d hear crackling flames. Abruptly the lights came on again, an
ugly yellow, then faded back out. Cole bent down and examined the door
with his flashlight. A magnetic lock. Dependent on an externally
induced electric flux. He grabbed a screwdriver and pried at the door.
For a moment it held. Then it fell open.

Cole stepped warily out into the corridor. Everything was in shambles.
Guards wandered everywhere, burned and half-blinded. Two lay groaning
under a pile of wrecked equipment. Fused guns, reeking metal. The air
was heavy with the smell of burning wiring and plastic. A thick cloud
that choked him and made him bend double as he advanced.

"Halt," a guard gasped feebly, struggling to rise. Cole pushed past
him and down the corridor. Two small robot guns, still functioning,
glided past him hurriedly toward the drumming chaos of battle. He
followed.

At a major intersection the fight was in full swing. Sherikov's guards
fought Security police, crouched behind pillars and barricades, firing
wildly, desperately. Again the whole structure shuddered as a great
booming blast ignited some place above. Bombs? Shells?

Cole threw himself down as a violet beam cut past his ear and
disintegrated the wall behind him. A Security policeman, wild-eyed,
firing erratically. One of Sherikov's guards winged him and his gun
skidded to the floor.

A robot cannon turned toward him as he made his way past the
intersection. He began to run. The cannon rolled along behind him,
aiming itself uncertainly. Cole hunched over as he shambled rapidly
along, gasping for breath. In the flickering yellow light he saw a
handful of Security police advancing, firing expertly, intent on a
line of defense Sherikov's guards had hastily set up.

The robot cannon altered its course to take them on, and Cole escaped
around a corner.

He was in the main lab, the big chamber where Icarus himself rose, the
vast squat column.

Icarus! A solid wall of guards surrounded him, grim-faced, hugging
guns and protection shields. But the Security police were leaving
Icarus alone. Nobody wanted to damage him. Cole evaded a lone guard
tracking him and reached the far side of the lab.

It took him only a few seconds to find the force field generator.
There was no switch. For a moment that puzzled him--and then he
remembered. The guard had controlled it from his wrist.

Too late to worry about that. With his screwdriver he unfastened the
plate over the generator an