But a door above swung open, and light spilled out from inside the base of the giant Statue. Two men appeared in the doorway, drawing pistols. "What--" one cried. Wales fired, a prolonged burst. He had no intention whatever of taking extra risks by sparing life. These men, and the men they worked for, would have taken the lives of millions. There was no mercy in him. One of the two in the doorway fell. The other, blood welling from his shoulder, tried to shift his pistol to his other hand. Wales, racing up to them, heard pounding footsteps inside the statue, and he took no time to shoot again. He clubbed the Venn gun's barrel down over the head of the wounded man, and sprang over him and the dead one in the doorway, right into the base of the lofty figure. A light burned in here. He ran to the foot of the winding stair that led upward. Frantic feet running up above him made reverberating echoes. He glimpsed a pair of legs on the stair-- He shot, and the legs crumpled and a man came sliding back down the stair, screaming and trying to aim his gun. Wales triggered again, and when the scream of richocheting steel and the echoes of gunfire died away, there was silence unbroken. He started running up the stair. In a minute he heard Martha's voice calling, from down beneath. "Jay!" He shouted back down, and ran on, his heart pounding, his lungs pumping. He came into the grotesque room of angled steel that was the inside of the giant head. There was a carefully shaded light here. And a man huddled on the floor near it, shackled to the wall. * * * * * Wales turned the light full on him. A bearded face looked at him, with wild dark eyes--a face he could hardly recognize. "Lee?" he said. And then suddenly, he was sure. "Lee Kendrick." Kendrick said, hesitantly, "Why it's Jay Wales. But you were on Mars. How--" And then Kendrick's eyes suddenly flamed and he shouted hoarsely. "Wales, you don't know what's happened, what they're planning--" "I know," Wales said, stooping by him. "Take it easy. Please--" Kendrick clutched him, babbling, pleading. Not until Martha came in, and stooped beside her brother, crying, could Wales get away. He said, "Try to quiet down. There must be a key to these shackles somewhere." He went back down the stair. The man he had shot in the shoulder and then stunned, was now stirring and groaning. Wales made a rough bandage for the bleeding shoulder, and then tied the man's wrists with his own belt. He thought it would hurt, when the man came to. He hoped it would. He searched pockets until he found keys, and then went back up. Kendrick seemed to have got control of himself. He talked feverishly as Wales tried keys. "There's still time before Doomsday, isn't there?" he pleaded. "Still time to get everybody off Earth? It isn't too late?"