e explosion shattered a vast section of the wall,
and for the moment I feared I had balked my own game by not having
provided a less powerful projectile.

After some fumbling, however, I was able to maneuver my ball through a
gap in the debris and find the corridor I was seeking. Down this
corridor I sent it at the speed of a Twentieth Century bullet, (this is
to say, about half speed) to spare myself the sight of the slaughter as
it cut a swath down the closely packed column of the enemy. If there
were any it did not kill, I knew they would be taken care of by the
other balls in the string which would follow.

I had to slow it up, however, near the head of the shaft to take my
bearings; and a sea of evil faces, contorted with livid terror, looked
at me from my viewplate. But not even the terror could conceal the hate
in those faces, and there arose in my mind the picture of their long
centuries of ruthless cruelty to my race, and the hopelessness of
changing the tigerish nature of these Hans. So I steeled myself, and
drove the ball again and again into that sea of faces, until I had
cleared the station platform of any living enemy, and sent the survivors
crushing their way madly along the corridors away from it. There was
blinding flash or two on my viewplate as some Han officer tried his ray
pistol on my projectile, but that was all, except that he must have
disintegrated many of his fellows, for our balls were sheathed in
inertron, and suffered no damage themselves.

* * * * *

Cautioning my unit to follow carefully, I pushed my control lever all
the way forward until my "eye" pointed down, and there appeared on my
viewplate the smooth cylindrical interior of the shaft, fading down
toward the base of the mountain, and like a tiny speck, far, far down,
was the car, descending with its last load.

I dropped my ball on it, battering it down to the bottom of the shaft,
and with hammer-like blows flattening the wreckage, that I might squeeze
the ball out of the shaft at the lower station.

It emerged into the great vaulted excavation, capable of holding a
thousand or more persons, from which the various escape tunnels
radiated. Down these tunnels the last remnants of a crowd of fugitives
were disappearing, while red-coated soldiers guided the traffic and
suppressed disorder with the threat of their spears, and the occasional
flourish of a ray pistol.

As I floated my ball out into th