Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/18

18 the cover of an old-fashioned clock. Captains stood at attention before their companies. Majors stood stiffly a few paces ahead of the captains. Top-ranking officers faced the blue-and-gold horde in stern-faced rigidness.

Two thousand white-gowned nurses had their places at the far wall. Ambulance drivers, orderlies, space-ship pilots and quartermasters flanked the fighting troops on the other side of the cavern.

One hundred men wide, one thousand men deep, Mortimer Cabot's warriors from seventy-five years in the past held the posts they had maintained for three-quarters of a century. Their rifles were at their sides. Packs were across their shoulders as if they were on the point of marching. Their brass was highly burnished and fresh polish gleamed on their shoes. A hundred-thousand sleeping soldiers!

And over it all lay silence, musty and inviolate since the men had marched to their posts and raised their hands in salute. Suddenly Dane shuddered. To break the clammy hold awe had on him, he took a deep breath and went forward.

Like a general Inspecting his troops, he passed slowly down the front line of warriors. He peered into their faces, met the stern glare of their eyes. Something of the fire in those eyes entered his being. A thrill of pride shook Dane. These were indeed men from the past! Men whose set jaws and clear eyes spoke of the love of freedom. Men who had sacrificed wives and families, that they might sleep until some far day when they would be needed.

Thirty minutes had ticked through the caverns when Dane tore himself from the main room and glanced briefly into the store-room filled with munitions and antiquated rocket ships. As he finished his tour back in the barracks, he was conscious of a new exhilaration flooding him. If he had formerly been undecided as to whether to risk death by returning to Earth, there was no such indecision in him now. He had a duty to mankind and these waiting thousands. Personal danger was a factor that did not count. He had delayed too long already.

He would go back, let them jail him for a few months, and come out to begin his campaign. Execution was an improbability. He had a few influential friends and Brooke would certainly speak for him.

Dane was wrapped in warm thoughts of the battle ahead when he heard the rasp of a man's breath behind him. For a moment, shock threw its icy chains about him. Then he was whirling with every muscle taut and ready.

HAT he saw brought an angry grunt from his lips. For the fraction of a second he thought it was East Bayard who had followed him here. The man was burly, black-haired, white-and-gold clad. But a blue scar across his chin instantly marked the man for Dane. Jeffrey Anson—head of the secret police!

Dane had no time to wonder about the whys and hows of Anson's tracking him. The Vedette Chief had his gun raised for a clubbing blow and his big body was crashing in upon the rebel. Dane's shoulder went up to shield his head. The gun-butt cracked sharply against his collar-bone. Pain stunned him, and before he could fight back, Anson was bearing him to the floor.

Bulky, two-hundred-pounder though he was, Anson was lithe as a panther. One powerful knee slammed into