er and mounted its small stairs. Creeping cautiously
to the entrance of the control room, I saw a fairly large, dimly
lighted oval apartment. Great banks of levers stood around it; tables
of control apparatus; rows of dials, illumined by tiny lights like
staring eyes. There was another gruesome heap of garments here on the
floor; a grinning white skull leered at me.

This was the main control room of the Power House. Across it, near an
open window, Tugh sat with his back to me, bent over a table with the
grid of a microphone before him. I raised my cylinder; then lowered
it, for I had only a partial view of him: a huge transformer stood
like a barrier between us.

* * * * *

Noiselessly I stepped over the threshold, and to one side within the
room. The place was a buzz and hiss of sound topped by Tugh's
broadcast voice and the roar of the storm outside--yet he was
instantly aware of me! His voice in the microphone abruptly stopped;
he rose and with an incredibly swift motion whirled and flung at me a
heavy metal weight which had been lying on the table by his hand. The
missile struck my outstretched weapon just as I was aiming it to fire,
and the cylinder, undischarged, was knocked from my hand and went
spinning across the floor several feet away from me.

Tugh, like an uncoiling spring, still with one continuous motion, made
a leap sidewise to where his own weapon was lying on a bench, and I
saw he would reach it before I could retrieve mine.

I flung my heavy battery box but missed him. And as I rushed at him he
caught up his cylinder and fired it full at me! But no flash came:
only a click. He had exhausted its charge when he killed the Power
House guards. With a curse he flung it at my face, and my arm took its
blow just as I struck him. We fell gripping each other, and rolled on
the floor.

I was aware that Larry and Tina had followed me up. Larry shouted,
"Look out for him, George!"

I have described Larry's hand-to-hand encounter with the cripple; mine
was much the same; I was a child in his grip. But with his weapon
useless, and Larry rushing into the room, Tugh must have felt that for
all his strength and fighting skill he would be worsted in this
encounter. He blocked a jab of my fist, flung me headlong away and
sprang to his feet just as Larry leaped at him.

I stood erect, to see that he had sent Larry crashing to the floor. I
heard his sardonic laugh as he hurled a m