police advanced toward him and the rest drew back.

"You mean I'm under arrest?" asked Karl incredulously.

"Certainly. Of course you're not to be harmed."

One of the guards had him by the arm and he saw the glint of handcuffs.
They couldn't do this! If it had been for rioting in the Square it
would be different. But this! It meant he was a prisoner of a foreign
government, for what reason he could not guess. He lost his head
completely.

The captain cried out in amazement as one of his huskiest guards went
sprawling under a well-planted punch. This youngster must be as crazy as
was his father before him. But he was a whirlwind. Before he could be
stopped he had tackled the other guard and with a mighty heave flung him
halfway across the room where he fell with a thud that left him dazed
and gasping. The pompous little man in the purple crawled under the desk
as the sergeant leveled a slender tube at the young giant in gray.

Karl ducked instinctively at sight of the weapon, but the spiteful
crackle of its mechanism was too quick for him. A faintly luminous ray
struck him full in the breast and stopped him in his tracks. A thrill of
intense cold chased up his spine and a thunderbolt crashed in his brain.
The captain caught his stiffened body as he fell.

* * * * *

Karl--refusing to think of himself as Peter Van Dorn--came to his senses
as from a troubled sleep. His head ached miserably and he turned it
slowly to view his surroundings. Then, in a flash, he remembered. The
paralyzing ray of the red police! They never used it in the lower
levels; but overhead--why, the swine! He sat suddenly erect and glared
into a pair of green eyes that regarded him curiously.

A quick glance showed him that he was in a small padded compartment like
that of the pneumatic tube cars. At one end there was an amazing array
of machinery with glittering levers and handwheels--a control board on
which numberless tiny lights blinked and flickered in rapid succession.
At these controls squatted the twisted figure of a dwarf. A second of
the creatures sat at his side and stared with those horrible green
eyes.

"Lord!" he muttered. "Am I still asleep?"

"No," smiled the dwarf, "you're awake, Peter Van Dorn." The misshapen
creature did not seem unfriendly.

"Then where am I, and who are you?"

"You're in one of the Zar's rocket cars, speeding toward Dorn. We are
but two of the Zar's servants--Moon men.