concussions of the
aerial-bomb guns, already searching the upper air with shrapnel.

Somewhere, out of the range of vision, another terrible shock made the
building tremble to its nethermost foundation; and wild yells and cries,
as of a charge, a repulse, a savage and determined rush, echoed through
the vast enclosure. Came a third detonation--and, blinding in its
intensity, a globe of fire burst almost beneath the window, five stories
below.

The partners, shaking and pale, retreated hastily. A swift,
upward-rising shape swept over the courtyard and was gone--one of the
air-fleet now launched to meet the attackers.

Far below a sudden crumbling shudder of masonry told the Billionaire
not a moment was to be lost, for already one wing of the Administration
Building was swaying to its fall.

"Quick, Waldron! Quick!" he shouted, in the shrill treble of senility,
and ran into the corridor that led to the north wing. Waldron, suddenly
sobered, followed; and from the offices, where the night-shift of clerks
were laboring (or had been, till the first explosion), came crowding
pale and frightened men. Not the fighting cast of Air Trust slaves,
these, but the anaemic chemists and experimenters and clerical workers,
scabs, to a man. Now, in the common sentiment of fear, they jostled
Flint and Waldron, as though these plutocrats had been but common clay.
And in the corridor a babel rose, through which fresh volleys and ever
more and more violent explosions ripped and thundered.

Flint struck savagely at some who barred his way; and Waldron elbowed
through, with curses.

"Get out of the way, you swine!" shrilled the old Billionaire. "Make
way, there! Way!"

The two men reached a door that led by a private passage, through to the
steel-and-concrete laboratories.

"Here, this way, Flint!" shouted Waldron. "If those Hell-devils drop a
bomb on us, this building will cave in like jackstraws! Our only safety
is here, _here_!"

Thoroughly cowed now, with all the brutal bluster and half-drunken
swagger gone, Waldron whipped out a bunch of keys, tremblingly unlocked
the door and blundered through. Flint followed. Behind them, others
tried to press, on toward the armored laboratories; but with vile
blasphemies the plutocrats beat them back and slammed the door.

"To Hell with _them_!" shouted Flint, perfectly ashen now and shaking
like a leaf, the fear of death strong on his withered soul. "We've got
all we can do to look after