Talbot had no intention of moving any closer to Frescura’s powerful arms. “You’ll have to free yourself,” he said. “Your foot will slip out of the shoe.” “I’ll try.” Frescura leaned on the machine and strained. His leg swung free. There was an odd rattling sound. Talbot glanced down--and froze. Scores of black spheres were rolling across the floor in all directions. Thermal capsules! Frescura had quite obviously been lying about the injury to his leg. He had resorted to the subterfuge to distract Talbot’s attention while he overturned a small box at the base of the machine with a swift carefully timed kick. Talbot glanced up. Frescura had leapt back into the shadows, and was crouching behind the machines, his bulk only faintly visible in the dim light. “Can you find all of them in this light--in the time you have left?” he taunted. “What would you do with them if you succeeded?” Talbot raised his gun and sent a shot crashing into the shadows in the general direction of the voice. As the dim subsided he called out, “The next one will be you! Start toward the front.” There was a mocking laugh from another direction. “I don’t think I will. But you’d better hurry, Talbot.” He didn’t stop to argue. The shop would be an inferno when the covering of the capsules disintegrated. The shop was long, but it took him scarcely an instant to reach the office building. The two structures were connected, but there was a massive firewall between them. Talbot was thankful for the wall’s protection. At the corridor near the outside entrance he tried to turn too quickly and went sprawling into a side passageway. He cursed the panic which had caused him to stumble. It wasn’t entirely physical. His knees had simply buckled and he couldn’t control his actions as he slammed into the wall and fell. He was trying to get up when the thermal concussion hit him. The superheated air expanded violently and hurled him flat again. In the shop steel and concrete had been instantly vaporized near each sphere. But the firewall at the office held. It took up most of the shock before it crumbled, and the sprinklers switched on. Talbot became suddenly and violently ill. It was partly a nervous reaction, partly a physical one. The guard from the outside came by, running toward the explosion. He didn’t see Talbot lying stretched out on the floor in the side corridor. Talbot staggered to his feet and went outside. He was still panic stricken; he ran. When finally he was out of breath and the fear and nausea had diminished, he slowed down. He came to a rise in the street and looked back. The shop was a glowing mass of white hot steel and concrete. Now and then a capsule which had been timed for a different interval belatedly let loose, sending up a shower of sparks. Frescura was dead.