startled. Behind him stood a slight man with the bearing of an officer. But his cold blue eyes and the large ancient revolver he pointed at Pell hardly betokened friendship.

"Who are you?" Dallard asked.

Briefly Pell explained, indicating his desire to find Gret and Gutridge. When he had finished, Dallard whistled softly and looked at Pell with new respect.

"We'll give you all the help we can, Pell—and in case we run into some tough opposition, we'd like you to reciprocate—with that thing." Dallard grinned and as he walked away with his men, called over his shoulder, "Luck!"

Pell nodded absently and turned away, considering the almost hopeless hunt that confronted him. Certainly they were no longer in the blaster tower; obviously Gutridge had taken the girl into the depths of the fortress when the Insurgents had attacked. Then the unpleasant possibility that Gutridge might be holding the girl as a hostage occurred to him. It added new drive to his purpose.

Pell's actions that night, had they occurred in another age, would have been the fiber of a legend. He never remembered exactly what he did himself and the accounts of the Insurgents who saw only a part of his exploits were disjointed and inconsistent.

Suffice it to say that a haggard, smoke-blackened, wild man almost single-handedly destroyed the last remnants of the DIC mercenary army on Centauri VI that night. In the face of Pell's blaster they surrendered faster than they could be captured. Points of resistance, when they were touched by the deadly blue finger of the blaster, vanished in violently reacting clouds.

Perhaps the toughest struggle of all was with a group of fanatical mercenaries on the sixth level who were scrabbling desperately in the rubble of the entrance to the dead-end corridor which led to the atomic armory. Fearing that its violent energies would explode the U-235 in the armory, Pell was unable to use the blaster against them. Desperately the Insurgents stormed the level, only to be cut down sickeningly by the trapped mercenaries. In the end, however, there could only be one result and the weary DIC soldiers had no choice but to surrender.

Pell's search was ended on the thirty-seventh level. Because of its tremendous depth, this level was ventilated only with great difficulty. The air, what there was of it, was close and sticky. The rumbling whine of the ventilator turbine could be heard plainly as 

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