“We’re approaching Athensi. Boy, what a place. We can see the arena. We’re over it and Frank is dropping the old buss. Now he’s pancaking, and they’re beginning to shoot at us from the platform, and the—Well, say, I’ll talk to you later.” Roy Stone’s voice ended abruptly. Jack turned to his father, who was pacing up and down the grove, listening for word from Jack, listening too for sounds from Korakum which would indicate the arrival of the Janissaries and the beginning of the attack, torn between conflicting emotions, eager to hear of the outcome of the attempt to rescue Bob, and desirous also of doing his part to beat off the Janissaries, and called to his anxious parent the purport of Stone’s last message. The two looked at each other. At that moment, the sound of rifle fire came to them from the direction of Korakum. Mr. Hampton seized his rifle and started up the Great Road. “Take care of yourself, Dad.” Jack was to stay and hear the outcome of the daring attempt to rescue Bob. He felt a strange tightness of the throat as his father disappeared. Would he ever see him again? Would he ever see Bob and Frank again? What was to be the outcome of it all? * * * * * * * * Less than an hour from the time of taking-off, Frank nosed the airplane through a gorge between towering mountains the sides of which were cultivated in terraces half-way to the summits. Men, women and children, at work in the fields, stood paralyzed with terror, unable to move, this strange monster of the air zoomed along. But those in the plane paid them no attention. They were watching a point ahead, where the two sides of the gorge drew closer together until they were less than a quarter-mile apart. Beyond they glimpsed a great open plain, in the distance, beside a pencilled cleft, the walls of a city at the heart of which rose a clump of great buildings. Only a glimpse they caught, and then the converging walls of the gorge shut out the sight. Steady as a rock, seemingly without a nerve in his body, Frank whipped the plane between the narrowest point of the mountain walls and found that the valley opened out abruptly at once. In a minute or two, as they zoomed along, the mountains had retreated miles away on either hand, they were flying over an intensely cultivated plain, the river flowing below in a gorge that cut through the heart of the plain, and the walls of the city seeming to leap into gigantic size ahead. No longer did Frank require directions from Amrath as to how to proceed. Everything lay clear below—the city walls, the crowding hovels within, and in the middle the walled inner city of the Oligarchy with the Coliseum at its gates. Over the Coliseum he passed, began to spiral, and then pancaked. It was then Roy Stone called his last message to Jack, as with gas bomb ready, he prepared to do his part.