"More of your friends, I expect," remarked Storm coolly, for he had recognised the voice outside in the hall. "Susan, get the door open--hustle!" "It's locked!" screamed Surcon. A mad triumph shook him. "Locked--locked--locked! No escape! Get after him, men! _Get on--get on--what're you waiting for?_ Watch, Captain Arden!" Storm saw the knuckles of Surcon's right hand whiten over the lever they still held. Storm blazed away--carelessly, with one gun, into the ugly surge of men who hurled themselves at him; accurately, with the other, at Ezra Surcon. And Storm thanked all his pagan gods that his boast had been a sound one--that he never missed. Three bullets sped like three crashing thunderbolts into Surcon's right wrist, smashing flesh and bone and sinew to a spurting crimson pulp. Storm saw the Apex drop his hand, and then Captain Christopher Arden, trouble-hunter, was slap in the middle of as big a slice of trouble as any Hotspur could desire. With two empty guns clenched in his hands to add weight to his blows, he was battling for dear life against a horde of raging maniacs who, fortunately for him, were too closely packed to be able to use their weapons without risk of killing each other, were hampered by their own numbers ... men who used tooth and talon like wild beasts ... men, like animals, thirsting for blood.... No giant of legend could have stood up to that terrible onslaught for more than three minutes. Human muscle and nerve, however willing, were physically incapable of sustaining the fearful pace of such a fight. Storm slogged away with the powerful precision of the fighting machine he had called himself, but he felt his strength going and the _sog_ of his sledge-hammer blows into contorted faces growing less potent with every punch. His fists catapulted out from all angles--he still smiled, but grimly--and all the time he knew it couldn't last. A red mist shot with eddying whirls of black and silver swam before his eyes nauseatingly; his chest was a hive of toiling agony; he wondered wearily how long it could last. But he never let up. He knew he was going out, knew that his hour had struck ... a great and worthy end to so wildly glorious a life. He knew no fear--only a strange, primitive exaltation. Battered, bruised, and torn, thereafter he fought on in silence. He knew that he had been fighting for no more than half a minute, yet in that short space he felt as if he had lived through an eternity. As though separated from his body, his mind stood out clear as a crystal globe in sunlight. He could think coldly, calmly, and work out exactly how much longer he could keep going. Another half-minute, perhaps, and then--_finis_....