Armageddon 1948

By Ed Earl Repp

This edition published in 2010 by eStar Books, LLC.

www.estarbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61210-111-8

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental .

Chapter 1

“Ready with that charge?" the call came above the slam and; rattle of machinery.

Phil Burke, Captain of the National Guard, sat in the swinging operator's chair with his hands on the controls and his eyes on the depth gauge.

"All set!" Page Russell, top Sergeant, sat in the swinging chair beneath him. A metal box rested on his lap, clutched tightly in sweaty, blackened hands. Sixty times in the last three days he had squirmed out the front of the machine to place the charge. But his nerves still recoiled from the touch of that box of concentrated murder.

Three days ago they had started out from the bank of the Hudson, working under the nerve-pinching pressure of terror and determination. Seventeen miles of fresh brown mounds, zig-zagging into the woods, showed how far they had come. At the bottom of each shaft reposed a charge of' explosive. Gamma rays made it impossible for a Borer to pass within three hundred yards of any charge without setting it off.

In a great arc that had New York City for its center, other National Guardsmen and army regulars labored in similar machines. Desperation kept them battling to complete the zone of death that it was hoped would protect the nation's temporary capital from the hordes of Borers working day and night beneath the ground.

There were severe lines, graven deep about Phil Burke's mouth and eyes, that told of a gruelling fight with fear and fatigue. The hammering of the engine pounded on his bruised nerves. Every time the gauge caught his eye, with its two needles making a flat V, he saw the grinning red mouth of a Borer.

Borers! Two syllables that stood for slimy, gray-white hallucinations twenty feet long and as thick as logs. Bodies like jelly and teeth like steel. You could shoot those bodies to hell and still the heads and mouths crawled on as long as there was a few feet of body to push them along. The Borers were utterly blind. But their corpulent appetites guided them unerringly to every root, leaf, and shred of organic life within miles.

The depth gauge showed forty feet. Lulled by the monotonous hammering of crankshaft and gears, Phil Burke's tired body was half asleep. Suddenly the mine layer shuddered and stopped its swift descent. The reamers' deep grinding merged into a shrill whine. Higher, shriller, that whine went until Page Russell's scream could scarcely be heard:

"For God's sake, shut it off! It's driving me crazy!"

The dropping wail of steel blades blunting themselves on something incredibly tough. Then silence; and Phil's rueful chuckle.

"Sorry! That one crept up on me. What the devil's happened?"

Page carefully placed the explosive on a rack and dropped beside the machinery. His homely features, long and unshaven, pinched as he stared at the main drive shaft.

"I thought we'd busted a shaft and the engine was running wild," he muttered. "But the thing's solid. We've struck something harder than the reamer. Or else we've pushed into a hole where the blades are biting air."

Phil was frowning at the instrument panel, trying to find a solution there. A shadow, the forerunner of a wonder that was soon to leave him stunned, passed over his face. With greasy fingers he rubbed at square, blue jowls.

"Metal doesn't come harder than those reamers," he grunted. "We've struck a cave of some sort."

Then both men were staring at each other in a sudden fear. "A swarm of Borers might have left such a hole!" was the thought that leaped into their minds. " And if they did, they've already broken through our lines--"

Phil started the motors again without a word. He backed the mine layer up a few feet. Then he cut the switch. Reaching for a flashlight, he swung onto the ladder. "Let's have a look," was all he said. Page opened the small door. Both stuck their heads through as Phil's hand guided the torch beam about. What they saw was a round plate of bronze at the bottom of the hole the mine layer had dug. Where the whirling blades had struck it, the metal held a brilliant lustre. But in no place had it been as much as scratched.

Phil dropped his long legs through the door.

"If that's bronze," he gritted, "we d better get out the whetstone and sharpen our cutters. Uraniumite will cut bronze like cheese, and not lose the feather edge."

Page lowered himself and both men bent over the shining metal. All the reamers had done was to burnish it and lose some of their own sharpness. Digging with his hands, Phil found that they had merely uncovered a small part of a slightly convex dome. Page stamped on it with a hard leather heel. The solid thump that resulted deepened Phil Burke's frown.

"If this has anything to do with the Borer, I want to know about it," he stated. "We'll dig a transverse shaft and get room to work in. Then we'll see what we've found. . ."

Then went back to work with the grimness of men fearing what they may find. Borers! The nickname, the horrible picture of them, had dwelt in Phil Burke's mind for months.

Out of the sky they had come, the night of the full moon. Between dusk and daybreak, seven months ago, a swarm of small, worm-like creatures, encased in cysts, pattered down upon Earth. Astronomers reported seeing them belch from the craters of Luna.

Seventy-two hours later, all over the globe, men and women were tromping out snake-sized wrigglers. On their roofs, in cellars, in the lobbies of hotels, in hospitals. . . With a stab of revulsion, Phil remembered the Borer he had killed in his apartment. The stench of the spilled yellow blood—!

At first it had been a sort of joke. Then it was discovered that the millions of steel-jawed creatures were growing at the rate of a foot a day!

Soon they attained their maturity-twenty feet. Everywhere they went, they carried their voracious appetites and gnashing, steel jaws.

Over-populated Europe, hardest hit, massed for battle. Millions of men poured out to meet them before the great cities. That was when they learned that guns were useless. Each individual Borer had to be chopped to bits before it was stopped.

Like a sea of maggots they crawled on, covering whole plains, entire cities, clogging rivers. Great liners sank in their slips by the very weight of the Borers rooting in them.

The European nations, moving with that pig-headed pseudo-efficiency called totalitarianism, blundered this way and that. Vainglorious self-seeking prevented efficient methods. For a while it seemed the sheer weight of luckless soldiers flung against the wriggling hordes might stop them. Then the worms went underground. After that—

Phil would retain to his death-bed the , memory of a thousand headlines. "London Crumbles, Prey to Borers!" "Paris, Moscow, Rome, Fall!" The creatures devoured whole cities of wooden structures in a night. Concrete skyscrapers they undermined with their burrows and brought crashing down. Then they sifted the ruins for bits of wood or human flesh.

America was having her struggles too. Here and there across the continent, hordes of Borers swept over towns and cities. An isolated swarm sprang up west of Annapolis. In twenty-four hours the Borers were closing in on Washington. Infantry and mechanized units failed to stop the gray, squirming tide. President Adams, leaving by plane, announced the removal of the capital to New York City for the duration of the crisis. But before Adams reached New York, his plane crashed.

After that, America had more to fear than the menace of the Borers. Adams' death left the rift wide for the wedge of dictatorship. It was rumored that sabotage had caused he wrecking of his plane. For years, Fifth Columnists had been preparing to strike. Overnight they moved. General Aubyn, highest-ranking army official, declared the country under martial law. As easily as that it was a fait accompli. Aubyn, taking orders from Berlin the past ten years, surrounded himself with a ministry of iron-fisted zealots and moved to unite the nation under him by the simple act of wiping out the Borers.

But it was not so easy. To men like Phil Burke and Page Russell, his blind rushes this way and that were useless moves that meant eventual ruin. To say so, meant the firing squad. The army, the National Guard, the police forces, were deeply veined with Aubyn loyalists. To co-operate with the new regime was the only hope of bringing a return to sanity.

Across the water, events plowed toward a finish. In just four months— four months —Europe and Asia were totally disorganized! Reports came no longer from the dying continent. Flyers told of seeing little- bands of soldiers here and there, surrounded by Borers. Of glimpsing packs of madmen vying with the wild dogs for bits of flesh to eat. Europe was a vast graveyard, a dark land where civilization was dead.

Two hours of work and Phil Burke and Page Russell were standing on the rim of the great hole they had dug, staring down at a dull metal dome about seventy-five feet in diameter.

"Whatever it is, it wasn't made by a Borer," Phil growled. "Gives me the cold shudders to look at it. It looks so —so ancient. Yet, it's the toughest metal ever poured. It's one thing even the Borers' jaws won't dent."

Page was pointing. "Looks like there might be an opening there. Just above that square contraption we uncovered." They hurried down one of the long scoops the mine layer had left. Phil had a box of tools under his arm. Page wiped dust from the slick surface of the dome and exposed a faint line, .hardly more noticeable than a crack on a white china plate. The crack enclosed a large square. But Phil's chisel failed to win the slightest purchase.

Page, scratching with a forefinger, cleaned the packed dirt from the top of the square box welded to the side of the dome, just below the door. Five bronze knobs were fixed to the top of the box. Each had its own groove; each could be moved up and down the groove at will.

"Get a load of this!" he nudged his superior. "A prehistoric combination lock! You know, I've got a hunch that if we just knew where to set these knobs, that door would open by itself."

"Professor, you amaze me!" Phil exclaimed. "But the point is, we don't know where to set them. An acetylene torch seems to be indicated. Suppose you run along and get the portable outfit out of the mine layer."

Page turned and ran up the incline, long and lanky in his brown mechanic's coveralls. Phil pushed the knobs around testing. From some dusty archive of his mind he recollected that the ancients were supposed to be great geometricians. By way of testing, he arranged the knobs into an equilateral triangle.

Immediately, a swift force tore the central knob from his grasp and brought it back to the bottom of the box. The rest of the knobs automatically fell into line! Phil's eyes goggled.

In the next moment he whirled. The door was standing open!

Page Russell heard his delighted yell as he emerged from the machine. He looked over the brink to see Phil standing in the doorway, motioning to him. There was a soft light behind him, and Page thought he saw stairs curving away into the earth. He dropped the acetylene tank and started to run, as Phil moved inside. At that instant it happened.

CHAPTER II

The Sleeper

Phil turned back with a cry. He was within a few feet of the door when it thundered shut. The grind of machinery had forewarned him. But the door, leaping from a slot in the floor, cut him off short of his goal. For a moment he ran his hands frantically over the wall at each side of the door. Then panic touched him with cold fingers. There was no knob, no button. He was locked in.

A soft light filled the place. Phil pocketed his torch and searched intently for a lock of some sort. He forced himself to think clearly. Somewhere, there had to be a way.

The dome was utterly soundless. Phil's ears ached with listening for Page's voice. He heard nothing, though he pressed his ear against the cold metal.

Suddenly that metal was no longer cold. It was hot—white hot! Phil clapped a hand to his ear and jumped back.

"What the hell!"

A small spot just at the edge of the door glowed with heat. Phil laughed shakily. The acetylene torch! Of course! Page was cutting through to him!

But Page didn't cut through, though he waited an hour. The patch of sizzling heat traced itself all over the door, seeking a softer spot. Finally it ceased. Phil's long jaws showed a line of white skin. The tank was empty. Page had done all he could for him.

Phil Burke did the most serious thinking of his twenty-nine years. A picture popped up in his mind of a skeleton, lying stretched out on the floor with its clawing fingers two inches short of the food and water beyond the wall. Right then he knew he must do something or go mad with terror.

Forcing a pseudo-nonchalance, he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked about his prison.

"Not bad!" The exclamation came involuntarily from his lips after a moment's scrutiny.

Ancient or ultra-modern, the builders of this place had been supreme craftsmen. Though walls, floor, and ceiling were of metal, not a weld showed anywhere. Light came from some indirect source. In the center of the floor, a magnificent staircase of inlaid colored plastics wound down into the heart of the structure.

Phil approached the balustrade and leaned over. He looked far, far down, into blackness. Strips of light at intervals told of other floors. He counted eight. The echoes of his own footfalls followed him chuckingly as he began to descend.

Where the stairway gave its first glimpse of the second floor, as the circular staircase of a lighthouse gives a lofty view of each level, Phil's feet dragged to a stop. The floor spread fifty feet in every direction. Every square foot of it was filled with wonders. Beyond the far walls, through open doors, he glimpsed other galleries.

Phil's first notion was that it was like the toy section of a department store. Showcases were crowded with exquisite miniatures. Display tables supported beautifully arranged exhibits. One section of the floor was laid out like a miniature landing field. A score of small ships were lined up for a take-off.

Reaching the floor, Phil turned to walk up one of the aisles. And all the time his legs carried him slowly along, a strain of logic kept pleading:

"This isn't real! It would have to be a million years old. They don't make things like this anywhere. And the cave-men certainly didn't make them. It isn't real!"

On every side, something rose up to insult his intelligence. Microscopes' of unbelievable power! Phil placed an absolutely blank side under a huge, black instrument and recoiled from a vision of something that looked like a dragon.

Metal that defied gravity! Touching a button beside an iron bar, he saw the bar flow upward and come to rest against the ceiling. "Magnetism!" his brain sneered. He released another bar, grabbed it before it could float away, and carried it to the stair-well. There he let it go. It was last seen drifting into the shadows of the dome.

Transmutation of elements! Here was a wheel of ten spokes, at the end of each spoke a sample of some element ! Gold, copper, zinc, lead. Where the hub would have been was a chamber containing a little chunk of sulphur. Phil touched a button beside the gold spoke—and unleashed a miracle. The wheel became a blur; when it stopped, a tiny flake of gold lay in the hub . . .

Almost frightened, Phil Burke fled to the stairway and descended to the third level.

Everywhere his eyes rested there were life-sized models of men and women on operating tables. Phil caught an eager breath. Here was his chance to see models of the people who had built this deep well of time!

The most impressive of the displays drew him. Shielded by a great glass bell, four men stood beside a table on which lay a man prepared, apparently for some operation on the heart. The surgeon's heads were covered with glass helmets. Wearing gray, knee-length trousers, their upper bodies were bare, exposing skin of smooth, gold color. In body and feature, they were like present-day men of superior strength and intelligence. As Phil stared, suddenly they began to move.

He didn't ask himself what had started them. He was beyond wondering any longer.

That the surgeons were only clever models was evident by a slight jerkiness of their motions. But man on the table—! Phil's eyes flinched as a scalpel drove through his flesh, and blood spurted. A second surgeon moved forward and deftly clipped the arteries shut. Things happened so fast then that the young National Guardsman completely lost track of his surroundings.

The heart, a pulsing red mass, was taken from the chest cavity and laid on the patient's breast. While swift knives made delicate alterations, Phil held his breath. At length the heart was returned and the surgeons stood back. Then it was that the watcher knew the patient was only a dummy; the sides of the wound drew together, the spilled drops of blood evaporated into the air, and the scene was exactly as it had been before the incision was made.

Phil had had all he wanted of this floor. Through scenes of childbirth, amputation, plastic surgery, limb-grafting, he rushed to the staircase and hurried deeper into the museum.

Each floor he examined brought him a more complete picture of the civilization that was preserved here. They lived in beautiful, park-like cities. Their buildings were of two or three stories and designed for the utmost comfort. When they traveled, they went by swift ground cars or stratoliners. They farmed scientifically and seemed to have control of the weather. Their factories ran automatically. The extension of knowledge was the supreme thing. Euthanasia was practiced. Stringent eugenics was responsible for the perfection of their bodies. Love and marriage were two things the state didn't attempt to control, but propagation was closely regulated.

A new wonder grew upon Phil as he neared the bottom. What kind of machinery ran the models he put into operation? What controlled the air-conditioning system, which he was certain, by the freshness of the air, must exist? It added up to this: Somewhere in the well of time lay a power plant so frictionless it had run for centuries—millenniums! So devoid of vibration that it could neither be heard nor felt.

Phil Burke reached the bottom level in a mental fog. But no exhibits met his questing gaze. To his right stood massive banks of switchboards and control units. Obviously, this was the heart of the whole plant. To the left, one object alone broke the dustless surface of the floor: A raised platform, supporting—a couch.

Was it fear that made Phil want to run, to get out of this place of mysteries? Terror had its foothold in his heart; but his feet moved him forward almost against his will. He crossed the floor and mounted ten steps to the platform. A score of wires and tubes lay beside the couch, the lower end of each passing through the floor to some room beneath. Phil looked at the impression of a body in the deep-piled blue velvet of the couch. Slowly his fingers went down to touch it.

With a choked curse, he withdrew his hand. The velvet was warm! A living body had lain here only a few moments before!

Then someone laughed.

"Did it burn you?” a voice asked.

CHAPTER III

Help from the Past

Against the dark mass of machinery, she stood, tall and dark-haired, the loveliest woman Phil had ever seen. Her gown was of the same blue as the couch. Its cut resembled the graceful Princess pattern of many years ago, emphasizing her high, firm breast. Her face and bosom were a creamy gold, and her eyes, crinkled with amusement, were deep blue. She came across the floor to Phil, and he couldn't move a finger or open his mouth.

"Do I frighten you?" she asked. For the first time, Phil noticed the little carrot-shaped silver instrument she held in her hand, directing it toward him as she spoke. "It is I who should be frightened," she went on. "You are here in your own world, in your own century, and I—"

"Who are you?" the question came out on a long breath from PhiPs lungs.

"My name is Avis," the girl told him. "I have lain here longer than I can tell you. The instrument that was to record the centuries as they passed failed to work. Either that, or—it broke when it passed its limit."

Phil’s knees began to shake, and he sat down on the couch.

"Centuries—! People don't live that long," he croaked.

"In suspended animation they do. You broke my long sleep when you opened the door. How did you move it?"

"I—I stumbled on the combination," Phil faltered. "We were digging and—"

"Digging?"

"Yes, laying mines to stop the Borers. We — Good Lord!" Phil started, as recollection came to him. "I've got to get out of here. Page—my partner—will be scared stiff. After I went in the door closed and we couldn't get it open."

"We will both go out—presently," the girl assured him. "But you don't mind if I take a few moments to orient myself—a few questions to learn what has happened?"

Page shook his head. If the world had been coming to an end, he wouldn't have had the heart to say no. Not while woman's beauty—beauty such as Avis' —could sway him. Phil was looking at her and trying to decide whether or not she was a hallucination. Suddenly he reached out and touched her cheek. The flesh was warm and soft.

At her quizzical glance, he grinned sheepishly:

"Don't mind me! But I thought if I could just be sure you aren't ectoplasm, I could breathe easier. I'm not used to finding beautiful women buried in bronze museums, you see—"

A flush that was far from prehistoric dyed Avis' cheeks. Her glance dropped for a moment; then quickly it came back to him.

"I must find out what time, what—" she groped for the term; "what year, what era, are we living in?" she finished. "Anno Domini, nineteen-forty-eight," Phil replied. "Nineteen hundred and forty-eight years after the birth of Christ."

"Christ? I don't know of him. Was he a king?"

Bitterness stained Phil's eyes darkly.

"The King of Kings! Not a tyrant like those who helped kill Europe. Not like our own General Aubyn — the usurping martinet!

Troubled lines altered the look about the girl's eyes.

"We have much to speak of, and no common basis of understanding," she frowned. "Let me tell you why this building is here, with all its relics. And then you must tell me all about yourself."

Phil waited. Avis sat beside him on the couch. She laid aside the silver instrument she held, slipping her fingers about his hand. He knew it to be purely a utilitarian gesture, but the thrill he felt was nonetheless enjoyable. Somehow, the carrot-shaped object translated thought waves into a common language. Apparently, the girl could perform the same trick by direct contact.

"The time-meter was designed to measure five hundred thousand years," Avis began slowly. "Since it is broken, I cannot tell how long I have slept, until I have time to discover the temperature of the earth and sun. Then I can approximate the interval since Juyo died.”

"Juyo was the nation into which all nations were blended, after hundreds of years of wars. If you have seen the miniatures and exhibits in this building, you know more of our civilization than I can tell you. We lived in the Golden Age of Earth. The globe was warm enough from inner fires that we never knew such things as ice and snow. We lived for knowledge and beauty—and—love. We could control every phase of our environment. We were absolute masters of our fate. Odd to think that so small a thing as a cloud should destroy Juyo!”

*Obviously the carrot-shaped instrument is a type of "radio" pickup machine which is capable of picking up the delicate emanations of the electric waves of the mind in the process of thinking. Mental telepathy is deemed a possibility, and ESP experiments have shown that in many persons the ability to detect thought waves is greater than that which can be accredited to chance. Avis, apparently, is able to detect them by means of some mental power which is fully developed, and which she can transmit to another by means of contact. This indicates that the nerves act in some way as a conductor of waves from the brain.—Ed.

"Yet destroy it, it did, and in the space of three years! A fragment of a dark nebula drifted into the Solar System and cut off ninety percent of our light and heat. Earth cooled rapidly. Millions of souls died from disease and cold. We waited, hoping the cloud would pass. Two years went by, and it did not. The oceans froze. All plant life was killed. For a depth of two miles, Earth froze as hard as steel.

"So one day we knew we must perish. Yet we didn't want to die without leaving our treasures for the men who would someday walk again on our world. Into a hundred museums such as this one, our knowledge was gathered. For each thesaurus a keeper was selected. It was made difficult for future men to enter the repositories, in the hope that they would be safe during the states of barbarism through which men must climb again. We wanted to help men only when they were ready for it."

"Your museum was opened too soon!" Phil broke in bitterly. "Mankind is still in a state of barbarism. We need your help—God knows!—but no world was ever less deserving of it."

Avis' dark eyes searched his face. Phil's head shook.

"The gods are against you, Avis. You left Earth in one set of death throes and you've found it in another. It was a cloud of gas that destroyed Juyo. It's a cloud of steel-jawed worms from the moon that is stopping us. They lay dormant among the lunar craters for centuries. Something—hunger, maybe —aroused them to migrate to Earth. They could have been stopped when they were small, winged cocoons. But they grew. And now they threaten to destroy civilization. It didn't have to happen—but it's happening! Thanks to a plague worse than the worms—dictators!"

"Dictators? What are they?"

"Human devils who set themselves up as gods," ground out Phil Burke. "The trend started in Europe, where three ruthless murderers seized control of their governments and finally forced their doctrines on all the countries of that part of the world. Within the last few years they've succeeded in infecting a large part of our nation with their ideas. When the Borers came, it gave the Fifth Columnists, as we call their spies, a chance to seize control of 'the government. And they've done it, damn them! President Adams left a clear road when he died for General Aubyn and his crowd to declare martial law and take over."

"What has happened in Europe?" Avis asked.

Phil said bitterly: "Europe no longer exists. The dictators refused to cooperate with each other when the invasion came. They made it easy for the Borers to conquer. The same thing is happening in America now. General Aubyn has his own pet plans and won't listen to advice from the greatest military experts in the country. Every day a dozen more cities fall, but he keeps on with his bullheaded course."

"These Borers—" Avis' eyes clouded as he finished speaking. "Are they strong enough to break through metal such as this?" She indicated the walls of the museum.

"Not a chance," Phil grunted. "Even their teeth can't scratch the stuff."

Avis was suddenly smiling.

"Then it will be easy! We can manufacture enough bronzite to surround a great city with walls a hundred feet high and equally deep. Gather everything possible into this city and wait until the Borers turn upon themselves. In a year's time, I promise you there will not be one of the monsters left!"

Phil's eyes lighted like stirred coals.

"Could we do that? Make the metal in such quantities?"

"For a single city, yes. The wall need only be the thickness of paper. But it would be possible to save only a fraction of your population. Still, it is that or complete extinction of the race."

"Of course!" Phil nodded, excitement growing swiftly in him. "An idiot could see that we're heading for doom this way. Isolation is the only way of fighting the plague. Avis—!" He suddenly gripped her fingers tightly. "You'll come with me—talk to Aubyn and his ministers?"

"I've waited a thousand lifetimes to help you," the girl smiled. And Phil, watching the quiet curve of those rich lips, read much into the simple words. With a start, he stood up, shot a glance at his wrist watch.

"Lord! Page has been waiting four hours! We've got to get out there before he has the whole National Guard hammering at the door."

Avis started down the steps with Phil impatiently accompanying her. They hurried to the stairwell and mounted the numberless steps to the dome. Nearing the top, the girl turned to him.

"I will stay here while you bring your General Aubyn," she stated. "There are many things to be done before I leave."

"But if he won't come—?"

Avis handed him the telepathy inductor.

"Present him with this," she said. "He will come."

Phil took it, puzzled. Forestalling further questions, Avis raised her hand and moved it back and forth through the air above the door. Immediately, there was the same grind of machinery, and the door opened.

Phil's eyes had been prepared for the glare of sunlight, but only the dim rays of late twilight reached through the door. While he stood on the threshold, excited voices broke out and someone darted to his side. Page Russell looked as though he had not slept for a week, as he grabbed Phil by the arm. Worry had cut deeply about his eyes.

"Phil—!" he gasped. "In God's name, where—" Then his tongue froze, and he gaped at the girl standing back a few feet. "Who—who's that?" he croaked.

Out of the shadows beyond the door, many men moved to stare. Phil saw a dozen of his fellow Guardsmen in the crowd. Some carried portable torches, others clung to crowbars and pick-axes. When he spoke, it was to the whole group.

"This is Avis," he said quietly. "I'll leave it to her to explain just who she is and why she is here. But I'll tell you this much myself: She's offered the first sensible plan for fighting the Borers that I've heard yet, and it's going to be listened to if I have to drag General Aubyn out here by the ears!"

Page hissed: "You're talking yourself into trouble! Watch yourself!" Phil shook his head. "Even old Lantern-Jaw will have to see the light when he listens to her. She —she's wonderful, Page . . ."

Page grinned, eyeing the girl admiringly.

"Uh-huh. Four hours alone with her and I'd have the same glitter in my eye that you've got."

Phil reddened, then put a frown on his face.

"Let's get back to the city before Aubyn takes off on one of his daring flights over the enemies' ranks. He's going to listen to what Avis has to say. Take my word for it, mister, we've wasted our last day digging gopher holes!"

In a borrowed Army pursuit ship, Phil shot back to the City. Lights frosted the island when he leveled off above it. Before City Hall, crowds jammed the street. Phil's guess was that Aubyn was speaking to the nation again by means of radio and loudspeaker. Dropping fast, he coasted to a stop on the landing roof atop the building.

With the roar of the engine still ringing in his ears, he heard the boom of amplifiers many stories below. He ran to the elevator-housing, listening with half of his attention to the General's spirited harangue.

"—not the first time this nation has faced ruin!" Aubyn bellowed. "But it is by far the most perilous situation that has ever confronted America. Under the old order, defeat would be a certainty. With every department of the government under my leadership, I will guide America back to safety. Give me one week and—"

The elevator door cut off his words. Phil let the car drop. He bounced to a halt on the ministry floor and hurried up the hall. Aubyn's voice came to him again. This time it pounded through the glass door of the council room from which he was broadcasting.

Two Gold Troopers, on guard before the door, presented crossed rifles. Phil offered his credentials.

"Captain Burke, with an important message for General Aubyn," he clipped.

The Gold Troopers, stiff and important in their high-collared tunics and tight fitting breeches, continued to bar his way.

"The General won't be free for an hour," one of them grunted. "You can talk to Colonel Sudermann."

"Sudermann won't do. Tell the General I've got information regarding a plan that will absolutely stop the Borers in two weeks!"

The same swarthy Gold Trooper raised an eyebrow.

"I don't think he'd be interested, Captain. He's just told the nation he'll stop the Borers in a week."

Phil arrested an angry contradiction. "Do you have any objection to my waiting inside?" he asked, through set teeth.

"I suppose not," the Gold Trooper shrugged. "Take a seat and keep still." Phil went inside, breasting a gale of vociferous promises and threats as he entered. General Aubyn sat at the head of a long table, a microphone before him. Around the table were ringed his war ministers: Colonel Sudermann, Major Henry, Major Westfall and four others. Phil took a seat against the wall and waited.

With clenched fists and bared teeth, Aubyn continued to harangue the listening millions for three quarters of an hour. He was a burly, deep-chested man of fifty, arrogant in his new power. His hair was thick and gray, his cheeks veined with tiny purple threads.

Sudermann, propaganda minister, kept a thoughtful frown on his face and made meaningless notes throughout the oration. Westfall stared straight ahead of him with hard, lustrous black eyes. Major Henry murmured from time to time. "Excellent! Well put!" Watching them, Phil's being crawled with contempt.

At last it was over. General Aubyn fell exhausted against the back of his chair, smiling slightly at his ministers’ comments. Then his eyes fell on Phil Burke, standing tall and stiff before him.

"What is it, Captain?"

"General, you've got to come up to the Catskills with me!" Phil blurted. "I've found something there that will change the whole tide of the war. We can stop the Borers dead if we act soon enough. Will you come with me immediately?"

Aubyn's waspish temper flared. He flung a look about him.

"Who let this wild-eyed young fool in?" he demanded. "Do I have to be plagued with cranks every hour of the day? Throw him out!"

Sudermann hammered on the table. One of the Gold Troopers opened the door and glanced in.

"Get rid of this fellow!" the Colonel bawled. "Someone will pay for this interruption!"

"Give me a chance, will you?" Phil cried. "This is no joke. You know as well as I do that you have no working plan of battle. If you'll listen to me, we can at least save a fragment of our civilization."

Aubyn suddenly had a gun in his hand. He motioned the Gold Troopers aside.

"Stand back. I claim the privilege of executing this traitor with my own hands."

Phil had a sickening instant of staring down a black gun-muzzle. Then his fingers encountered the slick feel of the silver telepathy inductor in his pocket. He held it before him. Aubyn's eyes reflected the sparkle of the gleaming metal. Just for a second his finger slowed on the trigger. Phil started toward him.

"You want proof that I'm not lying," he offered. "Examine this, and tell us what you think."

Aubyn took the inductor on his broad, flat palm. He held it close to his eyes. All at once he started, turning to look behind him.

"Who said that?" he snapped. "I heard nothing," Sudermann frowned.

"Are you deaf?" General Aubyn snarled. "Listen!" His lips began to move, whispering words that none of the rest could hear. " 'A million years I have waited to help you. Will you deny me the right now? It is a small thing I ask of you. Come with this man where he will take you.' "

"There! You hear that?" Aubyn challenged Sudermann.

"I — no, General!" the Colonel squirmed.

"You, Westfall? You, Henry?" The ministers' eyes fell before his. Aubyn angrily shoved the object in his pocket.

"You think I'm crazy, eh? Well, I'll show you how crazy I am by going with Burke to see just what the hell's up! And you're going with me, gentlemen." The ministers rose in a body to protest. But the General was curious enough, or frightened enough, to be adamant.

"We'll take a bomber—tonight. If it's a trick, I'll soon know it. Captain, lead the way."

Triumph was not Phil's sole emotion during the return flight. Anxiety was another. Would Aubyn have the perception to see the wisdom of Avis' plan? And would he admit it if he did? Vanity was the food Aubyn battened on. To give credit to another meant a loss of prestige.

Phil pointed down into the forest, and the pilot snapped on brilliant landing beams. Soon the light found the deep hole, and at the bottom of it, a campfire showed where Page and the rest of the Guardsmen waited. They landed in a nearby meadow and hurried toward the spot. Page was the first to greet them when they arrived. Aside, he whispered to Phil:

"Watch them! The girl showed us through the whole place. I don't like the way the others took it. They've got the notion it's some scheme of the reactionaries to get back in power."

"If we can just make Aubyn believe —" Phil grunted.

It was a stiff, awkward affair, that meeting between Avis and the dictator. The girl was gracious, General Aubyn glowering and suspicious.

"Let's see this fun house or whatever you call it," he snorted. "I warn you— I want proof, not parlor magic."

In the few hours since Phil had left the girl, she had gone a long way toward mastering their language. He did not wonder that she had been one of those chosen for the museums. Her answer to the general was only slightly halting.

"I accept your challenge, General Aubyn. Please come in."

The trip through the eight floors of the museum was an ordeal that left Phil shaking with repressed fury. The conceit of America's leader was so enormous that he blinded himself to everything he saw. That all the miracles could fail to impress him was impossible. Yet he buried his wonder beneath a hard shell of distrust. His attitude was a pattern for the rest. As she completed the demonstration of a weather-control model, she turned to Aubyn.

"Have I convinced—?" she began; and then she saw the guns in the hands of the leaders. Aubyn had not come here without a typical motive. Phil realized at the same instant what had happened. He groped for his own pistol and found it had been quietly removed.

Hot blood raced to his brain.

"You blind fools!" he raged. "After all you've seen—"

"I'll tell you what I've seen!" Aubyn barked. "A stupid attempt to hoodwink me. How long have you been working on this elaborate lie, you and your reactionist friends, Burke? Years, probably. Holding it against the time of need . . ."

Avis spoke softly, and Phil thrilled to the quiet courage she showed.

"What do you intend to do, General?"

"Execute the three of you as spies! What else can I do? The people have trusted me to protect them against all their enemies, and I number you among the most dangerous ones."

"Would you believe me, General, if I told you, you are standing on the very brink of hell at this instant?"

A look of dumb shock claimed Aubyn's features. Then he snarled:

"To hell with that! Take them, men . . ."

Avis' hand lay on the edge of a table. Her fingers stirred. Down from the ceiling writhed a column of blue flame that filled the room with a crackling hiss. Aubyn and his ministers stood enveloped in that sheet of fire!

The dictator's hysterical scream came from out of the midst of it.

"My God, she's killed us—!"

"Not yet, General!" Avis cried. "But unless you throw down your guns I'll put teeth in that harmless bolt of power. You'll burn like strips of bacon in a furnace. Are you ready to cooperate?"

Phil grinned and looked down at where Avis fingered a set of rheostats. It was not accident that they had finished the tour on this spot!

Sudermann's gun was the first to come skittering across the floor toward them. Phil captured it. He could see Aubyn's features, muscles working beneath the taut flesh. Then the dictator flung his gun down and Westfall, Henry, and the rest followed suit.

"Now you'll listen to somebody else for a change!" Phil flung at him. "Behave yourselves or I'll turn that dial myself!"

"What's your plan?" Aubyn panted. His fingers clung clawlike against his thighs. His face was like dough.

"You know the uselessness of ordinary weapons against the Borers," Avis declared. "Trying to hold them back is racial suicide. The only salvation for America is in impregnable fortresses."

"What's impregnable against the Borers?" Sudermann growled.

"Bronzite. The metal of which this repository is made. I can show you how to make it. In a few weeks' time we can manufacture enough to construct a walled city. Perhaps two or three cities. We will continue to build them as long as we are able. Into these cities we will gather the best of your civilization. Huge storehouses of food will guarantee that they do not starve. In the space of a year, the Borers are certain to have exhausted all the food on the globe. Then they will turn on themselves and start the job of self-destruction that we will finish."

"How many people can we save?" demanded Aubyn.

"Perhaps two million in each city."

"Two million! What's to become of the rest?"

"They must die, as you will all die unless you do as I say. Is it to be total destruction, or partial destruction and a chance to rebuild?"

"How do we go about starting?" Aubyn's manner was that of stalling for more time.

"Probably with a selective draft. It must not be given out that the persons called are the only ones who will be saved. There would be revolution overnight. Let them think they are to form a new army unit. Withdraw them to some point far from the present activity of the Borers."

There was silence for a few seconds, with only the crackling of the flame to offset it. Phil grated impatiently:

"Well, how about it?"

"Will I put the plan in motion?" Aubyn let his eyes go from Phil to Avis and back again. "No; I will not. In my opinion it's a scheme to save yourselves at the cost of millions of other lives. My methods may be primitive, but at least they aim at saving every soul we possibly can. Women and children ! Are you asking me to turn them over to the Borers to protect myself and you? The answer is—to hell with you!"

CHAPTER IV

Tunnels

Whether or not Aubyn was sincere, Phil Burke could not tell. The dictator stood with chin lifted and eyes blazing, a resolute, self-sacrificing figure. Ready to die for his country; a martyr to his principles. The whole thing didn't jibe with the rest of his character.

"You're asking us to put you to death, you know that?" the Guardsman breathed.

"I realize it," Aubyn said in a monotone. Then his eyes glinted, and his egotism boiled to the surface again. "Here's something else I realize. You don't stand a chance in a million of getting your message to the people without my help. You don't dare broadcast it to the whole nation. That would defeat your purpose. You can go to Science Congress, ami who will believe you? A couple of shavetail Guardsmen and a woman who claims to be a million years old!"

"You're nine-tenths right," Phil came back. "But you forget one factor. If we've already lost, we may as well kill you and have the satisfaction of doing it!"

"I didn't say you'd lost," the general argued. "But first I intend to put my own methods to the test. I'll make a bargain with you. If I haven't got the Borers on the run in ten days, I'll do whatever you ask."

"By that time it may be too late!" Phil objected. "The Borers already have control of all the cities west of the Mississippi. They've been fairly quiet in the South and East, but how do we know they aren't advancing underground?"

"Captain, we don't." Aubyn was once more expanding into his normal bluff manner, as he gained control of the situation. "But I'm gambling that they aren't and I think I'll win. You can play it my way and hope for the best. Or you can execute me and condemn millions of people with the same bolt that kills me. It's your choice, this time."

Rage shook Phil, and Russell seemed on the point of diving for the switch himself. But it was Avis who placed her hand over the rheostat and shook her head.

"He's right," she murmured. "We can only deal through him." She turned the power off and the tongue of fire withdrew into the ceiling.

Aubyn wiped sweat from his flat jaws.

"A wise decision, young woman. I believe you'll thank me, ten days from now, for preventing a tragic mistake." He signed to Sudermann and the rest to leave. Then he caught Phil's gaze. "Coming along, Captain? And you, Sergeant? I wouldn't want to court-martial you for desertion."

"You won't have to," Phil snapped. "We'll be right there watching your progress those ten days."

Page frowned a warning at him, sensing Aubyn's purpose in inviting them out of the museum. Avis stilled his fears with a shake of her head.

"I'm sure you'll deal fairly with my friends, General Aubyn," she smiled. "There are a few things I neglected to show you in the galleries. One was a very unpleasant gas-bomb. It probably would not affect the Borers, but I'm sure it could destroy most of the population of New York. Including the dictators."

Aubyn's eyes went a little wide, and his jaw got a soft look. Then he brought a smile to his lips.

"You may consider them my guests," he said ironically. "Good night."

Avis accompanied them to the stairs. They had not ascended past the fourth level when the pilot of the bomber came down the steps at a dead run. He stopped when he saw Aubyn.

"General! The Borers!" he gasped. "I got it over the radio. They've taken Philadelphia and Albany. They're on the way to the capital now!"

Aubyn cursed. Then his thick legs were pumping him up the stairs. The rest of the group gained the dome just behind him and plunged into the night. A gang of Guardsmen crowded the door of the bomber. Aubyn knocked them aside and stood panting before the ship's radio. Phil stopped outside the plane and listened.

"This is Thomas Kerry, speaking from Buffalo," the commentator's voice came. "We are in an NBC news-plane flying low over the city. It is difficult to see anything below us, as the power lines have all been destroyed. Buffalo is in total darkness. But there is sufficient moonlight that we can see waves of Borers sweeping across the city. Most of the tall buildings have fallen. The streets are jammed with wreckage. The army is endeavoring to maintain an orderly exodus, but there is little hope of this, as most of the roads are blocked by hordes of Borers. The report is that they entered through the sewers.

"Word comes that Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Boston are also falling. As you can see on a map, this forms a wide arc about the city of New York. The Borers, moving with some sort of plan, are rapidly closing in on the new capital. Other swarms of them have broken from the earth in less populated sections of Pennsylvania and New York state. . . ."

Aubyn snapped the instrument off. He slammed the pilot into the seat.

"Get this damned thing off the ground!" he roared. To Phil and the rest of the Guardsmen, he shouted: "Inside. Every man able to fly a plane is going to meet those stinking brutes."

Avis clutched Phil's arm as he moved to enter the bomber.

“Come back for me!" she whispered. "I'm going along. Maybe the sight of them will suggest something."

Phil nodded.

"Stay with her," he told Page. Then he climbed into the plane and found a seat. Aubyn crouched over the transmitter the long fifteen minutes it took to return. Into every department of the army, his voice found its way. Just as they reached the edge of the city, the first swarm of planes rose into the stratosphere and roared west and north. Phil saw the knot of officers waiting on the landing dock as they dropped from the clouds above City Hall. They hurried to confer with Aubyn as the bomber made its landing.

Phil joined the group in the elevator hurrying to the nearest landing field. Trucks waiting in the street rushed them away. There were planes by the hundreds in the hangars. Aircraft preparedness was one of the late President's chief directives, and New York was blessing him for it now.

Phil was assigned a tiny scout-interceptor. The ship was fifty percent engine and forty-five percent machine guns and small cannon. The rest was abortive tail and wings. At the dispatcher's signal, he inched back the accelerator. The interceptor roared down the runway. A flip of the elevators and it was howling straight into the sky.

When he leveled off, the redness of dawn burned along the stubby wings. He had climbed to daylight, though New York lay yet in gray half-light. Biting savagely, the propeller hurled the scout along at four hundred miles an hour. Phil was circling for a landing in ten minutes. Pre-dawn illumination made landing risky but no snags found the rolling wheels as he set it down.

From the edge of the field, Avis and Page hurried. The girl had changed to light, almost filmy garments. Impulsively, she seized Phil's hand as he moved to help her. And this time there was no pretense of telepathy to lessen the Guardsman's returning squeeze.

They crowded into the tiny cabin. Page draped himself around the rear gun. Avis was just behind Phil's shoulder when the interceptor took the air. Phil's orders were to proceed in the general direction of Syracuse. That way they shot at full throttle.

The sun raised its scarlet rind above the Atlantic. Gray waters shifted to a moving tide of gold and crimson. Beneath the ship, trees and meadows seized the same wealth of color. Then, in the near distance, a dull line of gray-white loomed. Phil pointed.

"Put the glasses on that!"

Page unkinked his long legs and crawled forward. Through a pair of binoculars, he scanned the horizon. He was silent; then:

"My God! What a sight! The Borers—"

Phil took the glasses with one hand. What he saw bunched the muscles of his body into knots. Worms! Maggots! A crawling ocean of them!

He had seen enough. The glasses came down and the interceptor went into a long slope. Now, above the wriggling gray mass, other ships could be seen diving and turning. Here and there, geysers of torn protoplasm showed where bombs had landed.

From maggots, the Borers swelled to the size of giant anacondas. Phil had the ship rocketing along just over the wave of monstrous caterpillars. They could see trees and shrubs falling before them. Their hard green faces glistened as they crested low hummocks. North and west, as far as eye could reach, the Borers covered the ground. Climbing higher, Phil looked down on a ragged lump upon the earth's surface, miles wide. Broken concrete spires and steel skeletons lifted gaunt above the moving mass. Phil grunted: "Syracuse."

Page stifled a curse and crawled back to the gun.

"Put her about," he gritted. "Let's give them hell!"

Phil turned the ship and they flew back. As they won the front line again, he swung at right angles to the advance and they began a strafing attack up and down. Their explosive shells cut the crawling Borers to pieces. The second line piled into the dying first line; then they swarmed over and crawled ahead unimpeded. Phil flew still lower, kept both his guns chattering while Page rocked the other machine gun back and forth.

Other ships dived and strafed a mile away. Their success was no greater than Phil Burke's. They could slow the Borers, but they could not stop them. No power on Earth could do that.

Phil wanted desperately to believe the mines they had laid far to the south would stop them. But logic told him how vain that hope was. Earth's disease was in its terminal stages, beyond the help of any medicine. They were seeing the end of civilization. At his elbow, Avis breathed: "It's hopeless, Phil. Aubyn has condemned New York by his blindness. The rest of the world, as well. It may be too late now to manufacture sufficient bronzite for a small city, even if he would agree."

"But—there has to be another way! If we can't arrest them here, they'll go on to destroy everything, every shred of life in the country. Isn't there— some way. . . ?"

"There is one possibility, Phil," Avis said soberly. "I hadn't mentioned it before, because it's small comfort at the most. You've only seen a fraction of the building in which you found me. Beneath the eighth level are living quarters for perhaps five thousand persons. The swiftness of the ice plague kept us from ever filling those rooms. A small colony, indeed, to give civilization a new start! Still, a start—if only we could get in touch with the type of men and women we need."

Page had started up at her first words. Now he sank back.

"That's it," he muttered. "It's no use picking out five thousands individuals at random. We'd be giving mankind a dowry of disease, idiocy, and laziness. God knows how we can contact a better class."

Phil's fingers were white on the controls.

"There's just one man who could help us," he murmured. "The kingpin of them all—General Aubyn. And I've got a feeling he'll be glad to help us—"

"Aubyn—!" You aren't serious, Phil—?" Avis' blue eyes were big.

"Absolutely. He'll be practically unguarded, with even the Gold Troopers in the field. If we can get next to him, make him call the head of Science Congress and round up the foremost men of science in New York—"

"That's it!" Page yelled. "Give her the gun, mister. The big shot's going to talk turkey for once!"

CHAPTER V

Hegira--

From the council room on the seventieth floor of City Hall, it was Aubyn's custom to keep in touch with his leaders by radio, during crises. Phil Burke knew this, and he had banked heavily on it in heading there. The landing dock was empty, and they reached the elevator unseen. Under his arm Page carried one of the machine guns, dismounted and ready for work.

The elevator door slid back on the seventieth level. Down the corridor, a pair of Gold Troopers stood guard before the council room. At the sound of the door, they looked up.

Phil hissed:

"Ready with that gun! We'll try to act like it's official business or something—"

Avis went between them. The guards watched them narrowly, puzzled. When they were within twenty feet, the blue-jowled Trooper on the left barked:

"Hold it! What's the idea of the artillery?"

Page raised the heavy caliber gun on a line with the sentries.

"Don't get excited, boys. This is where you lie down and play dead dog. We don't want trouble, but—"

"Get him!" the Gold Trooper roared. His rifle swung up, blasted flame and lead down the hall.

Hot wind stung Phil's cheek. Then the corridor rocked with the hammering thunder of the machine gun. Page fired two short bursts. There were the added explosions of the shells detonating in the Trooper's bodies. The guards' rifles clattered on the floor and they went back against the wall, to slide loosely to the polished marble.

Phil sprang past them, flung the door open. He had a glimpse of Aubyn rising from his chair with sagging features, Sudermann and the others watching from their posts at the table. Page stuck the ugly, smoking snout of the gun into the room.

"Lift 'em high," Phil snapped. "We've got plans that include murder, if it's necessary."

Aubyn stood there with his hands slowly lifting. The table before him was littered with maps and diagrams. His blunted features worked.

"I thought we'd had this out before," he said slowly.

"I guess we couldn't quite get used to your decision," Phil returned. "We're making some changes. Sudermann, you and the rest will go with Russell. One of the basement rooms should do, Page. We'll meet you there later."

The Guardsman nodded.

"Lay your guns on the table, all of you," he directed. Phil gathered up the weapons as they appeared. He threw them all in a closet. As an afterthought, he said:

"Better have them carry those Troopers along. They're liable to spoil things, lying there in plain sight."

When they had left, he grinned at the general over his guns.

"Get Arthur Volney on your private line,” he ordered.

"Volney—! What do you want with him?"

"He's head of Science Congress, isn't he? All right. Here's what you do. Tell him to come up here immediately. I'll be in the closet when he comes, so you might as well get used to the idea of following my directions. Have Volney round up all the leading scientists in the city, their families as well. Also, he's to get about a hundred capable physicians and surgeons together. Have him gather all the professors from the colleges, too. He's to take all these men—along with their families, understand—down to the docks and put them on a couple of ships. Give him complete directions for reaching the museum in the Catskills. Oh, yes. Give him carte blanche to the army commissary to take out enough food for five thousand people for a year. Have the soldiers take care of the loading for him. Got all that, now?"

Aubyn's head shoved forward on its thick neck.

"You're out of your mind!"

"Not entirely. Just crazy enough to think we can save part of the civilization you doomed by your bullheadedness. One other thing. Tell Volney he's to take care of all that in six hours, if possible. It won't be much longer than that before the Borers reach the Catskills. Now get on that phone "

Aubyn obeyed the menace of the weaving pistols. He called Arthur Volney at Science Congress, where he was up to the neck in plans for new explosives. Volney unwillingly agreed to come. Phil and Avis got into the closet when his footfalls were heard in the hall. Through the aperture left by the unclosed door, Phil could see him enter.

"Yes, General?" He stood before Aubyn, a surly, almost rebellious figure.

"I've decided to entrust you with an important mission, Volney," Aubyn began. "The most important thing you've ever attempted. We're setting up a new post which will be our last bulwark against the Borers. The fort will be located in the Catskills, near the river. Here's a map showing you how to get there. Now, here's what I want you to do—"

He tolled off the points Phil had mentioned. There was a hopeful ring to his voice as he concluded.

"You think you can—er—take care of this in eight or ten hours?"

Arthur Volney showed his excitement by his nervous folding and unfolding of the map.

"Easily, sir! I'll put my whole staff on the job and have it done in three or four hours. If you don't mind my saying so—it's about time some safeguard of this nature was taken!"

"Thanks," the general grunted. "Now get the devil out of here."

Volney bowed and left.

Phil gave him a few minutes to leave the building. Then they marshaled Aubyn down the corridor to the elevators. The lift dropped them to the basement, where they walked slowly along the dark, musty tunnels until a door opened at their advance. Phil saw Page Russell beckoning them. Hurriedly they entered the room.

The cabinet made a sullen, miserable group where they sat on boxes near a boiler. Page sat down with his machine gun.

"Get Volney?" he asked.

"He's our man!" Phil exulted. "Thinks he can have the ships on the move in less than four hours."

"Good! Four more hours is about all I can stand of looking at these sniveling heel-clickers."

"You'll have to look at them longer than that," Phil told him. "We'll take no chance of having them send out bombers to stop the ships. Yet we'd take that risk if we left them before Volney's had a chance to make it to the museum. We'll stay with them for six hours and give him plenty of time."

Page made disgusted noises in his throat and settled down to wait.

During those six hours Aubyn went from cajolery to threats and back again. The rest of the ministry relapsed into a lowering silence. But the dictator could not keep still. He was on his feet every minute, as nervous as a cat. And when Phil at last stood up and looked at his wrist watch, he started toward him with one hand clenched.

"You'll never make it without my help," he snarled. "Come to your senses. Cot us in on it and we'll rule this new world you talk of together."

"You misunderstand our motives," General," Avis said sweetly. "The idea of a selective draft was to cut out men like you."

Phil chuckled and glanced at Page.

"Got the key to this door? All we want is a ten minute headstart and we're set."

Page tossed it to him. Carefully, then, backing every step of the way, they moved to the door. They were on the point of backing into the hall when Avis uttered a choked little cry.

"Phil! Behind you—!"

Phil turned, a second late. From the shadows lunged a dozen Gold Troopers. Rifles probed his stomach and a walnut stock crashed down on his shoulder. He went to his knees as the soldiers plowed Page down and disarmed him.

Aubyn was bellowing.

"That's the stuff, men! How the hell did you find us?"

Fear worked in the face of the Gold Troop Captain who answered him.

"No one saw you leave so we knew you were in the building. We've searched every floor down to here. But, my God, sir, I'm afraid it's too late! The Borers are in the city! The subways—"

Aubyn seized the fellow by the arm. "In—the city—?" he croaked.

"Yes, sir! They're everywhere. Empire State's down and half the city's on fire. How are we going to evacuate, with the subways blocked and the docks cut off?"

Phil, dazed with pain, saw the swift look of craft that shot through Aubyn's face.

"Evacuate?" he heard him cry. "Do I look like a coward to you, Captain? We'll arm every man and woman in the city and fight to the last ditch. Go tell them that. Have them open the arsenal and start doling out guns."

The Gold Trooper saluted.

"I knew you'd say that, sir!" he grinned. "But—these people—you'll want them executed first?"

"No, Captain. I'll take care of them myself. Oh, yes; another thing. Is my plane on the landing dock?"

The Trooper nodded.

"Ready, fueled, and the bomb racks filled, General."

"Excellent. I'm going to see if I can bomb a path to the ships, myself. If all else fails, we'll try to get the people into ships somehow."

The Troopers saluted and left. As the sound of their running feet died, a slow smile buckled Aubyn's wide lips.

"Now, then. I suppose the museum is locked?"

Phil laughed harshly.

"Knew there was something wrong!" he mocked. "So you're going to fight to the last ditch, eh? And the last ditch for you is the museum. To hell with the people, eh, General?"

Aubyn's eyes blazed.

"Later on there'll be time to teach you respect. For the time being I may need you. Out that door now, all of you. Make a suspicious move and you'll died in your tracks."

Phil took Avis' hand as they left the room. She smiled up at him, a smile to which fear had no claim. Reaching the roof, Aubyn rushed them into the giant bomber in which they had flown in to the Catskills the time before. The dictator himself took the pilot's place and started the motors. Before the sputtering roar broke out, they heard other ominous sounds.

Women's screams, and the shriller cries of children; the dull kettle-drumming of falling masonry, the rattle of guns and expansive roars of grenades; and over it all the clash-clashing of the Borers' hungry jaws.

Then Aubyn had lifted the craft into the air. They sped up-river, closing their eyes to the horror below. Nearing the museum, they saw another sight to terrify them.

The Borers had crossed the river several miles above the bronze shell and were sweeping cross-country on a tangent that would carry them across it. About an equal distance from the museum was a dark mass of running, walking, crawling humanity. It was not the danger to the scientists that started Aubyn cursing. It was the possibility that they themselves would not make it to the repository from the meadow.

With his frightened hands on the controls, the ship almost ended things for them in the meadow's deep grass. Striking a rock, it bounded twenty feet into the air and came down in a grinding skid. The ship's dozen passengers landed in a heap against the dashboard. Phil's one thought was for the bombs in the racks—but they failed to detonate. Aubyn shook himself and barked orders. The men crawled out of the wrecked ship.

Aubyn tore open a locker and began passing out small crates of hand grenades.

"We may need these to hold them off!" he shouted. "It's going to be a dead heat if we make it."

Even Phil and Page were made to lug boxes. It was man-killing work, that uphill struggle through the rocks to the museum. They reached the hummock above the great pit that hid the shell, and the men in the lead let out a cry.

"We're too late! They're a hundred feet from the pit!"

"Too late, hell!" bawled General Aubyn. "Start heaving those grenades. Keep them in the air as you run. We'll blast 'em out until we can get inside."

The leader allowed his prisoners to hurl grenades along with the rest, knowing they could not harm him without killing themselves. In the late dusk, the red flashes broke out blindingly among the mass of Borers wriggling down the walls of the pit. Heads, fragments of bodies, and loose earth flew hundreds of feet through the trees. The worms were legion, but for a moment they were hurled back from the museum.

They broke into a dead run, after that. Phil glanced off through the trees and saw the flash of moving bodies. Volney and his strange collection of humanity were not far off. Now Aubyn was plunging down the sloping dirt incline. He gained the bottom and began shouting to Avis.

"Get this door open! We can't hold them off much longer!"

The girl turned to Phil.

"What shall I do? He'll only save himself and kill the rest of us."

Phil grinned, a wild, mirthless grin.

"Pretend to open it. Stall along, I'll do the rest."

Avis left his side to run to the combination box. After she had toyed with the dials a moment, she said something to Aubyn. The dictator cursed.

"Keep at it!" he panted. "We'll hold them off."

He ran to where the others had formed a short line twenty-five feet from the door. Up and down their arms flailed, in that queer, overhand grenade throw. The tide of Borers was on the lip of the crater. Up there, the ground boiled and smoked, churned to life by constant explosions. Now and then a wriggling monster would come rolling down the hill, to start its blind rush after its tormentors. Then one of the men would pump bullet after bullet into its head until nothing was left of it.

But the minutes inched by. The Borers were piling up. A dozen of them at a time would roll down the hill. It was no longer possible to keep up with the massacring of those that gained the bottom. Aubyn turned desperately.

"Will you hurry!" he shouted. "We can't—" Then he saw them; the men led by Arthur Volney.

At a stumbling run, they poured down the incline. Avis had opened the door and the first of them were entering the museum. Aubyn said not a word. He jerked the pin from a grenade and his arm went to throw it into the mass of men, women and children.

Phil was on him like a mastiff. His knuckles landed on the general's jaw. Aubyn reeled, sat down. Still he clutched the grenade. Phil dived on him. He tore the bomb from his fingers and threw it. The Guardsman chopped another fist into his face and Aubyn's jaw went slack and he fell back.

Phil jumped up and shot a measuring glance up the slope. The Borers seemed poised like a breaking comber. He began to throw again. The rest of the men had not seen the by-play. Their bombs still fell among the monsters.

Phil's shoulder muscles burned. The pain seemed to steal into his brain. He lost track of everything but the need to keep on fighting. He was still hurling grenades when Page grabbed his arm.

"Come on!" he cried. "They're all inside. We're ready to close up '"

"To close up." Words Phil had thought never to hear. He stumbled along at Page's side until the dome loomed above him.

He looked back to see the dictator struggling to his feet. Aubyn shrieked and flung up an imploring hand. It was in Phil's heart to show him the pity he didn't deserve. But at that moment the ground between them split open and an ugly green head, the size of a washtub, burst from the earth. Aubyn screamed and turned to run. But behind him were thousands of other Borers. Phil turned away.

The coolness of the metal structure was about him, then, and the door thundered shut.

"It's over, Phil!" Avis whispered. "There's death outside, but in here there's life. And hope for your people to rebuild their world again."

Phil went toward her, until he was standing tall above her, his hands on her waist.

"Our people," he corrected. "This is the Ark of covenant, and it's going to be guided by you. You'll bring us back to a saner world than we ever knew. A world in which dictators are classed lower than the Borers."

"How can I fail?" Avis smiled. "With everything to work for—and you to help me!"

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