"Careful, my friend!" the Lunarian hissed. "Your anger shows on your face, and that is bad. We cannot help that poor girl now. Come!"
They went down into the city, avoiding the broad boulevards and keeping to the narrower streets where the poorer people were. As they passed by the base of one of the high palaces, they came to the body of a girl who lay crushed on the stones and had evidently been thrown or jumped from one of the upper windows. An aged man stood astride the body, leaning back and shaking his skinny fists at the white and gold bulk of the palace above him.
"Woe be upon the Lords of Gral-Thala!" he screamed in his shrill old voice. "Triple woe upon the tyrants and upon the decadent parasites who fawn upon them. Evil lies in wait for ye, lurking in your white palaces with your guards and your harlots! The hour of doom is not far away! The vengeance of Gorton and Laila may be long delayed, but it comes in the end! Woe to the Lords of Gral-Thala!"
An uneasy, sullen, murmuring crowd was gathered around the ragged old man although they left a broad circle of vacant space around him and the body of his granddaughter. A few troopers of the garrison were making a half-hearted effort to push the crowd back. They were uncomfortable in the face of the unspoken but obvious hatred of the throng. Larry and the others prudently kept to the back of the crowd. Even so, they were near enough to see what happened next.
Silver bells rang sharply, and lackeys called an arrogant summons to clear the way. In the midst of a circle of armed guards, porters carried a swaying gilt litter. On the cushions of the litter rested a man. It was one of the nobles of Gral-Thala, a perfumed degenerate in silken robes with a rouged and painted face. For a moment he stared at the crowds with his arrogantly scornful eyes. Then, as he saw the old man beside the girl's body and heard the curses he was shouting, his patrician face was distorted into a sneering frown.
The noble snarled an order, and one of his guards lifted his electronic rifle. There was a flash of blinding light! A sudden clap of miniature thunder, and a smell of ozone. The man-made lightning bolt struck the old man in the chest and knocked him sprawling across the body of his granddaughter. With a faint smile the noble leaned back on the cushions of the litter and waved languidly to his porters to move on again.