The square was well filled with people now, and more were arriving and being herded into side streets and buildings. Some were still numb. Some wept or prayed or implored or tried to ingratiate themselves, some cursed and threatened, some retreated into impassive silence. But—prisoners all. Captured, impotent, legitimate prey.

Hammer turned as an outlaw galloped up, thrusting his horse through the crowd without regard for their safety. “What is it?” asked the chief, not anxiously. His victory was too tremendously evident.

“I dunno—some trouble down by the river,” said the gangman. “About half Joe’s detail ain’t showed up yet.”

“Hm-m-m? Musta found some likker.”

“Yeah—Hey—What’s that?”

Hammer turned. He couldn’t see much sitting down. Huge and shaggy and ablaze with the arrogance of his triumph, he sprang lithely onto the bench and looked north along the street. He grinned, then laughed, then shouted with humorless mirth. “Lamp that, boys. Some crazy mutie—look at him!”

Wayne was so placed that he could also see down that street. His heart staggered, for a black instant he couldn’t believe, refused to comprehend, then—

“Alaric.”

The boy was coming down the street, walking slowly and carrying an object, a fantastic wire-tangled grotesquerie of electronic surrealism, thrown together in the wildest haste and with no recognizable design. A wire led from it to a reel of cable mounted on a mule’s back, and the cable snaked behind, along the road—it must go clear to the powerhouse!

How had Al done it? That cable was sacrosanct, reserved for electrifying the airport. That apparatus, the invaluable parts in it—how had he gotten them? How—why? Why? What mad vagary of a reasonless brain had prompted him to go thus on this darkest of mornings? What—

“Come on, kid,” shouted Hammer boisterously. “Whatcha got?”

Alaric came closer. His delicately cast features were set in concentration, his strange light eyes flashing like glacial ice, not a human gleam. He lifted his device and twirled a pair of dials.

“May be a weapon,” said a bandit uneasily and raised his rifle.

“Not…Alaric—” It was a hoarse cry from Wayne’s throat, and he made a clumsy lunge for the outlaw. Hammer swept one long arm in a careless blow and sent him crashing to the ground.

The gang-man squeezed the trigger on his rifle but never completed the motion. He was dead before that. Wayne, sprawled on his back, looking up through a whirling fog of grief and horror and hopeless defeat, saw the man’s body explode.

It went up in a white burst of steam, a crash of rending bone and tissue and a brief glare of incandescence. The rifle flying from him glowed cherry red, blowing up as its cartridges detonated. Before the fragments had fallen, something had swept the outer edges of the square, and where the guards had stood were steam-clouded heaps of charred bone and shredded flesh.

The crowd yelled, a single beast cry half of terror, half of surging death-lusting triumph, and swept down on the remaining gangmen. Most were too demoralized to resist. Others struggled, and got a few townspeople before they were trampled under.