"All in good time. Lady Elza," Tarrano repeated. "You will know where we are presently; we are closer to human habitation than you would think."
Elza's heart pounded. As they were descending she had noticed a glow of light in the sky ahead. As though by intuition now, she seemed to realize that they were not far from the Great City. Her thoughts leaped to me--Jac Hallen--there in Maida's palace. Tarrano's grim, sinister purpose was as yet unknown to her. But she guessed that in it, danger impended for me--for all of us in the Great City.
Her thoughts instinctively reiterated the two words uppermost in her mind. And I think that it was just about then when they awakened me.
Leaving the vehicle, Tarrano commanded Elza to follow him; and he began picking his way through the jungle. A light was in his hand; it penetrated but a short distance. A quivering beam of yellow light; then Elza saw that upon occasion, as Tarrano's finger slid a lever, the beam narrowed, intensified to a bright lavender. And now where it struck, the vegetation withered. Blackened, sometimes burst into tiny flame, and parted thus before them as they advanced.
The jungle was silent; yet, as Elza listened, beneath the crackle of the burning twigs she could hear the tiny myriad voices of insect life. Startled voices as the heat of Tarrano's beam struck them. Rustling leaves; breaking twigs; things scurrying and sliding away, unseen in the darkness.
Once or twice a crashing--some monster disturbed in his rest plunging away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with squat, twisted legs; a thing larger than a man. A grotesque naked monstrosity almost in human form. A travesty--gruesome mockery of mankind. A face, three-eyed...
The thing lay writhing in the underbrush, mouthing, mumbling and then screaming--the shrill scream of death agony. And the horrible smell of burning flesh as Tarrano's light played upon it...