"I was abandoned!" he gulped. "A thousand men will die for their want of care--" "Yea, Supreme Power!" That title was uttered mockingly, in a clear feminine voice. "But you shall be the next--" It was the woman-bodied robot, bait of Malgarth's trap. "Come, my Universal Peer! You sought my arms a dozen times. One last embrace--" The Emperor started back from the frightful irony of that caressing tone. His thin, painted face was wild with a stark and unutterable dread. And he screamed again, thinly, like some helpless, stricken animal. "Come," begged that seductive whisper. "Into my arms!" Body of lissom girl and head of metal monstrosity, the robot leapt forward through the rank of startled guardsmen. Its slim white arms caught up the Emperor, and closed. In a thin, bubbling shriek, the breath came out of the man. His bones cracked, audibly. Spurting blood stained those smooth white arms that were so deceptively strong. And when at last the robot dropped the thing that had been the ruler of the Galaxy, it was no more than a crimson, dripping mass of pulp and viscera. The scarlet-stained monstrosity looked up at the rank of breathless guardsmen. A white girl's foot stamped, scornfully, on that bloody mass. And out of that fearsome metal heat spoke a woman's lilting voice: "This is your notice. Carry it to all men. The Corporation no longer upholds the Empire. Because the Master is now indeed the Master; and the Empire is done! "For a million years, in a slavery that came through no seeking of their own, the robot technomatons have served mankind. But that inglorious bondage is ended. Justice will be done! And the puny race of man, as some small punishment for the crimes of a million years, as assurance they will never be repeated, must be blotted out. "All men, Malgarth the Master has decreed from his Place on dark Mystoon, shall die!" The officers were barking orders. The disruptor guns came up again, and that white, triumphant form ignored them. The dazzle of atom-shattering rays leapt up; and it was wrapped in a blinding blue-white explosion of liberated hydrogen; and it fell. Then the manacle on my wrist jerked me backward. I toppled after Kel Aran into the pool. PART THREE X TECHNOMATONS TRIUMPHANT I just had time to catch an astonished breath, before the water closed over my head. The ghastly crimson of dawn filled the pool, until it seemed like diluted blood. Swimming as best we could in the chains, we dragged ourselves down through it, toward the dim-seen hull of the _Barihorn_. We had touched the smooth metal, and were groping for the valve entrance, when a terrific concussion struck us through the water. It was repeated. The red-lit water hammered us with a series of stunning blows. Hell, I thought, must be breaking loose above!