sections of different levels, where deprived
of food and ventilation, the wretched inhabitants died miserably, long
before the disease germs developed in their systems.

* * * * *

At the end of two weeks the entire population of the city was in a mood
of panicky revolt. News service to the public had been suspended, and
the use of all viewplates and phones in the city were restricted to
official communications. The city administration had issued orders that
all citizens not on duty should keep to their apartments, but the order
was openly flouted, and small mobs were wandering through the corridors,
ascending and descending from one level to another, seeking they knew
not what, fleeing the air balls, which might appear anywhere, and being
driven back from the innermost and deepest sections of the city by the
military guard.

I now made up my mind that the time was ripe for me to attempt my
escape. In all this confusion I might have an even break, in spite of
the danger I might myself run from the air balls, and the almost
insuperable difficulties of making my way to the outside of the city and
down the precipitous walls of the mountain to which the city clung like
a cap. I would have given much for my inertron belt, that I might simply
have leaped outward from the edge of the roof some dark night and
floated gently down. I longed for my ultrophone equipment, with which I
might have established communication with the beleaguering American
forces.

My greatest difficulty, I knew, would be that of escaping my guard. Once
free of them, I figured it would be the business of nobody in
particular, in that badly disorganized city, to recapture me. The knives
of the ordinary citizens I did not fear, and very few of the military
guard were armed with disintegrator pistols.

I was sitting in my apartment busying my mind with various plans, when
there occurred a commotion in the city corridor outside my door. The
captain of my guard jumped nervously from the couch on which he had been
reclining, and ordered the excited guards to open the door.

In the broad corridor, the remainder of the guard lay about, dead or
groaning, where they had been bowled over by one of these air balls, the
first I had ever seen.

The metal sphere floated hesitantly above its victims, turning this way
and that to bring its "eye" on various objects around. It stopped dead
on sighting the door the guard had thrown ope