guards needed no command from the
new ruler of Antrid. These devils from Earth had tampered with the last
rocket-tube charge; probably had caused serious damage to the tube
itself. They must die.

Only the guards were armed, and the Llotta swarmed so closely in
pursuit of the fugitives that it was impossible for them to use their
ray pistols. At the great iron gate that now closed the exit stood the
guard who had admitted them. Tommy's pistol spurted blue flame and he
was enveloped by the destroying energy.

Ulana screamed as a Llott grasped her, wrenching the iron bar from her
hands. Blaine covered the intervening distance in a bound and his fist
crashed to the fellow's jaw, snapping back his head and lifting him off
his feet. He crashed to the floor plates an inert heap and the Earth
man recovered the pinch bar.

Pocketing his pistol, he swung the bar with both hands in mighty
circles that took terrible toll of the Llotta. They fell back before
the onslaught of the infuriated Terrestrial, leaving eight of their
number dead or dying with crashed skulls and broken ribs and arms.

* * * * *

"Open the gate, Tommy," he shouted. "Use your pistol on the lock if you
have to." A guard was coming at him and he ducked to the floor as the
blue flame crackled, singeing the hair from his head and blistering the
scalp as it spent its charge in fusing a cross member from one of the
steel columns nearby.

He fired from under his prostrate body and the guard thrashed his arms
wildly in the blue mist, then stiffened to a sparkling vanishing figure
within the dissipating vapor.

A gas grenade burst at his side and Blaine sprang to his feet, running
from the spreading sulphurous cloud. The gate was open and its lock
dropped molten metal. Good old Tommy!

The poison gas hid them from their pursuers for the moment and they
were through the gate, all three.

"Get back!" Blaine shouted: "the gas!" He held his breath and closed
his eyes as he slammed the gate and wedged it with the pinch bar he
still carried. That would hold them for a while.

The gas was upon him and his skin flamed scorching hot from the
contact. He mustn't breathe: mustn't open his eyes. He groped there in
the scalding vapor, blindly. Tommy had him by the wrist then, dragging
him away. Ulana was calling somewhere there in the darkness. His lungs
were bursting. And then he knew the air was pure, and he exhaled the
long p