ness of a machine.

* * * * *

Slowly we were driven back down the broad street and toward the palace.
As we retreated, old people and children came from the houses and went
with us, leaving their dwellings to the mercy of the monsters.

A block from the palace we bunched together and, by sheer mass and
ferocity, actually stopped the machinelike advance for a few moments.
Miscellaneous weapons had been brought from the houses--sledges, stone
benches, anything that might break the Quabos' helmets--and handed to us
in silence by the noncombatants.

Somebody tugged at my sleeve. Looking down I saw a little girl. She had
dragged a heavy metal bar out to the fray and was trying to get some
fighter's attention and give it to him.

I seized the formidable weapon and jumped at the nearest Quabo, a
ten-foot giant whose eyes were glinting gigantically at me through the
distorting curve of the glass.

Disregarding the clutching tentacles entirely, I swung the bar against
the helmet. It cracked. I swung again and it fell in fragments, spilling
the gallons of water it had contained.

The tentacles wound vengefully around me, but in a few seconds they
relaxed as the thing gasped out its life in the air.

* * * * *

I turned to repeat the process on another if I could, and found myself
facing the Queen. Her head was held bravely high, though the violet of
her eyes had gone almost black with fear and repulsion of the terrible
things we fought.

"Aga!" I cried. "Why art thou here! Go back to the palace at once!"

"I came to fight beside thee," she answered composedly, though her
delicate lips quivered. "All is lost, it seems. So shall I die beside
thee."

I started to reply, to urge her again to seek the safety of the palace.
But by now the deadly advance of the tentacled demons had begun once
more.

Fighting vainly, the population of Zyobor was swept into the palace
grounds, then into the building itself.

Men, women and children huddled shoulder to shoulder in the cramping
quarters. An ironic picture came to me of the crowding masses of Quabos
stuffed into the protection of the outer cave, waiting the outcome of
the fight being waged by their warriors. Here were we in a similar
circumstance, waiting for the battle to be decided. Though there was
little doubt in the minds of any of us as to what the outcome would be.

Guards, the strongest men of the city,