crane dipped, steel jaws champing, steel-thewed neck stiff and superior, now lifting.

Danton put the girl down, leaped, caught the metal lips, clung as the crane lifted, swung, caught the rail, pulled himself over onto the walkway. His breath was hot and his lungs burned.

He slid the ancient revolver free and examined it quickly. Its mechanism was simple enough. He twirled the cylinder, removed the safety catch. Doors? Where did they go? None of the doors seemed inclined to tell him; nothing moved around him except the crane and the conveyor belt.

He walked round the circular way once, came back. It would seem that he must crawl onto the belt to escape the pit. That would take him—somewhere. It seemed that he was destined to follow the dead wherever the dead went in this place where the dead seemed to have lost the last faint tinge of dignity or honor.

Silently, simultaneously, the doors slid open. A man was born from the darkness of each black rectangle. Bronze giant men in tunics that glittered like finely-woven metallic-silk. There was some variation, yet they were amazingly alike, expressionless, cold, removed. Far removed.

Danton heard the conveyor belt moving softly, swiftly behind him, carrying its macabre load. The revolver felt heavy in his hand. Then, from somewhere, a voice crackled in the pit like ice shifting.

"Bring this soldier to the Council Room."

A man's voice, without any particular characteristic other than one of detachment. It might have been the voice of a machine, or something on a tape.

Danton fired seven times ... after that he stopped, because the gun was empty....

Danton fired seven times. After that he stopped because the gun was empty of cartridges. Each time he fired, a man fell soundlessly, without dramatics, calmly. Each time, the man next in line stepped forward to receive the next bullet. After the last bullet was gone, three other men lifted the fallen bodies and placed them on the conveyor belt. Five others surrounded Danton. They did not touch him. If the episode had had any emotional significance at all for these men, Danton hadn't seen it. Further resistance was futile; the firing of the revolver had been only token defiance anyway.

Danton felt the refrigerated air of the pit clinging to him as the men marched him down a long tubular hall 

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