eyes were on mine strangely, watching me for some reason I didn't get. She was saying:
"We want to be your friends here. We are that kind of people who want to help and plan for such men as you—inventors, the real scientists of the world. We, too, consider ourselves scientists and useful people. As such, in a kind of understood brotherhood with all other intelligent people. Strange things may happen to you here at our hands, but please trust and believe in us. For instance, you are going to sleep now because I am putting you to sleep, and you may have very strange dreams. Very . . . strange . . . dreams . . . indeed . . . !"
My voice now strangely answered Tanil's, but it was not of my own volition. Alarm was ringing a bell all through my body, the thrill of danger clamored in my brain, but my inner self did not listen. It was the influence of some subtle spell she had been weaving about me, or else the wine had been heavily drugged! And I had asked for more. . . . That was funny. I was full of wine and my senses all awry with alcohol and drugs. The soft lure of her sing-song tones and the subtly powerful influence of her strong female personality, the utter desirability of her revealed beauty and the warm closeness of her beside me made my voice uncontrollable. I said:
"I hear, but I do not understand. . . ." My head nodded sharply. . . .
The feel of the male hands of the guard upon me woke me because my unconsciously resisting muscles had closed the toggle switch of my harness, released a flood of my synthetic body electric from the case of batteries into my libs. I leaped erect, sharply awake, and the restraining hands of the guard—who had been bending to pick me up—reached for me again. He was a third again my weight!
Kyra threw up her hands in alarm, remembering suddenly my harness and guessing what had happened, but she was too late to stop me now.
I seized the guard's arm, pulled him to me, turned swiftly and heaved him over my back. He flew, all three hundred pounds of muscle and fat and smooth brown hide, clear across the room and struck the wall, lay there without moving, sprawled—out! The other guard, not understanding my battery and harness, and thinking my prowess solely due to skill, advanced toward me, his hands outspread like a wrestler, not to be caught as his fellow had been. Kyra shouted:
"His invention; he's wearing it! I didn't get a chance to tell you. He's stronger than four men."
But her words were too late to save the other guard, for I did not wait for him. I leaped toward him, got him in the crotch and around the waist, lifted—heaved. He went up and over my head, fell heavily on the floor six feet from me. He didn't get up. Whether he was out or not, he had had enough.
As I stood there panting, and the two women staring at me wide-eyed with the sudden revealing of strength in a victim they had thought completely in their power, I relaxed. The muscle tension gone, the several little switches of my harness opened, as they were made to do. The vital energy of the battery ceased to course through my body. The drugs they had given me took sudden effect, I slumped to the floor! As I fell, the switches opened, a flood of power coursed through me—and as suddenly stopped. I blacked out.
I AWOKE to find myself upon a table. About me were the white, masked faces of nurses, of doctors! If I could have screamed in terror I would have! No man likes to find himself upon an operating table, and least of all when he has given no consent, has no illness, knows he is there because of an enemy.
What kind of an operation would they be doing upon my body? The worst possible ideas of their intent rose in my mind; they were stealing my young glands for some old man's money, etc., etc. All the lurid tales of fiction rose in my mind to explain this sudden horrible appearance of an operating room about me—and me the guy to get the knife.
