stammering and overwhelmed, but
trying to make a report.

Consternation reigned, incredulous, amazed consternation. The bearded
old man rose dazedly and strode from the hall with the rest of the
Council following him. A pause of stunned stupefaction, and the
spectators in the hall rushed for other doors.

"Stick to Aten," snapped Tommy. "Something's broken, and it has to be
our way. Let's see what it is."

He clung alike to Evelyn and to Aten as the air-pilot fought to clear
a way. The doors were jammed. It was minutes before they could make
their way through and plunge up the interminable steps Aten mounted,
only to fling himself out to the open air. Then they were upon a
flying bridge between two of the towers of the city. All about the
city human figures were massing, staring upward.

And above the city swirled a swarm of aircraft. Tommy counted three of
the clumsy ornithopters, high and motelike. There were twenty or
thirty of the small, one-man craft. There were a dozen or more two-man
planes. And there were at least forty giant single-wing ships which
looked as if they had been made for carrying freight. They soared and
circled above the city in soundless confusion. Before each of them
glittered something silvery, like glass, which was not a screw
propeller but somehow drew them on.

The Council was massed two hundred yards away. A single-seater dived
downward, soared and circled noiselessly fifty yards overhead, and its
pilot shouted a message. Then he climbed swiftly and rejoined his
fellows. The men about Tommy looked stunned, as if they could not
believe their ears. Aten seemed stricken beyond the passability of
reaction.

* * * * *

"I got part of it," snapped Tommy, to Evelyn's whispered question. "I
think I know the rest. Aten!" He snapped question after question in
his inadequate phrasing of the city's tongue. Evelyn saw Aten answer
dully, then bitterly, and then, as Tommy caught his arm and whispered
savagely to him, Aten's eyes caught fire. He nodded violently and
turned on his heel.

"Come on!" And Tommy seized Evelyn's arm again.

They followed closely as Aten wormed his way through the crowd. They
raced behind him downstairs and through a door into a dusty and
unvisited room. It was a museum. Aten pointed grimly.

Here were the automatic pistols taken from those of Jacaro's men who
had been killed, a nasty sub-machine gun which had been Tommy's, and
grenade