nner fire for an
instant, then the head bent lower. For an instant he tottered there
beside me, then crashed to the floor with a sound like a bundle of dry
sticks.

I turned my head, saw that I was in the chamber of my first
interrogation, and the sound of feet about me was the Jivro "doctors,"
moving to carry away their ruler. I saw the sleek body of Carna on a
table but a dozen feet away. Three of the tall white-robed insects bent
over her, one moving a control in a great lamp device, another
scribbling on a pad, and the third was speaking. Evidently the Zoorph
was getting the third degree, too. I lay back weakly. I felt as if I had
been through a washing machine and some of my buttons left in the
wringer.

As I closed my eyes, a vast _boom_ crashed into my ears, the table
jumped beneath me, pieces of masonry fell bounding on the floor and I
raised my head, staring wildly. Evidently the prince and the Croen were
still bombing the place.

I tugged at the straps on my wrists and ankles. They gave a little. I
kept on tugging, turning my head as far as I could to see how the insect
men were taking their bombardment. They stood, near fifty of them, in a
group by the door. Evidently they had started to run out when the crash
came, but had stopped when it was evident the roof was going to remain
intact. If those things had any sense they would be in the deepest
sub-basement they could find, I figured. The Schrees must have been
carrying them as helpless parasites for too many centuries to realize
they could do without them, for them to be so inept.

Straining my neck, I watched the grotesque high-breasted white figures
about the doorway, they were tittering to each other in some tongue I
did not know, a strange sound like the rasping of corn husks under
squeaking wagon wheels. Suddenly the whole palace shook terribly, the
floor seemed to reel, an unbearable sound raged at my ears. I cringed
from the pain of the sound. When I opened my eyes, the whole mass of the
Jivro medicals was jammed in the doorway, struggling to get over each
other, and the squeaking and rasping increased into a bedlam of sound. I
laughed, a deep "ha ha," and from the neighboring table Carna cried:

"See what wonderful creatures are the tyrants when things are not going
their way. If I had known they were like that in war, I would have
killed them all myself long, long, ago. I would have poisoned them, and
when they asked me who did it, I would