Tarrano laughed. "Treat me! Cretar, you know not with what you have been trifling. Immortal? You are indeed. Disease cannot touch you! You cannot die--save by violence!"
He swung to Elza. "These men, Lady Elza--they are strong-muscled. In health now more perfect than any other humans. _You_ are frail--a frail little woman. And unarmed. I bid you--strike one of them!"
She stared; but as she suddenly faced about, she caught in part his meaning. Before her Cretar shrank back, his face gone white, his teeth chattering.
"What's that behind you?" Tarrano's voice simulated sudden alarm; he scuffled his feet on the floor. The men jumped with fright; nerves unstrung, they cowered.
"What manner of men!" Tarrano's laugh was contemptuous. "Oh, Lady Elza, let this be a lesson to all of us! To cure disease is well. To prevent it--that too is good. But immortality--Dr. Brende never intended it, _you_ know he did not, Lady Elza--the belief that we have everlasting life here on this plane--the Creator never intended that. With all danger of death gone--save violence--these immortals here fear violence so greatly that they are men no longer!
"Immortal terror! God forbid _I_ should ever feel it! Or you, Lady Elza. A lesson for us all, who would be so un-Godly as to seek and think we have found what only the Creator Himself can bestow!"
I must revert now to that time in the gardens of Maida's palace at the Great City when we stood upon its roof-top, threatened below by that mob of _slaans_. Georg stood with the cylinder in his hand, waving it. The palm foliage was freezing. Down through the swirling snow fell the frozen bodies of the _slaans_ who had climbed into the gigantic palm fronds. The thuds as the bodies struck the ground sounded horribly plain in the stillness. Georg was still waving his cylinder. Snow and ice were gathering everywhere. Incautiously he lowered the weapon; a brief, momentary chill--the congealing breath of the Arctic in this warm palm-laden garden--swept the horror-stricken crowd.
Maida's frightened, pleading words brought Georg to his senses. He snapped off the cylinder and dropped it behind him to the palace roof-top. He was trembling and white as he stood with his arm around Maida. Weapons so drastic as this one were seldom used. Indeed, it was law throughout both Venus and the Earth that no civilian should possess them. The power for wholesale death in his hand, and which without wholly meaning to, he had so nearly used to its full effect, had unnerved him.