Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/16

16 cavern of the Cabots, supposed to be the housing place of ten thousand soldiers in suspended animation, left there by old Mortimer Cabot. The "Sleeping Army" they called them. The words narrowed Brooke's eyes. But she stood silent and pale as Dane darted away and disappeared out a side door.

His small strato-cruiser was in the field beyond the building. He reached it on a dead run and plunged inside, to lock the door and snap to the controls. He flew the ship low, forestalling effectual pursuit. Now that the tumult inside him was dying, he realized the position he was in. He had assaulted a Leader, and that could mean prison or death.

Neither threat changed Dane Cabot's pulse rate. What did perturb him was the knowledge that death would write finis to his idea, so long cherished, of leading a revolution against The Hundred. Perhaps Dane was more of a dreamer than Mortimer or Samuel Cabot. He had dreamed much and done little toward bringing about the upset of the dictators. Mortimer Cabot, legend said, had formed an army of ten thousand picked fighting men, put them under suspended animation, and hidden them where seventy-five years of searching had never turned them up. Samuel Cabot had supplied great stores of armaments to the army.

Dane realized darkly how little he himself had done. But things were different now. There was no one to whom he could turn for help with his plans. The Hundred had carefully bred out of their subjects the germ of initiative. The people were in the habit of following the strongest leader, right or wrong.

Dane's thoughts were on the sleeping army as he started to drop to his home in the foothills. If anything happened to him, the ghostly troops would have the sleep of eternity. For only he—the last of the Cabots—knew the secret of their hiding place.

Dane came to a sudden decision. As he had turned to that cavern for solace so many times in the past, so he turned there now. The ship veered under his controlling hand, speeding toward the landing field where he kept his rocket ship. He spoke to no one as he landed and hurried to his private hangar. Rolling back the door, he shoved the small craft into the take-off trough. With only one backward look, he ignited the rockets and roared into the blue

ITH the need for action behind him, weariness suddenly descended on Dane like a sodden blanket. Excitement and hatred had taken their share of his strength. Setting the controls, he pulled the blinds across the ports and lay down on his bunk for a few hours sleep.

The soft ticking of the chronometer was the only sound when Dane awoke. His eyes turned sleepily upon it then went wide. Twelve hours!

He stood up and stretched the kinks out of his long, hard frame. The rockets had been shut off by the automatic timing device. He strode to the controls and glanced at the direction indicator. Still on dead center.

So for another eighteen hours Dane kept the ship plowing through the purple, star-frosted void. To forestall pursuit, he forsook the usual route this time, plunging recklessly through the meteor-infested region marked in red on all space charts as "The Quicksands." Danger sprang upon him a hundred times, but Dane's hand was ever ready at the controls.

And always, when his mind was not