r lanes and streets.
Although it was a gallant, ragged little army that Nea and Maya led, it
would have lasted no longer than a straw in a whirlwind had it not been for
the Kalis. They appeared to be enjoying themselves, even as Grim Hagen's
men were not. They zig-zagged this way and that. They purred. They fed.
They were stronger now and their movements were quicker. Their victims died
faster.

* * * * *

And as they forged forward, Nea was growing in strength. She leaped after
them, leaving Maya to command the small army. She screamed. She urged them
on with a "Kill, kill, kill!" that froze the back of Odin's neck. Here was
no girl trained to work in a laboratory. This was a high-priestess, long
derided and forgotten, come back from the stars to wreak her vengeance.

"Good God," Odin was thinking. "What unexplored labyrinths are left in the
human brain?"

Then there was no time for thinking. The Lorens who were trying to gain
the stairway had finally dislodged the two bodies that Odin and Gunnar had
flung down upon them. They came up like a surging tide, and for the next
few minutes Odin and Gunnar were busy.

Gunnar had never been any happier in his life. He talked to his sword and
he growled at those that he killed. He yelled at Ato's and Maya's wearying
armies, urging them to go on and account themselves well. He stood by
Odin's side, and the two hacked and thrust until the stairway was chocked
with bodies and no one was left to assail them.

He and Odin were splashed with blood. The tumult was deafening. The
tiger-screams of the Kalis, the agonized torment of their prey. The
gun-blasts from Maya's army, the cry of Ato who had hacked his way almost
to Gunnar and Odin, the victory-scream of Nea, the broken music! And even
above this, the mad curses and commands of Grim Hagen!

Some of Grim Hagen's Lorens were in flight. Most of them were dead. But
his white-skinned warriors held firm. Not over a dozen were left at Grim
Hagen's side. Two were still working with the odd-shaped weapon.

There were other Lorens coming out of the hedges, but they held back.
They had seen enough.

Had fortune favored Ato then, his army would have won.

But at the precise moment when the balance was swinging toward the Brons,
Grim Hagen's gun-crew got the strange weapon unlimbered. The globe started
turning. Unseen motors roared within it. As though spun out like gleaming
strands of cobwebs, coils