t would grasp them, drag them into the heart of the yielding
substance, and slowly smother them to death while the life was drained
from their bodies. It had been said the death was painless, but that
was Government propaganda. But he would be holding Ruth in his arms.
He'd find her: he had no doubt of that at all.

And, strangely enough, now that Kay knew the worst, now that not the
slightest doubt remained, he was conscious of an elevation of spirits,
a sort of mad recklessness that was perfectly indefinable.

* * * * *

Kay turned his torch into a corner of the kitchen. Yes, there was the
thing subconsciousness had prompted him to seek. A long-shafted, heavy
woodsman's ax, a formidable weapon at close quarters. Because it is
the instinct of _homo Americanus_ to die with a weapon in his hands,
rather than let himself be butchered helplessly, Kay snatched it up.
He ran back to his plane. The gas tank was nearly empty, but there was
petrol in the ice house beside the lake.

Kay wheeled the machine up to it, and filled up with gas and oil. All
ready now! He leaped in, pressed the starter, soared vertically,
helicopter wings fluttering like a soaring hawk's. Up to the passenger
air lane at nine thousand: higher to twelve, the track of the
international and supply ships; higher still, to the fourteen thousand
ceiling of the antiquated machine. He banked, turned southward.

It was freezing cold up there, and Kay had no flying suit on him,
but, between the passenger lane and the lane of the heliospheres, at
thirty thousand, there was no air police. And he could afford to take
no chances. The Government police would be on the lookout for a score
such desperate men as he, bent on a similar mission. He drove the
plane toward the Atlantic till a red glow began to diffuse itself
beneath him, an area of conflagration covering square miles of
territory.

Swooping lower, Kay could hear the sound of detonations, the roar of
old-fashioned guns, while through the pall of lurid smoke came the
long, violet flashes of atomic guns, cleaving lanes of devastation.
New York was burning.

The frenzied populace had broken into revolt, seized the guns stored
in the arsenals, and attacked the great Bronx fortress that stood like
a mighty sentinel to protect the port.

A swarm of airships came into view, swirling in savage fight. Kay
zoomed. It was not his battle.

* * * * *