them. And we can track Chambers with his ring."

"That's right," agreed Greg, "but we've got to speed up. Craven is
getting under way now. If he does this, he can do something else.
Something that will really hurt us. The man's clever ... too damn
clever."

_CHAPTER SIXTEEN_

A miracle came to pass in Ranthoor when a man for whom all hope had been
abandoned suddenly appeared within the city's streets. But he appeared
to be something not quite earthly, for he did not have the solidity of a
man. He was pale, like a wraith from out of space, and one could see
straight through him, yet he still had all the old mannerisms and
tricks.

In frightened, awe-stricken whispers the word was spread ... the spirit
of John Moore Mallory had come back to the city once again. He bulked
four times the height of a normal man and there was that singular
ghostliness about him. From where he had come, or how, or why, no one
seemed to know.

But when he reached the steps of the federation's administration
building and walked straight through a line of troopers that suddenly
massed to bar his way, and when he turned on those steps and spoke to
the people who had gathered, there was none to doubt that at last a sign
had come. The sign that now, if ever, was the time to avenge the purge.
Now the time to take vengeance for the blood that flowed in gutters, for
the throaty chortling of the flame guns that had snuffed out lives
against a broad steel wall.

Standing on the steps, shadowy but plainly visible, John Moore Mallory
talked to the people in the square below, and his voice was the voice
they remembered. They saw him toss his black mane of hair, they saw his
clenched fist raised in terrible anger, they heard the boom of the words
he spoke.

Like a shrilling alarm the words spread through the city, reverberating
from the dome, seeking out those who were in hiding. From every corner
of the city, from its deepest cellars and its darkest alleys, poured out
a mass of humanity that surrounded the capitol and blackened the square
and the converging streets with a mob that shrieked its hatred, bellowed
its anger.

"Power!" thundered the mighty shadow on the steps. "Power to burn! Power
to give away. Power to heat the dome, to work your mines, to drive your
spaceships!"

"Power!" answered the voice of the crowd. "Power!" It sounded like a
battle cry.

"No more accumulators," roared the towering image. "Never again need you
rel