"Yes. I'll get them to give us the street glare!"
I pressed the danger signal, giving our location to the operator. In a
second we got the light. The street in all this neighborhood burst
into a brilliant actinic glare. The thing menacing us was revealed! A
figure in a black cloak, crouching thirty feet away across the
corridor.
Snap was unarmed but he flung his hands out menacingly. The figure,
which may perhaps not have been aware of our city safeguard, was taken
wholly by surprise. A human figure, seven feet tall at the least, and
therefore, I judged, a Martian man. The black cloak covered his head.
He took a step toward us, hesitated, and then turned in confusion.
Snap's shrill voice was bringing help. The whine of a street guard's
alarm whistle nearby sounded. The figure was making off! My pencil ray
was in my hand and I pressed its switch. The tiny heat ray stabbed
through the air, but I missed. The figure stumbled but did not fall. I
saw a bare gray arm come from the cloak, flung up to maintain its
balance. Or perhaps my pencil ray had seared his arm. The gray-skinned
arm of a Martian.
Snap was shouting, "Give him another!" But the figure passed beyond
the actinic glare and vanished.
We were detained in the turmoil of the corridor for ten minutes or
more with official explanations. Then a message from Halsey released
us. The Martian who had been following us in his invisible cloak was
never caught.
We escaped from the crowd at last and made our way back to the
_Planetara_, where the passengers were already assembling for the
outward Martian voyage.