Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/19

Rh Dane's stomach, flattening him. His left hand clutched Dane's throat and with his right he lifted the gun.

The Vedette leader's lips slipped back in a grin.

"Led me a merry chase through the Quicksands, Cabot!" he panted. "But you're going back in cold storage this time!"

The gun came slicing down. Dane's sinews bunched, and he moved aside just as the gun grazed his ear. Anson swore and tried to catch his balance. But the lighter man slapped the heel of his palm beneath his chin and hurled him on his back five feet away.

Anson's swart features blackened. He sat up, shifted the gun and brought the shining barrel in line with Dane's chest! The rebel heard the roar of the weapon as he ploughed forward, felt the sting of lead score across his back. Behind him there was the crash of glass, and one of the soldiers crumpled within his transparent bell.

Then for a slugging, cursing sixty seconds the two men were locked togethered [sic], the Vedette chief fighting to bring his gun into position, Dane holding his wrist in a grip of steel, battering at his face with his free hand. Sweat oozed from Anson's dark face. The cords of his neck stretched tight under firm skin. He clawed at Dane's face, trying to gouge out his eyes. If he had intended to take his man alive a moment before, there was no such intention in his mind now.

Dane knew that he was not fighting for his own life alone. A hundred thousand fighting men watched the battle with staring eyes and would have known, had they been conscious, that it was their lives Dane Cabot was defending.

Straining, stumbling, they fought back and forth through the ranks of sleepers. Now and then a glass dome would be overturned and shiver to splinters on the stone floor. Then one more soldier would be stretched out in the sleep that knew no waking.

But the deadlock had to end. The driving power of Anson's body was not a match for desperation that hurled Dane savagely ahead. Anson's gun-wrist had been bent back to the breaking point when disaster struck without warning—and its victim was Dane. His heel struck a spot made grease-slick by a smear of blood. In a flash he was slipping to the floor, Anson shouted with triumph. Cruelly deliberate, he selected a spot on Dane's breast and sighted along the barrel of his gun.

Then something happened that Dane Cabot was not to understand for many weeks. The hammer of Anson's weapon was inching back, and Dane could see the slight wincing of his eyes as they anticipated the flash.

In the next moment the golden man was standing before the Vedette chief. His tall, thin form obscured half of Anson's body from Dane's view; but all of Anson could be seen through him, as if he had been made of thick, translucent glass. He wore a shining uniform of shimmering gold flakes. He had a strange weapon in his hand, and he spoke in a voice so sharp, so full of menace, that Dane shuddered.

"Anson! Drop your gun!"

NSON now saw him for the first time. He started, swung the gun. Fear struck through his features, loosening his jaw. His head craned forward.

"Who—what are you?"

The golden man ignored the query.

"You won't be warned again, Anson," he repeated. "Drop it!"

Watching the Vedette chief's eyes, Dane saw them search the stranger's features. Abruptly, Anson's eyes squint-