Tad and I rushed at her. And I saw that Tad had staggered back; he fell, but he was alive, shouting: “Jeff! Look out--run!” Rhana whirled at me. I fired again. The flash was reflected upward; the room ceiling reddened for an instant where it struck. “Run, Jeff!” Tad was on his knees. I leaped forward--and struck the radiance surrounding Rhana as though it were a solid wall. A wall of vibration. The flesh of my arm burned; my robe shriveled about me. I was dashed back and fell; my weapon clattered to the floor. Rhana had ignored my attack. An instant only she stooped over the table, then she turned from the instruments. I caught a glimpse of her face. Her lips were parted in a mocking smile. She went past Tad and me before we could rise; she caught up her cloak, went through the doorway. The metal door closed upon us. Failure! It pounded at my heart--failure now at the last! I was striving to get up. “Jeff--you all right?” Tad got to his feet, wavering, almost falling again. I stood with him in a moment, stood shaking. My left arm hung limp and my legs were almost unable to hold me. The smell of burned flesh, noisome, was heavy about us. My arm was burned; Tad was scorched. Both our robes were shriveled and charred about us. We lurched to where Entt lay huddled on the floor, then I pulled Tad away. “Dead?” he asked. I gasped. “Yes--don’t look, Tad. His face--burned where she struck him--it’s--too badly burned.” Thank God he was dead! Failure! It pounded at us, beyond thought of Entt, or ourselves. These gates, this torrent! The mechanism lay inert where Rhana had demolished it. But more than that-- “Jeff, listen! Good God!” Monstrous roar and surge of the water. But there were other sounds in it now--a muffled rumbling, far away, a vague blended rumble, crashing, tearing, as of great mountains of rock split and torn and moved away. It was growing into a tumult--sweeping nearer, louder. “Jeff!” The window by the broken mechanism was closed; but its heavy pane was transparent. We could see the dam through it. A mile away, as we stared, a great segment of metal moved outward, broke and fell into the torrent. The dam was crumbling! A snapping violet light, huge as a rainbow, was out there, darting along the wall as far as we could see into the distance--a powder train of light, laid by the Gians, which now Rhana had released. It ate and tore and ripped at the wall. Another segment crumbled and fell--a mountain of metal rock, instantly engulfed by the greater surge of water from behind it; engulfed and flung down and lost as though it were a pebble. The seething white abyss was visibly higher now. In ten minutes more it would be up here to the gate-house level, its backed-up water surging into the dark realm of the monsters, surging everywhere. “Tad--it’s breaking!” Was that my voice, so calm in the midst of a cataclysm like this? “Breaking, Tad. We can’t do anything about it. Just get out of here--”