the wire till it was gently taut. A moment's compunction
rose in him at what he was about to do. Then the black roll of the
Easterners' crimes rushed into his mind. Naomi's safety, his own, and
that of the little colony that had endured so much to preserve
humanity, cried out for their extinction. Allan jerked the metal
thread, and the faucet nozzle in the corridor opened.

A black stream gushed forward, reached the fire, and the room was a
roaring furnace. Allan saw the forms of his enemies silhouetted
against the blaze for a fleeting instant, then they were flaming
statues. One only, Jung Sin, nearer than the rest, leaped for the
window and escaped the first gush of flame. Allan pressed the trigger
of his ray-gun. But no blue flash answered that pressure. The weapon's
charge had leaked out, was gone!

* * * * *

Allan tore himself loose from yellow hands that clutched at him, his
fist crashed into Jung Sin's fear twisted visage, and the crazed
Oriental fell back into the roaring blaze.

But Allan himself was thrust backward by that blow, was swaying on the
very edge of the chasm. His hand went out for a saving hold on the
window sash; flame licked at it. He was toppling, against the strain
of his body muscles to resist the inevitable fall, and death reached
up from depths for him. Then an arm was around him, was drawing him
back to life. Naomi had darted back, defying the terror of that
height, the surge of heat. She had reached him just in time--a
split-second later and his weight would have been too much for her
puny strength. But in this instant, the merest touch was enough to
save him. They crept along the ledge and climbed wearily in.

There was another plane in the hangar, and presently Allan had it
rising through the well into clean, free air. He turned to the girl in
the seat beside him and pointed at the scene they were leaving.

"Look," he said.

The city was in darkness beneath them, save for the one staring
rectangle that marked a pyre. But dawn shimmered opalescent in the
east.

A soft white hand crept into Allan's. There was a long moment of
silence. Then Allan said, softly: "A new day, and a new world for
their children."

A sleepy, tired voice sighed: "For their children and ours, Allan."

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's When the Sleepers Woke, by Arthur Leo Zagat

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