FLAME AND FIRE!

THE masses piled into the halls like medieval peasants storming a castle. There were no firearms. Men wielded sticks, chairs, missiles, any weapon they could find.

Zulerich ran swiftly and with endurance. The pale green drops had restored the agility of his early youth. But there was no escape. Men already were upon the stairs and swarming from the elevators overhead. He was surrounded. There was no way past them at all. Hoarse bellows which cried for his destruction rose above the incessant howl. He made a turn about the second floor and took the next flight of stairs. At the third floor men were also swarming. He turned down the hall toward the end of the building. Expansive windows made up most of the outer walls. Through these Zulerich saw a flash of the dreaded heat ray. It whipped here and there over the city like the blade of a great searchlight. The brightness of it was such that it cut daylight as an electric torch does night. It raked the city, found the palace and shot a broad blade of incandescence through the windows and down the hall. Fire burst from it and furnishings flamed as paper thrown into an electric furnace. It was no billowy roaring flame which trailed lurid clouds of smoke. It was a quiet, intense heat, which blinded him and burned down the struggling men with the suddenness of an explosion. A frightful sight, that blazing tongue consuming and leaving ash of everything combustible. It cracked the white marble walls and left them a red blaze of heat. It ate woodwork like a spreading acid. Down in the lower floors of the palace rose shrieks and moans as the flashes leaped from top to bottom of the big palace. Zulerich darted into a nearby vault, stricken and almost overcome. He knew what had happened. The sun-reflectors of the municipal towers had been turned upon the palace. The mob inside was attacked by men of different political beliefs.

Zulerich lay panting in the open vault. He had fallen exhausted upon the floor, burned by the reflection of the flashes against the wall. As the blade swirled about like the flash of an ancient searchlight he saw it strike downward into the court.

Cries and panic sounded but the destruction went on. Shrieks drowned it now and then but it did not die. It rose again and again with new and lusty vigor as men crowded into the ashes of those just burned. Though it was bright day outside the vault the hall seemed dim and hazy, much as a room will after one has stared into the naked sun. Zulerich got up and stumbled out the door, determined to leave the palace and to escape to some far land. There he might possibly gather around him a little band of men to organize a government of sanity and restraint.

He stumbled over something near the door inside of the vault. The glaring search of the gunfire came swinging up the palace walls again and gave him a fleeting glimpse of what lay there. It was the man with the Vandyke beard. One *of the Rulers was still alive!

Zulerich stopped and shook him, shouting, "Wake up, man. Wake up! The palace is aflame!" He had forgotten that the man could not move, that he was one of the tyrants who had tried to worm the secret of eternal life from him. But when the man stared up at him with fire in his eyes, his body rigid as though frozen, he remembered that Vandyke had drunk of his pale green drops and he remembered too that he must know the code which worked the telecops.

All he lacked was a few drops of alkali to give him speech and movement. If he could only get down to the basement, where he had his vials of alkali, he could revive this man and bring order out of chaos. The invulnerable police, which once had stricken fear into the hearts of the people, could again be about their jobs. -

He picked up Vandyke in his arms and ran out into the hall. Even as he ran hurriedly for the lower floors he noticed that the telecops were as good as ever despite the terrific heat which had been thrown upon them.

They were evidently made to stand intense heat as well as any other mode of attack. But the vials of alkali were not for Zulerich just then. They were far below and he could hear men already crowding back into the palace, singing their dread song of rebellion.

The glare of the diabolical heat ray came traveling back again. Zulerich had reached the stairs and stumbled down them, falling heavily upon the landing, where a fountain spurted a jet of water and steam from its cracked and blistered marble base.

The glare grew swiftly. The heat ray was sweeping upon him like an ancient machine-gun seeking out a nest. He twisted about and pulled himself from under the helpless man in his arms, who had fallen across his thighs.

He got to his feet with one leg wobbly and hurt and tried to hobble away but his kindly old eyes caught the upright stare of the man who could not move. He thought of the time he also had been helpless and had waited for men to come and put him in a grave.

His big heart would not let him leave the paralyzed man to be consumed. He reached down and dragged the stiff length of him to his feet and balanced him as he strove to make his wounded leg obey his will.

ALREADY little waves of heat were quivering from the walls and stung his hands and face unbearably. It began blistering long before the blade of fire reached them.

Zulerich dragged Vandyke over to the fountain, hoping that by some miracle the blade of flame would miss them and he could cool its reflection with the warm water. Yet it came steadily on, traveling upon them like sunshine across the earth through a rift of fast-moving cloud. His whole thought then was of the alkali drops. If there were only some way to revive Vandyke they could run back to the vault and both be saved. But there was no way to revive him at all that Zulerich knew. Without alkali the rigid man was as helpless as an image of stone. His own leg badly hurt, Zulerich stared about the palace like a trapped wolf. His eyes swept the burned furnishings, the brick-red blisters upon the white marble walls, the little heaps of ash which had been lounges, tapestries, pictures and doors. Then he looked again into the upstaring eyes of the only living thing beside himself in that charnel house.

Again he begged of heaven and earth some way to put movement into Vandyke. True the man was a tyrant, a selfish brute who had sought to torture him.

Still Vandyke was the last link old Zulerich knew which might control the telecops. He had to save him, not through pity so much as to find the key to the mechanical men for they alone could restore order to an unrestrained race.

He splashed water over himself and then over Vandyke. It steamed as it soaked the hot clothing. The steam of it seemed to scald him. This must surely be the end, he thought. He must either abandon Vandyke and the key to power over the mob or be consumed in the flame himself. He let Vandyke fall and turned to run. His feet crunched fallen ash of the thick carpet which had threaded the stairs. And that gave him his solution! Ashes were alkali!

He turned back to the man, who lay across the marble parapet of the dazzling pool. He stooped and raked a handful of ashes from the stair and crammed them into the open mouth. He dipped up a handful of water and washed them down.

Vandyke lay tense for a moment, much as he had through all the months since Zulerich had given him the drops of eternal life. Then he quivered a little. He seemed to realize what had happened to him. He leaped to his feet and shouted in a tongue that was hissing and strange. There came a rumbling down the hall. It grew and reverberated throughout the heated place. A weird Phoenix life seemed roused within the blistered halls. It was the measured tread of iron men as they came marching from their position against the seared walls.

Vandyke turned and fled for the vault, leaving old Zulerich alone!

Zulerich stared helplessly at the back of the fleeing man. There was little use in trying to follow. His leg was badly hurt and he had delayed to revive Vandyke. He could not run fast enough to reach the vault before being overtaken by that speeding blade of the heat rays.

Vandyke darted about the wall at the head of the stair. He would certainly make the vault in time. He would live on and on, alone. King of earth, ruler of telecops, master of men. King of earth, czar of ruthless control that asked no favors and feared no odds.

It would be a tryranny a thousandfold more unendurable than that Zulerich had sought to overthrow. Before, there were many Rulers, each suspicious of the others. Now there would be no check at all on the power of this new emperor.

Zulerich flung himself into the fountain pool. He did not expect the water, which was already almost too hot to bear, to protect him from the heat ray but with all his eternal life old Zulerich was human and he postponed dreadful fate as long as he possibly could.

A telecop came clanging by with ironshod heels that bit into the blistered marble. Zulerich reached from the pool and caught the mechanical man around the calf of his leg with arms that were strong with fear. He twined his own legs around that iron one and was carried down the stairs with six-foot strides which took four steps at a time. The telecop made no effort at all to shake him loose. It was obeying an order which sent it straight to its duty and paid no attention to what it might trample or thrust aside. Old Zulerich held on with no idea at all where the thing was taking him. He hardly cared just so he got away from the barrage of oncoming rays. But one floor down he saw with dull hopelessness that the telecop was striding straight toward the advancing fire.

He let go of the leg and fell beside a door. The telecop ran on, unmindful of him. He got painfully to his feet and opened the door.

Then he went down on all fours and crawled into the room. It was a large sunny room with big windows lining the east and south. Zulerich stared at them helplessly. There was no protection here. Before he could crawl away he found he had no more need to fear the flash for it was stricken from the palace and snapped out. Evidently Vandyke's command had been broadcast to telecops much nearer the power controls than the palace.