Triplanetary (The Lensman Series Book 1)

by E.E. "Doc" Smith

As they paused before the door of the power room, both men felt Clio’s voice raised in her first and last appeal, an appeal wrung from her against her will by the extremity of her position. “Conway! Hurry! His eyes—they’re tearing me apart! Hurry, dear!” In the horror-filled tones both men read clearly—however inaccurately—the girl’s dire extremity. Each saw plainly a happy, carefree young Earth-girl, upon her first trip into space, locked inside an ether-wall with an over-brained, under-conscienced human machine—a super-intelligent, but lecherous and unmoral mechanism of flesh and blood, acknowledging no authority, ruled by nothing save his own scientific drivings and the almost equally powerful urges of his desires and passions! She must have fought with every resource at her command. She must have wept and pleaded, stormed and raged, feigned submission and played for time—and her torment had not touched in the slightest degree the merciless and gloating brain of the being who called himself Roger. Now his tantalizing, ruthless cat-play would be done, the horrible gray-brown face would be close to hers—she wailed her final despairing message to Costigan and attacked that hideous face with the fury of a tigress.