Tarrano the Conqueror, page 138 by Raymond King Cummings
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dy 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!"
CHAPTER XXVI
Black Cloud of Death
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.
"Georg, have mercy!"
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.
Without the ray, the wind soon died. The warmer air mounting, melted the ice; the snow ceased falling. But the swath of shriveled foliage remained--a hideous scar cut into the luxuriant tropical growth.
The mob had forgotten its threats, its evil intent. Silent for a moment, it now burst into outcries. Motionless: then milling about, struggling aimlessly with itself--struggling to retreat. A panic of terror. The boats in the lagoon were retreating. The slaans along the fringe of shore began hurriedly to embark. The groups huddled at the