it had done any harm.

Fumbling in my pockets, I pulled out a loaded clip, lay there pondering
with the clip in front of my nose. Absently I noted the black band
around the nose of the bullets, indicating it was a high-velocity,
armor-piercing cartridge, manufactured by the U.S. Army for exactly such
emergencies as I faced. I did not know if it would prove too big a
powder-charge for my rifle, I did not know then even how I came to have
the cartridges. Polter had bought some Army ammunition and these must
have been among his things. I may have been firing them steadily and not
known the difference.

I inserted the clip, and lay there with my fore-sight following the disk
ship in its steady circling flight. Just where would an armor-piercing
steel bullet do the most harm? I shot the clip out at the great round
body of the thing, trying to guess where a hit might damage machinery or
pierce fuel tanks. There was no visible result, and I gave the flying
disks up as a bad job. How did I know they were built to resist meteors
in ultra high-speed space flight? It didn't even occur to me.

"Where're your buddies?" I asked Holaf. He lay beside me peering down
into the street below.

"Gone to join the Shinro. They are storming the doors of the palace
now." He gestured toward the street.

I leaned over the parapet. Below in the street the hideous, mutilated
bodies of the Shinro moved in a mass. They had brought up a huge beam,
and were pounding it against the great palace doors. Others climbed
toward the tall barred windows, some of them slipped through. But of the
white-robed Jivros there was now no visible sign.

I was about to send a few shots through those same windows, when a
waving white cloth from a window near the top of the huge structure drew
my eyes. A sudden fear struck my heart. Could that be my Zoorph, left
there--could that be Carna? I felt sure it was, and something warm and
pitiful seemed to flutter in my chest as I thought of her alone among
those hopping Jivros. I got to my feet, started across the roof.

"Where are you going, earthman?" asked Holaf, placing a hand on my
shoulder.

"I am going into that place, but there is no need you accompanying me. I
think I saw Carna at her window, a prisoner! I would like to free her."

Holaf gave a cry of unbelief.

"No, you cannot do that! The Croen means to destroy that place down to
the ground. Carna will have to perish with it. It is too bad, but you
canno