ese waits that the next phase of the attack developed.

It began, like the last one, with a distant roar that swelled in volume
until it seemed to fill the whole world. Then, fifteen or twenty
thousand feet out of blaster-range, the new attackers swept into sight.

There must have been fifty of them, huge tapering things with
wide-spread wings, flying in close formation, wave after V-shaped wave.
He stood and stared at them, amazed; he had never imagined that such
aircraft existed in the First Century. Then a high-pitched screaming
sound cut through the roar of the propellers, and for an instant he saw
countless small specks in the sky, falling downward.

The first bomb-salvo landed in the young pines, where he had fought
against the first air attack. Great gouts of flame shot upward, and
smoke, and flying earth and debris. Hradzka turned and started to run.
Another salvo fell in front of him; he veered to the left and plunged on
through the undergrowth. Now the bombs were falling all about him,
deafening him with their thunder, shaking him with concussion. He
dodged, frightened, as the trunk of a tree came crashing down beside
him. Then something hit him across the back, knocking him flat. For a
moment, he lay stunned, then tried to rise. As he did, a searing light
filled his eyes and a wave of intolerable heat swept over him. Then
darkness...

* * * * *

"No, Zarvas Pol," Kradzy Zago repeated. "Hradzka will not return; the
'time-machine' was sabotaged."

"So? By you?" the soldier asked.

The scientist nodded. "I knew the purpose for which he intended it.
Hradzka was not content with having enslaved a whole Solar System: he
hungered to bring tyranny and serfdom to all the past and all the future
as well; he wanted to be master not only of the present but of the
centuries that were and were to be, as well. I never took part in
politics, Zarvas Pol; I had no hand in this revolt. But I could not be
party to such a crime as Hradzka contemplated when it lay within my
power to prevent it."

"The machine will take him out of our space-time continuum, or back to a
time when this planet was a swirling cloud of flaming gas?" Zarvas Pol
asked.

Kradzy Zago shook his head. "No, the unit is not powerful enough for
that. It will only take him about ten thousand years into the past. But
then, when it stops, the machine will destroy itself. It may destroy
Hradzka with it or he may escape. But