* * * * *

We decided to rush back by the underground route. The Power House
could remain unattended for a time. We got down into the tunnel and
made the trip without incident. We ran to the limit of Tina's
strength, and then for a distance I carried her. We were all three
panting and exhausted when we came to the corridors under the palace.
I think I have never had so shuddering an experience as that trip. I
tried to convince myself that nothing could have happened to Mary,
that all this haste was unnecessary, but the wild thought persisted:
Where was Migul?

A group of officials stood in one of the palace's lower corridors. As
they came hastily up to Tina, I suddenly had a contempt for these men
who governed a city in which neither they nor anyone else did any
work. In this time of bloodshed, all these inmates of the palace had
stayed safely within its walls, knowing that it was well fortified and
that within a few hours help would doubtless come.

"The _Micrad_ is coming with the long-range deranger," Tina told them
briefly. After a moment they hastened away upstairs and I heard one of
them shouting:

"The revolt is over! Within an hour we will have all the accursed
Robots inert. The _Micrad_ can sweep all the city with her ray!"

The death of Alent, the guard in the tunnel to the Robot cavern, had
been discovered by the palace officials, and another guard was there
now in his place. Migul had not passed him, this guard told us. But
there had been an interim when the gate was open. Had Migul returned
here and gone back to Mary?

We reached the cavern of machinery. It was dim and deserted, as
before. We came to the door of Mary's room. It was standing half open!

* * * * *

Mary was gone! The couch was overturned, with its coving and pillows
strewn about. The room showed every evidence of a desperate struggle.
On the floor the great ten-foot length of Migul lay prone on its back.
A small door-porte in its metal side was open; the panel hung awry on
hinges half ripped away. From the aperture a coil and grid dangled
half out in the midst of a tangled skein of wires.

We bent over the Robot. It was not quite inert. Within its metal shell
there was a humming and a faint, broken rasping. The staring
eye-sockets showed wavering beams of red; the grid of tiny wires back
of the parted lips vibrated with a faint jangle.

I bent lower. "Migul, can you h