gashed from elbow to
wrist, and blood was dripping down his fingers. He dashed the drops aside
as he screamed orders. His black eyes still blazed with that old feral
hate, and though the years had wasted him, his hips were still as thin as
an Apache's and he looked iron-hard.

Odin and Gunnar knelt beside the railing that marked the entrance to the
tunnels below. Neither Hagen nor his men saw them.

Gunnar grasped Odin's shoulders and pulled him down. "Listen," he whispered
in Odin's ear. "Do you hear anything strange?"

Odin listened. Above the tumult behind them came that same sound which he
had heard out on the plain. A whining, purring sound. The purring of a
tiger feeding contentedly.

Then screams drowned out the whining sound, and Odin wondered if he had not
imagined it.

Nearly a hundred of the defenders came running toward Grim Hagen. They were
in mad flight now. Most of them were weaponless. Grim Hagen cursed them,
rallied them about him, and urged them to pick up new weapons and fight.

Now, Ato and Val and another hundred men came charging forward.

Leaving three men to set up the strange machine, Grim Hagen's trained
Aldebaranians met them. They clashed head-on--blade against blade, fist
against bone. They held there, like two wrestlers evenly matched. For a
moment Grim Hagen's men were forced back. Then some new defenders swarmed
out of the side-alleys and joined them. A head was poked up from the
stairway below, Gunnar split the man's skull and sent him tumbling down
upon some new replacements.

Now Grim Hagen spied Odin and Gunnar as they advanced to help Ato.

Standing upon the dais, his face livid with rage, Hagen pointed to them and
screamed--as mad as any of the last Caesars who had gone insane from too
much power.

"Look, men of the Lorens," Hagen cried, still pointing. "I will give
immortality to the men who bring me those two alive."

The first two to reach Gunnar and Odin died at the end of Gunnar's and
Odin's swords.

"Your immortality does not last very long, Grim Hagen," Gunnar shouted as
he wiped his blade.

Then another man came up the stairway. Odin killed him and flung him back
upon the men who followed.

But reinforcements were pouring in from other lanes. Grim Hagen and his
men now numbered over a thousand.

Seeing Odin and Gunnar, Ato swung his men over against the subway entrance.
They rallied there. Grim Hagen's soldiers came at them. Ato, Gunnar, and
Odin stood si