one, their isolated points of resistance were being wiped out. The
corridors and chambers of the huge palace were thronged with rebels,
loud with their shouts, and with the rasping hiss of heat-beams and the
crash of blasters, reeking with the stench of scorched plastic and
burned flesh, of hot metal and charred fabric. The living quarters were
overrun; the mob smashed down walls and tore up floors in search of
secret hiding-places. They found strange things--the space-ship that had
been built under one of the domes, in readiness for flight to the
still-loyal colonies on Mars or the Asteroid Belt, for instance--but
Hradzka himself they could not find.

At last, the search reached the New Tower which reared its head five
thousand feet above the palace, the highest thing in the city. They
blasted down the huge steel doors, cut the power from the
energy-screens. They landed from antigrav-cars on the upper levels. But
except for barriers of metal and concrete and energy, they met with no
opposition. Finally, they came to the spiral stairway which led up to
the great metal sphere which capped the whole structure.

General Zarvas, the Army Commander who had placed himself at the head of
the revolt, stood with his foot on the lowest step, his followers behind
him. There was Prince Burvanny, the leader of the old nobility, and
Ghorzesko Orhm, the merchant, and between them stood Tobbh, the
chieftain of the mutinous slaves. There were clerks; laborers; poor but
haughty nobles: and wealthy merchants who had long been forced to hide
their riches from the dictator's tax-gatherers, and soldiers, and
spacemen.

"You'd better let some of us go first sir," General Zarvas' orderly, a
blood-stained bandage about his head, his uniform in rags, suggested.