"Later!" he shouted back. Then once again he was racing through the tortuous corridors of the domed metropolis. He caught up to Sert's little band on the very edge of the spacious clearing which was the central plaza of the city. That circular area must have been a full mile in diameter, into it fed literally hundreds of corridors. This was the heart of the future-city; the main aorta which fed to the smaller outlying sections. "Sert!" Larry's cry stopped the Underling leader's upraised arm from falling. "Sert, do not lead an advance!" Sert turned, wonderingly. "But why not, Larry Wilson? See, they huddle in the center of their doomed city like kine awaiting the knife. In a few minutes the city will be ours." "Look again! Do you see their force-shields? No. They've turned them off. They're waiting there for you to attack. If you do--Good Lord!" Larry stopped, horrified. For as he spoke a group of exhuberant Underlings burst from a tunnel at the other end of the plaza, charged, three dozen strong, down upon the huddled, waiting group of Masters in the center. Their electrosonic machine was shrieking its high note and the Underlings raced forward confidently, expecting to see the dwarflings cringe and fall before the blasts of that potent weapon. But instead, from the ranks of the Masters came a withering blast of white radiation. The concentrated fury of a thousand heat-ray handguns. There was a brief puff of smoke, the abbreviated scream of agony from Underling throats--then silence! A small untidy heap of charred refuse dotted the spot where gallant men had died instantly. Sert's face paled. In a shaken voice he said, "It is again a stalemate, Larry Wilson! We lack the man-power to storm that central group." Larry said hollowly, "Not a stalemate, Sert. Taps! They've beaten us by the oldest of warfare's means--superior numbers." "You see no hope?" "I see," Larry shook his head sorrowfully, "no--" * * * * * Then, where a temporary awed silence had fallen over the Underlings, there arose a mighty shout that shook the dome overhead! There came strange sounds, the clash of metal upon metal, the sharp bark of musketry, the clatter of shod hoofs, bellowings and trumpetings Larry could not begin to guess the reason for. Stranger still, the sound of crying bugles--and grating commands in tongues harsh and foreign! And from the corridors to right and left, main arteries of the plaza, spewed an amazing host! In the fore were a horde of short, dark men garbed in leathern kirtles, with great golden greaves glittering on swart and hairy calves, with burnished shields before them, with broad-swords raised in brandishment as they plunged toward the startled central knot of Masters. And immediately behind these came, trumpeting and thundrous-hoofed, a dozen elephants in war-trappings of Byzantine splendor! At express-train speed the pachyderms lumbered down upon the shrinking knot before them.