s arm as it swung past. He pulled Maida toward the head of an
escalator a dozen feet away. Its steps were coming upward from the plaza
at the ground level. Half way up, the first of an up-coming throng were
mounting it.

But Georg again turned aside. He found Maida quick of wit to catch his
plans; and agile of body to follow him. They climbed down the metal
frame-work of the escalator sides; down under it to where the inverted
steps were passing downward on the endless belts. Maida slid into one of
them, with Georg after her, his arms holding her in place.

They huddled there. No one had seen them enter. Smoothly the escalator
drew them downward. Above them in a moment the tramp of feet sounded
close above their heads as the crowd rushed upward.

They approached the bottom, slid out upon a swinging bridge which
chanced at the moment to be empty of people. Down it at a run; into the
palm-lined plaza at the bottom of the city.

Down here it was comparatively dim and silent. The alarm lights of the
plaza section had not yet come on; the excitement was concentrated upon
the burning tower above. The crowd, rushing up there, left the plaza
momentarily deserted. Georg and Maida crossed it at a run, scurried like
frightened rabbits through a tunnel arcade, down a lower cross-street,
and came at last unmolested to the outskirts of the city.

The buildings here were almost all at the ground level. Georg and Maida
ran onward, hardly noticed, for everyone was gazing upward at the
distant, burning tower. Georg was heading for where Wolfgar had an aero
secreted. A mile or more. They reached the spot--but the aero was not
there. They were in the open country now--Venia is small.
Plantations--an agricultural region. Most of the houses were deserted,
the occupants having fled into the city as refugees when threats and
orders came from Washington the day before. Georg and Maida came upon a
little conical house; it lay silent, heavy-shadowed in the starlight
with the glow of the city edging its side and circular roof. Beside it
was an incline with a helicopter standing up there on a private landing
stage.... Georg and Maida rushed up the incline.

A small helicopter; its dangling basket was barely large enough for
two--a basket with a tiny safety 'plane fastened to its outrigger.

In a moment Georg and the girl had boarded the helicopter. She was
silent; she had hardly said a word throughout it all.... The helicopter
mounted straig