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The Man Who Lived Twice
by EDMOND HAMILTON
Down and out, Nick Riley answered an ad for a chauffeur, and
found himself trapped on an operating table; Awakening once
more, he found his brain in the hood of the Airlord of Amer
CHAPTER I
A Strange Experimont
NICK RILEY hadn't had any breakfast, he had just spent his last dime, and if he wasn't lucky he would have to walk thirty miles back to New York. Yet there was a carefree grin on his devil-may-care young face, and he was whistling cheerfully as he strode up the sunlit drive and onto the porch of the isolated old Long Island house.
His knock on the front door was answered by a tall, impatient man of forty, with a colorless intellectual face and cold black eyes.
"You're Doctor James Brant?" Riley asked. He named himself. "I saw your advertisement for a chauffeur."
Doctor Brant thoughtfully eyed the lean, shabby young man. "You're down and out, eh? No family?"
"No family and no job," Riley replied cheerfully. "You can call me a soldier of fortune, mister."
"Come on in," the scientist said. "I think I can use you."
He motioned Riley to precede him down a dim, paneled hall. The young man stepped into a white-tiled laboratory illuminated by bright electrics. Upon benches and tables was a. bewildering array of scientific apparatus.
Suddenly a stunning blow crashed on his head from behind. He sank nervelessly to the ?oor.
When his brain cleared, he found himself lying on an operating table, held down by steel fetters. Doctor Brant was wheeling an anaesthetic apparatus toward him.
"What the devil does this mean?" Riley wrenched futilely to free himself.
"I'll explain," said the scientist coolly.
He went to a table and brought back a square, glass jar filled with thick, clear liquid. In the liquid floated a small, gray, wrinkled mass.
"Do you know what this is?" Brant asked. "It is the brain of a dog-and it is living. It has lived in this jar of serum for nearly a year."
"Why, that's impossible!" Riley exclaimed, astonishment momentarily overcoming his anger.
"Nothing of the sort," Brant smiled. "I have mastered the art of keeping living tissues and organs alive in serum."1
1: Doctor Alexis Carrel of Rockefeller Institute, the greatest living authority on tissue culture, has kept a sliver of chicken heart living in serum for years. He has done the same with other animal organs and tissues.—ED.
"What are your serums to me?" Riley cried. "I want to know why you knocked me out and tied me on this table."
"I've succeeded," Brant continued calmly, "in keeping animal brains living in serum. I think it can be done with a human brain. If so, it will mean an immense addition to medical and scientific knowledge."
Riley's hair bristled on his scalp. "You surely don't mean that you intend to—"
"You've guessed it, Riley," said Brant coolly. "The only way I can get a healthy, living human brain for the experiment is to take it from some living person. My advertisement was designed to bring such a person to me.
"You'll never be missed by the world, and you're of no particular value to the world. In this way, you will help a tremendous scientific achievement. It will be quite painless—you will go to sleep on this table and never wake up. Your brain will live on in the serum, unconscious, oi course."
Riley could not believe his ears as he heard those calm, ghastly words.
"You're crazy as a hoot-owl!" he exclaimed. "Just because you've got some crack-brain idea. for an experiment, you'd commit murder!"
"I realize," Brant admitted, "that according to human ethics, I am committing a terrible crime. But I have no particular reverence for human ethics. I am willing to incur any possible guilt, for the sake of science."
He wheeled toward the operating table another table on which were racks of glittering surgical instruments, and a large glass jar of colorless liquid.
Riley stared incredulously at the jar. He realized for the first time that if the scientist could actually do the thing, his brain would live indefinitely in that jar. He strained his muscles until they cracked, until his face was crimson with exertion, but the steel fetters held.
The scientist turned a valve, then raised the rubber mouthpiece of the anaesthetic apparatus. He paused, holding it over Riley's head.
"I'm sorry for you, Riley," he said, a ring of sincerity in his voice. "I wish I didn't have to do it. But the cause of science comes before all sentiment."
"Damn you, if I had my hands on your throat just one minute!" Riley cried furiously.
He threshed and twisted his head aside as the rubber mouthpiece descended on his mouth and nose.
But Brant held it firmly down on his face. He tried to hold his breath. But in a moment his tortured lungs opened despite him. He gulped in sweetish gas—and sank rapidly into a whirling green darkness.
CHAPTER II
A Weird Awakening
RILEY awoke slowly, his first sensation that of a throbbing headache. He lay, too dazed to open his eyes, trying to remember where he was. Then he remembered. Brant and his ghastly experiment! It must have been interrupted, he thought thankfully, or he wouldn't be waking now.
He opened his eyes. At once he saw that he was no longer in Brant's laboratory. This was a large, strange room with curving walls of cool, silvery metal. Sunset light from high windows shimmered off graceful metal furniture.
He sat up bewilderedly on the metal couch on which he had been lying. In the wall opposite him was a tall mirror. He stared into it at his reflection, and then from him burst a hoarse cry of horror. The man in the mirror wasn't himself, wasn't Nick Riley at all.
A stalwart, brawny-shouldered man of thirty with a dark, strong, ruthless face, close-cropped black hair and hard black eyes, dressed in a tight black uniform—that was how he looked in the mirror. By some devil's magic, he was now in another man's body.
"God!" he cried hoarsely. "What's happened to me? Pm not myself any more—"
"Calm yourself, highness," said a soothing voice behind him in English. "I will explain every-thing."
Riley whirled. Beside him stood a small, elderly man with a smooth, cunning face and sly eyes, dressed in a black uniform like that which Riley wore.
"Who are you?" Riley demanded Wildly. "And who am I?"
"You are Jan Strang, First Airlord of Amer in this year 2242," said the other hurriedly. "I am Garr Allan, your Chief Councillor."
"2242?" husked Riley stupe?edly. "You mean—I'm three hundred years in the future?"
Garr Allan nodded quickly. "Yes, three centuries ago your brain was removed from your body by a scientist of your own era. Your brain has lived in serum ever since, preserved by a museum as a scientific curiosity. Today, I had your brain put into the skull of Jan Strang, whose brain had been destroyed though the rest of his body was unharmed."
Riley stared dazedly into the mirror at his new, stalwart body and ruthless dark face.
"You said I'm Jan Strang, First Airlord of Amer?" he repeated thickly. "What does that mean?"
"It means," replied the crafty-eyed little man, "that you are supreme ruler of the Airlords of Amer, our race who dominate the great continent once called America."
Riley gasped. He, Nick Riley, down and out soldier of fortune, catapulted by Brant's mad experiment across three hundred years, into the rulership of half the world!
Garr Allan led him to one of the windows. The fox-faced Councillor told him, "This building is your palace—and outside lies N'Yor, our capital city."
Stricken dumb with amazement, Riley looked out of the window. He had never seen such a city.
Its buildings were truncated, terraced pyramids that rose out of beautiful gardens of green trees and banked flowers. The pyramidal buildings were not crowded together but separated widely by the blossoming gardens. The building in whose ground floor he was, was one of the largest of all.
He noticed a slender, soaring white tower that rose out of a great park a mile away. Sleek, silver-winged airplanes were hovering above it, and other swarms of planes buzzed like flocks of shining swallows over the city.
"What's that white tower?" he demanded.
"It is the center of our power," smiled Garr Allan. "Without it, my race could not rule Amer. It is the great Power Tower from which power is broadcast to our airplanes in all eastern Amer. A similar tower at Losang serves the west."
"Radio transmission of power?" Riley asked startledly. "That's what drives all those planes—power broadcast from that tower?"
Garr Allan nodded. "Exactly. Even in your day, I believe, engineers were trying to achieve radio transmission of power. My race achieved it two centuries ago.
"We were a small European nation, then. But because of the immense weapon given us by our discovery of radio power, our air fleets could stay aloft unceasingly. We attacked this rich continent of Amer—and conquered it."
"You conquered the American people?" Riley exclaimed incredulously. "They'd never have surrendered!"
"They have never surrendered completely," Garr Allan admitted. "Their descendants still resist our rule and live in crude subterranean cities which they excavated deep inside earth at the time of the great air war. These Groundlings, as we call them, live a barbaric, half-buried existence under earth's surface, maintaining their defiance to us Airlords.
"But of course, their attempts to overthrow us are never successful. With our radio-powered aircraft, we dominate the surface completely. Every time the Groundlings emerge and attack our cities, our planes easily beat them back."
"Why don't the Groundlings build planes of their own and use your broadcast power?" Nick demanded.
"That is impossible," Garr Allan assured him. "They do not have the secret of the power-receiver embodied in our ships. And each of our ships is so constructed that in case it should be captured, it will explode if they try to dissemble and study it."
Nick Riley's anger fired at the picture the crafty Councillor had drawn. A picture of his own race, the descendants of Americans of his own day, forced to dwell under earth's surface, while the foreign, conquering Airlords dominated the surface with their radio-powered planes.
In him rose a sudden fierce determination to fight against the rule of these arrogant Airlords, to help the Groundlings, his own race, win their freedom. Then he suddenly remembered he himself was now chief of the hated Airlords!
"Why in the world was my brain put into the body of Jan Strang, your First Airlord?" he cried.
"It was necessary to my plans," shrugged Garr Allan. "Today a Groundling girl slave here tried to assassinate Jan Strang. The bolt of her electric pistol pierced his skull, destroyed his brain. Jan Strang was dead—that meant that Stirb Ikim, the Second Airlord, would inherit the rulership and I would lose my powerful position as Chief Councillor.
"I determined somehow to revive Jan Strang to life, to save my own position. His body was undamaged—only his brain was destroyed. I remembered the living brain in serum, in our scientific museum here. So I had my physicians, under oath of secrecy, bring that brain here and put it into Jan Strang's skull. Our medical science is so advanced that the operation was easy, and our therapeutic knowledge is such that the incisions could be healed over in an hour. No one will know you are not really Jan Strang, if you do as I say, and I will remain in power. "
CHAPTER III
A False Airlord
BEFORE Nick Riley could answer, a liveried servant ran hastily into the room.
"Master!" he cried to Garr Allan. "Stirb Ikim and the nobles are coming here! He has told them Ian Strang is dead, and that he is now the rightful First Airlord."
The little Councillor's cunning face paled.
"Now you must play the part of Jan Strang well!" he told Nick tensely. "For if they discover this imposture, they will kill both of us."
The doors of the room flew open as he spoke. A crowd of dark-faced men in black uniforms burst in.
At their head was a thin-lipped, hatchet-faced man with agate eyes who was obviously Stirb Ikim.
"I say that Jan Strang was killed by that Groundling girl!" Stirb Ikim was exclaiming as they entered. "You shall see his body yourselves, and then according to law you must acclaim me First Airlord."
"Jan Strang is not dead!" shrilled Garr Allan to the entering throng. "Look, and see for yourselves!"
A confused cry of astonishment went up from the nobles as they saw Riley standing, facing them.
"It is true—Jan Strang still lives!"
Riley saw Stirb Ikim's jaw drop in sheer surprise. Then the Second Airlord's face hardened.
"This is some impostor!" he cried to the nobles. "Can a dead man return to life? I tell you, I saw Jan Strung fall dead when the Groundling girl fired at him."
Doubt came upon the nobles' faces as they heard. Garr Allan whispered frantically to Riley.
"Assert yourself now or we are both lost!" whispered the little Councillor in an agony of fear.
Nick Riley sensed his peril. And he knew he had no choice but to carry on for the time being in the part into which he had been thrust. He had to be Jan Strang, First Airlord, or he wouldn't live long. And he was determined now to live—for a purpose.
That purpose was to smash the tyranny of these foreign Airlords over his own race! Somehow, he swore inwardly, he was going to do that. But he wouldn't live long enough to do that or anything else if he didn't play his part well now. A tingling excitement leaped through his blood.
"Nobles of Amer, have you lost your wits that you do not know Jan Strang when you see him?" he shouted loudly. "I was wounded by that girl assassin—but do I look dead?"
Stirb Ikim reached toward the stubby pistol at his belt. Riley saw it, and rasped to the man:
"Draw that gun, Stirb Ikim, and I'll take it from you and break your neck with my bare hands."
Stirb Ikim fearfully let his hand fall from his belt. And a great shout went up from the nobles.
"It is Jan Strang who speaks, indeed! Hail the First Airlord!"
Riley grinned inwardly at the thunderous cheer. It seemed that by luck he had acted just as the real Ian Strang would have done, and it had convinced them.
Stirb Ikim bowed with poorly assumed respect, hate still throbbing in his thin face.
"I beg your pardon, highness," he muttered. "I honestly thought you dead, or I would not have dared—"
"Save your excuses," Riley told him contemptously. Flushing darkly, Stirb Ikim hacked away.
Garr Allan whispered tensely.
"Dismiss them now—you have done well so far, but you may make a slip any moment."
Riley waved a big arm toward the doors. "You may go, nobles of Amer," he told them. "And next time see that you do not credit Stirb Ikim's assertions too quickly."
A roar of laughter went up at that. And Riley saw that Stirb Ikim's agate eyes were throbbing with fury as the Second Airlord backed out with the others.
"Left alone with Garr Allan, he felt a little shaky, and drew a long breath of relief.
"By Heaven," he muttered. "We put it over—but it was a bad ten minutes."
"Stirb Ikim still suspects," said Gar: Allan, his crafty face thoughtful. "He was present when that Groundling slave-girl Nirla attempted to kill you."
"Why the devil did the girl try to kill me, or rather, Jan Strang?"
The Councillor shrugged. "She hates you bitterly, like all the Groundlings in Amer. They consider Jan Strang their most implacable enemy, whom all would love to kill."
"Where's the girl now?"
"In the dungeons underneath the palace," Garr Allan told him. "She will be executed in the morning."
Then the little Chief Councillor looked at Riley, his cunning eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"You are Jan Strang now," he said. "You, a man or rather a brain from the past, are ruler of all Amer. You owe me gratitude for putting you into this powerful position. And I shall expect you to be grateful.
"I shall expect you," Garr Allan continued, "to leave the actual rule of Amer in my hands. So long as you do that, I will help you maintain your position."
"We'll talk it over again," Riley told him. "Right now, I'm feeling plenty shaky and tired."
"It is no wonder," smiled the little man. "You have come across three centuries. I shall leave you now to rest, and later tonight will return for our talk."
Riley watched the foxy little man leave, and a frown gathered on his face. If there was one thing he did not feel, it was any gratitude or obligation toward Garr Allan. The Councillor had only put his brain into Jan Strang's body to save his own position, and further his own scheming ends.
And now he, Nick Riley, was installed in this palace as chief of the Airlords of Amer, chief of the tyrants who had forced the American race into the earth. No wonder the Groundlings hated him so bitterly! No wonder that a girl slave of their race had done her best to kill him!
His jaw clamped with sudden decision. He was going to see that girl. For she, who was a Groundling herself, could tell him better than anyone else how he could best aid the Groundlings to overthrow the Airlords.
He strode out of the silvery room, through luxurious chambers in which a rosy glow of artificial light was softly growing, as night fell outside. He came out into a broad corridor where a guard sprang to attention.
"Your orders, highness?" he inquired.
"Escort me to the dungeons in which the girl who tried to kill me is confined," he ordered curtly.
THE guard's dark face expressed understanding. "Yes, highness—shall I call your torturers, also?"
"No!" Riley flared, shocked to fury by the dark possibilities implied by the question. "Go ahead!"
Hastily, the guard led the way down the corridor. Riley strode after him, down little-used back stairways and halls, all glowing with rosy light, down into gloomy passages carved out of the living rock beneath the palace.
The guard stopped before the solid metal door of one of the rock-hewn rooms of this somber labyrinth.
"Here is the girl's cell, highness."
"Get me the key."
The soldier was back with it in a moment.
"Now return to your post," he rapped. The guard stared wonderingly, but obeyed.
Riley unlocked the door, and stepped into a rock cell softly lit by a single rosy bulb.
A girl who had been sitting on a metal bunk sprang erect as he entered. She shrank back, her face dead white, as she recognized him.
She was young and slim, the youthful beauty of her white limbs revealed by her short white silken robe. Her black hair fell in a soft, wavy mass to her shoulders, her dark eyes were wide with incredulous amazement.
"Jan Strang!" she whispered. "But I killed you—I saw you fall dead—"
THEN the incredulous surprise on her face was succeeded by bitter disappointment and hate.
"So you were only wounded, tyrant! I was awaiting execution happily, thinking I had killed you."
Nirla's dark eyes were blazing, her breast heaving with emotion as she glared at him.
"If only I had killed you!" she repeated throbbingly. "You, the chief of the Airlords who live in the Sunlight while we Groundlings hide beneath the earth like animals! It was my dearest wish, from the time I was captured and brought to this palace as a slave, to kill Jan Strang. And I've failed!"
"Nirla, you did kill Jan Strang today," Riley told her emphatically. "I am not he—though my brain now inhabits his body."
"Do you expect me to believe that, tyrant?" Nirla exclaimed with bitter laughter.
"It's true!" Riley said desperately. Rapidly, he told her of his incredible awakening. "So you see, I'm not Jan Strang. I'm Nick Riley, an American of three centuries ago."
Doubt came into Nirla's frowning face.
"It's true," she whispered, "that I have heard of a living brain preserved in serum for generations in the musemn. But why should Garr Allan put your brain in Jan Strang's body?"
"I've told you that Garr Allan was only seeking to preserve his own position," Riley said. With sudden inspiration, he added, "Look at the back of my skull. There ought to be a new scar there, if my story is true."
He turned his heed. He heard Nirla bend close, felt her warm breath on his neck, then heard her gasp.
"There is a scar!" she exclaimed. "Then it is true!"
Her eyes were suddenly shining at him. "You are one of the great race who were our ancestors, the Americans who were free men. You are not Jan Strang!"
"No, I'm not Jan Strang," Riley said rapidly. "I mean to smash the rule of these Airlords over your people, my people. And I've thought of a way in which their rule could be overthrown this very night—"
A cold, hard, triumphant voice from the door of the cell interrupted him.
"So you are an impostor, as I thought!" that voice exclaimed exultantly.
Riley spun around. The door had stealthily opened—and Stirb Ikim stood in its opening.
CHAPTER IV
Nirla's Mission
THERE was triumph in Stirb Ikim's thin-lipped face, baleful exultation in his agate eyes as he confronted Riley. He held an electric pistol in his hand.
"So this is the explanation of Jan Strang's strange revival from death!" he gloated. "I knew there was some imposture—that is why I trailed you when you came down here, and listened at the door. And well have I done, for now you and Garr Allan shall die for your deception, and I shall be rightful First Airlord of Amer."
"Not if I can help it," Riley rasped, and sprang for Stirb Ikim as he spoke.
The Second Airlord, engrossed in his gloating triumph, had not expected that wildcat spring. He fired his weapon—but an instant too late. The crackling blue bolt of electrical force from the weapon grazed Riley's head.
And then Stirb Ikim was borne to the floor by Riley's rush. The American wrested the pistol from his hand. And before Stirh Ikim could open his mouth to yell, Riley had thrust the unfamiliar weapon into the man's ribs.
"One peep out of you, and you'll die!" he rasped. "Get your hands up."
STIRB IKIM'S hatchet face was raging as he raised his hands.
"You and Garr Allan will not get away with this imposture for long!" he said furiously.
Nirla clutched Riley's arm. "You were saying you had thought of a way by which the Airlords' rule could be overthrown this very night. What is that way?"
"How far are the nearest subterranean Groundling cities from this city N'Yor?" he asked her rapidly.
"Less than fifty miles. Why?"
"I want you to carry word to your people in them to come out with all their forces, and march toward N'Yor and attack here at midnight," he told her.
Nirla shook her head hopelessly. "They would not dare do that. The planes of the Airlords would swoop down on them before they reached N'Yor, and slaughter them all."
"But suppose none of the Airlords' planes can ?y tonight? Suppose that Power Tower stops broadcasting power, and all the planes are grounded. Then would your people dare attack N'Vor?"
"They would, yes!" Nirla cried, dark eyes lighting. "Do you mean that you could stop the tower from broadcasting power tonight?"
"I think I can," Riley told her. "As Jan Strang, First Airlord, I can get inside that tower. Once inside, I'll stop the power-broadcast, or die trying."
"You traitor!" cried Stirb Ikim. "Plotting the overthrow of your own people—"
"They're not my people," Riley snapped. "I was thrust into the body of Jan Strang without being consulted. My people are the Groundlings, rightful owners of this country."
But Nirla's excitement suddenly vanished, a baffled, frustrated look came into her soft face.
"It's impossible—how can I get out of N'Yor to my people?" she said. "I'd surely be discovered before I escaped this city."
"No, you're going in a plane," Riley told her. The inspiration had come to him a moment before.
She shook her head. "I cannot fly one. No Groundling can."
"Stirb Ikim can—and he's going to fly you to your people, Nirla," Riley rasped. "He'll do it or die—you can sit behind him with this pistol, all the way."
"I won't do it!" cried the Second Airlord. "I won't help you bring about the overthrow of my people."
"You'll do it, or die right here and now!" Riley told him, shoving the weapon into his ribs.
Stirb Ikim paled. At heart, he was a coward. And he proved it now.
"Even if I did do it," he said sullenly, "the Groundlings would kill me when they got hold of me."
"Nirla will make them spare your life," Riley promised. "It's your only chance to live!"
Stirb Ikim's eyes rolled helplessly, hate and fear contending in them. Riley's trigger finger tightened. The Second Airlord blanched.
"I'll—I'll do it," he gulped.
"I thought you would," Riley said grimly. "Now lead the way out of here to the nearest plane. Remember, if you try any tricks or if we're challenged, you'll get yours."
Ten minutes later, his gun still pressed into Stirb Ikim's back, they emerged from the great palace into the starlit lawns and gardens around it.
All around them, in the middle distance, towered the great pyramids of N'Yor, patterns of blinking lights, with many lighted planes coming and going above them. A mile away soared the shining white spire of the Power Tower.
STIRB IKIM led across the palace gardens to a row of sleek-winged silver planes. He paused by one of them.
"This is my own plane," he muttered.
"Get in," Riley grated.
And as Stirb Ikim entered and took the pilot's seat, Riley handed Nirla the pistol.
"Keep this gun against his back, Nirla. If he tries any tricks, don't hesitate to kill him."
"I will," she promised. "And I will have the Groundlings gather every man and march to attack N'Yor at midnight, as you ask. But—"
There was an agonizing doubt in her clear, dark eyes upraised to his, a terrible fear.
"—but if you should fail," she told him, "if the power should not be turned off, then the planes of the Airlords will take the air to slaughter my people."
"Don't worry, the power will be turned off by midnight," Riley promised emphatically. "I know the fate of the Groundlings depends on it, and I won't fail."
Nirla impulsively raised her lips and pressed them warmly against his. Then she entered the cabin of the silver plane and closed the door.
Riley glimpsed her in there, holding her gun against Stirb Ikim's back, giving him orders. The electric motors of the plane whirred, it rose into the starlight, circled once, and then drove westward at high speed.
CHAPTER V
The Power Tower
RILEY watched, his heart thudding. Nirla should reach the subterranean Groundling cities and get their forces on the march, in an hour. And if he fulfilled his part, this night would see the end of the Airlords' rule! He ought to be starting now for the Power Tower—
"Jan Strang, what are you doing out here?" cried an anxious voice.
He turned startledly. Garr Allan, the little Councillor, was hastily approaching, followed by servants.
"What are you doing here?" Garr Allan repeated. "Don't you know that Stirb Ikim might try to murder you?"
"I just came out to look around," Riley answered lamely.
"You must return into the palace at once—it's not safe for you out here," Garr Allan declared.
Riley swore inwardly. He couldn't start for the Power Tower now—Garr Allan would suspect his motive. And he couldn't stun the Councillor, with his servants watching. He had to go with him, and get rid of him as soon as he could.
He went with Garr Allan back into his own spacious, softly-lit apartments. There the little Councillor broached what was on his mind.
"We must find some way to get rid of Stirb Ikim!" Garr Allan declared, his cunning face determined. "He suspects you are an impostor, and he is a danger to us."
Riley wasn't listening. His eyes were on a clock. Midnight was only a few hours away. He racked brain for some way of getting away from Garr Allan, to the Power Tower.
"Why aren't you listening?" Garr Allan demanded, eyes narrowed. "What has happened to you?"
Riley was spared an answer. A soldier hastily entered the room and saluted.
"It has just been discovered that the Groundling girl, Nirla, who tried to kill you has escaped!" he told Riley. "Her cell was found empty."
"Well, send out an alarm for her capture," Riley said with assumed indifference. "Why bother me about it?"
The soldier hesitated. "But since you went down to see her tonight, highness, I thought perhaps—"
"Get out and don't annoy me further about the matter until you've captured the girl!"
Hastily, the man withdrew. But a suspicious expression had come into Garr Allan's crafty eyes.
"You went down to see that girl?" he asked, frowning. "Why?"
"I just wanted to see what these Groundlings look like," Riley lied. Garr Allan's face grew darker with suspicion.
"I don't believe you—I think you helped the girl escape," he snapped. "And if you did that—"
Sudden understanding and fear crossed his face. "If you did that, you're plotting something with the Groundlings against us Airlords! I might have known that you, a barbarian from the past, would hate us. But I'll not let you live to conspire any longer against us—I'll expose you as the impostor you are!"
And Garr Allan opened his mouth to yell for the guards. But Riley sprang, his hand clamping over the Councillor's mouth and stifling his cry.
"Remember, Garr Allan," Riley rasped, "if you expose me now, you expose your own trickery. You'll be condemned for that, yourself."
But Garr Allan continued to struggle frenziedly to open his mouth. Riley understood then that the little Councillor, trickster and schemer though he might be, would risk his own life to stop the conspiracy against his race.
Hastily, therefore, he bound and gagged the little man with strips torn from the hangings. He looked at the clock. Midnight was nearer! No time to lose now! He searched the rooms until he found a rack of electric pistols, stuck one in his belt, and slid out a window into the dark gardens.
In fifteen minutes, he walked boldly up to the lighted entrance of the looming Power Tower. A closed, heavy metal door in the silver wall, it had muzzles of great electric guns projecting from around it, and a full company of soldiers on guard outside it.
"Stand back!" warned their officer as Riley approached. "You should know that no one is permitted to approach the Power Tower."
"Not even Jan Strang?" Riley asked loudly.
"The First Airlord!" exclaimed the officer. He bowed low. "Pardon, highness."
"You were but doing your duty," Riley approved gruffly. "Have the door opened."
THE officer hastened to at button in the wall, pressed it in a complicated signal. The huge slab of the metal metal door swung slowly inward, as great bolts were withdrawn.
Riley strode into a vast, brilliantly-lighted hall where colossal, unfamiliar generators droned. Two gray clad technicians came toward him, as another closed the door.
"What orders, highness?" they asked.
"Shut off the broadcast of all power at once," Riley clipped.
They stared at him as though unable to believe their ears. Then they broke into a babble of protest.
"But highness, we can't do that! It would mean that all planes in eastern Amer, all the patrol fliers on which we depend for safety, would have to come to earth. Such an order has never been given before!"
"I'm giving it now," Riley reaped. "I am First Airlord, am I not? I order you to obey."
Looking stunned, the chief technician bowed jerkily.
"Very well, highness," he stammered. "I will go at once to the switch room and give the order."
"I'll go with you," Riley said tightly.
He followed the chief technician down the vast hall toward a copper door. But at that moment, the sound of a shrill, screaming voice came from outside the tower.
"Open to me—Garr Allan! Treachery is going on inside!"
CHAPTER VI
Besieged
ONE of the technicians started toward the heavy door, to withdraw the bolts.
"Don't open it!" Riley rapped. The technicians hesitated. Inwardly, Riley was cursing the chance that had permitted Garr Allan to escape" his bonds. He should have killed the little Councillor!
"Open, I say!" Garr Allan screamed outside. "The man in there with you is not Jan Strang—he is an impostor who is about to betray us to the Groundlings!"
The chief technician, staring at Riley, went white. He tugged at his pistol.
"So that's why you ordered the power shut off!" he cried, his weapon flashing up.
Riley had already jerked out his own weapon. He aimed the unfamiliar weapon as he would have done an ordinary pistol, and pulled trigger as the other man cried out.
A bolt of crackling blue force shot from his pistol and hit the chief technician. He fell, but the other two gray-clad men were drawing their guns. The bolt from one of them scorched past Riley's arm as he shot swiftly. Both men tumbled in dead heaps. But his pistol's electric charge was exhausted.
There was a thunderous din at the outer door—Garr Allan and the guards outside were battering to break it in. He looked wildly around the vast hall. There were no other technicians in sight—apparently only a handful of men were needed to keep the jealously guarded Power Tower functioning.
Riley ran toward the copper door of the switch room. It opened as he approached—the technician in charge of it peered out startledly at the dead men in the hall.
"What has happened, highness?" the man cried as he recognized Ian Strang's figure. "Who is at the door?"
"They are rebels against my rule," Riley told him, thinking swiftly. "I had to kill these men."
He pushed the technician back into the switch room. It was a copper chamber whose curving walls bore a bewildering number of gigantic switch panels. These were the controls of the mighty flood of power that was broadcast from the tower to every plane of the Airlords in eastern Amer.
Riley shut and barred the copper door once he was inside, and then quickly ordered the bewildered technician:
"Shut off the power broadcast, at once!"
"But highness—," the man objected.
"It is necessary, to break the revolt against my rule!"
Hesitatingly, the man went to the panels. He hastily flipped giant switches and relays, one after another.
Riley heard the thunder at the outer door of the tower grow louder. They were using battering rams now.
"The power broadcast is all off—every plane in eastern Amer is now grounded!" the technician hurried up to report. "What now?"
"Now, we wait." He glanced at a clock—still nearly an hour to midnight!
The Groundling forces, he knew, must still be miles from N'Yor, even if Nirla had succeeded in getting through to her people. And if she hadn't—
The minutes fled by, and the battering at the outer door of the tower had become a deafening din. The clock showed a quarter hour to midnight when the outer door went down with a great clang.
Riley heard the besieging guards rush into the tower. In a moment they were battering against the copper door of the switchroom, Garr Allan urging them on.
"Highness—" faltered the technician.
"Turn on the power again, you inside!" shrieked Garr Allan from outside the copper door. "It is not Jan Strang in there with you but an impostor, a traitor!"
THE technician heard, his face went livid. He sprang back toward the switch panels.
Riley jumped after him, brought his gun butt down on the man's head. He sank in his tracks.
The copper door was now beginning to bend inward. The clangor of battering was thunderous in the switch room. They would be inside in a few moments.
Riley looked wildly around the room. If he could just wreck these switches someway to keep the power off a little longer. But he had no tools, nothing but his bare hands.
The copper door bent further inward. He felt despair bitter in his soul. He had failed Nirla, had failed the Groundlings, the descendants of his own race. There was nothing left for him but to die fighting.
Bare hands against the thundering crowd who would rush in in another minute! He tossed his useless gun away, clenched his fists and Stood with legs wide apart inside the sagging door, his face flaming the defiance he felt. He'd show them how a man of three centuries before could die!
A wild scream penetrated through the clangorous din outside the door.
"The Groundlings are attacking N'Yor! Their hordes are streaming into the city!"
The attack on the door was interrupted the next minute by a sudden crash of battle out there in the great hall of the Power Tower, a wild uproar of yelling voices.
Recklessly, Riley unbarred and opened the sagging copper door. The great hall of the tower was being invaded by a torrent of men, pale-faced, white-clad men who had electric guns, and even swords and spears for weapons, wild-eyed men who were with utter ferocity attacking the black-clad Airlords.
The Groundlings! Riley yelled with exultation. They had come at last, their attack had smashed into N'Yor, while the stopping of the power broadcast had grounded the planes of the Airlords. The descendants of American freemen were taking long-delayed vengeance on the conquerors of their land!
Groundling warriors who perceived Riley's black uniform ran toward him with weapons raised in menace.
"Stop!" cried a silvery, urgent voice. Nirla came flying through the Groundling fighting-men, flung her arms around Riley.
"It is the man who saved us—the American from the past who wears Jan Strang's body!" she cried to them.
And she clung to him, sobbing, "You did it! You shut the power off, and my people are sweeping all in N'Yor before them." The Groundlings had killed every Airlord in the tower. Riley and Nirla hurried out with the warriors into the night.
In the darkness, great N'Yor had become a hell of battle and death. Thousands of Groundlings were streaming through the city, hunting down the Airlords who fled in panic or turned vainly to fight. Blue electric flashes starred the darkness.
But the Airlords were already overwhelmed. Without the myriad planes on which they had always counted for safety, they could not oppose the hordes of vengeance mad Groundlings who were taking toll for two centuries of oppression. Already all organized resistance of the Airlords was shattered.
A tremendous throng of Goundling fighters gathered around Riley and Nirla, and shouted themselves hoarse.
"We've won!" he cried to the girl. "Now we hold power over all eastern Amer. And we can use all these planes now, powered by this tower, to sweep the Airlords out of the west."
A giant, bearded Groundling soldier waved his bloody sword aloft and shouted in a bull voice.
"For years," he yelled, "my dearest wish was to kill Jan Strang. But now that he, or the man in his body, has Won our land for us again, I say—hail Jan Strang, President of Amer!" There was a roar of approval from a thousand liberated voices.
THE END