And bent and twisted in her likeness, straining until their molecules whined, were the dynamos and cones and globes.
"Magnetic ... flux ... by Grock! Grock!" she screamed. "I can't hang on. It's got me. Grock ... good Grock...."
Travis dove to yank her free--and ran into it. He felt it in his fingers, first. It was a maddening wrench that bent them as if they had been boneless. He leaped sideways and the thing caught him in the middle. On hands and knees he crawled away, crawled toward the only spot that offered safety.
He slid into the nacre coldness, dropped onto the stone floor of the captured tower. Sobbing, he lay there, listening to Nuala scream.
_This is the end of it. There is no way out_--
No way out. Only death from torture. Or--maybe not death. Just torture for Nuala. He remembered the pink and menacing girdle that secured the crypt from the _arklings_. The unseen voices, recorded somehow by the first humanoid race, had told of tortures--_Nuala, stop screaming! God, I can't stand it!_
Travis lifted his tanned face. His eyes burned savagely, staring across the tower toward the dials and levers that controlled those forces that only Rudra and Nuala understood. Travis moved his hands, getting to his feet. He looked at his hands, balled them into hard fists. He whispered, "I wanted something to come to grips with. I needed something to put my hands on, to hit, to batter!"
Travis snarled, "Rudra!" and slammed his hands on the levers. He had watched Nuala move them. He knew how to move the tower through the dimensional paths Nuala had guided it.
Under his feet the tower swayed, reeled sickeningly.
The two towers met with a jarring crash. Travis was already in midair, leaping through the gap. Stones met and tumbled. The roof of Rudra's blackened tower was caving in. Travis swept through the air, aimed for a crumbled section of roofing. His hands went out to fasten on smashed tile. Through the rent, he saw Rudra at his visiscreen, laughing at the twisted, helpless thing that was Nuala in the calyx--
Travis went mad. He leaped for Rudra, leaped from the roof. His fist caught him beside the cheek, drove his head back. His knees hit the man's chest as he fell, toppled him backward. Sobbing, Travis went for him even before he hit the floor.