ounds came
to him. He leaped to the door, flung it open. Faint footfalls, a
distant shout, came from far down the corridor, away from the
direction of the stairs. Allan glimpsed dark forms, rushing toward
him. He darted back to the girl, swung her, still unconscious, to his
shoulder, and was out. The floor was slippery beneath his feet. He
reeled as he ran, and the sounds of pursuit gained on him. The heavy
burden weighed him down, the dim hallway stretched endlessly before
him. From close behind came hoarse, guttural shouts that chilled him.

The pack was not twenty feet away when Allan reached the stair door.
He slammed it behind him, heard the latch click. He mounted the
narrow, winding steps with the last dregs of energy draining from him,
and heard a crash below that told of the collapse of the barrier. But
he had reached his plane, had flung the girl into it, and was pulling
himself in when the first of the pursuers burst out on the roof.

Allan thrust home the throttle, the helio-vanes whined, and his
'copter leaped skyward. He glimpsed men running across the roof; they
vanished behind a leafy arbor. Dane turned the nose of his craft
toward Sugar Loaf, amethyst in the haze of distance, but from that
green arch a black aircraft zoomed up and shot after him. The American
shook his head free of the cobwebs of fatigue, and veered westward. He
must not lead the Easterners to Anthony's refuge.

Through the dead air, over a dead world they shot--Allan's white flier
and the ebony plane with the bloody emblem of the seven-pointed star
emblazoned on its nose. Allan wheeled again as the pursuers reached
his level on a long, climbing slant.

But they continued rising! They, were five hundred, a thousand feet
above him. Then they leveled out, and dived down. Their strategy
flashed on him--they were planning to shepherd Dane down, to force
him to land where they would have him at their mercy. And their craft
was the faster!

* * * * *

The black ship was right on his tail; Allan flicked his controls and
his 'copter slid sidewise on one wing. The other plane banked in a
tight arc and sped for him; Dane countered with a lightning loop that
brought him behind his enemy. His gray eyes were steel-hard, his lips
were a straight, thin gash. The other ship was faster, but his,
lighter and smaller, was more flexible. He could not get away,
but--They flipped up and back in an inside loop; Allan's li