that other pile of wreckage, and I thought you too were dead...." She covered her face with her hands.

Allan turned his head, saw for the first time the crumpled debris of the black ship, a hundred feet away, saw stark forms. "There's nothing to be afraid of now," he said. "It's all over. We'll soon be with your father's friend, with Anthony."

A little smile of reassurance trembled on the girls lips. "Oh, do you think so?"

Allan nodded.

"Sure thing! Just trust to me, Miss ...?"

"Call me Naomi."

"I'm Allan." The pilot thrust out his big hand, full fleshed now, and a little white one fluttered into it. An electric thrill rippled at the contact, and the two hands clung. The girl gave a little gasp, and pink flushed her cheeks.

Naomi shivered a little, and Allan realized that a chill breeze was sweeping across the roof-tops and that daylight was almost gone. "Look here, partner, we'd better get started, somewhere." He pulled himself to his feet. Pain shot through him and his head still throbbed. "I'd better take a look at that." He gestured to the wreck of the Eastern ship. "You wait here."

When he returned his face was pallid, and there was a sick look in his eyes. The girl asked sharply: "What is it? What's wrong? Tell me, Allan!"

He looked at her grimly, started to say something, thought better of it. Then: "It wasn't a pleasant sight." He shrugged. "Come on, let's see what we can find. We'll have to spend the night here, and start for Sugar Loaf Mountain in the morning."

Once more Allan descended a narrow, spiral staircase into darkness and silence. But this time someone was at his side, and a warmness ran through him at the thought.

The topmost floor of this building was a residential level. Like the one where he had found Naomi, a green mold covered everything, and pallid fungi, emitting a pale-green phosphorescence, clung to the walls and ceiling of the long corridor. Apparently the dwellers here had rushed out at the first alarm, had died elsewhere. "This is luck," Allan said. "We shall have a comfortable place to sleep, and food is not far away."

"How is that?"

"Why, the stores level is not far below. Most of New York's structures have a number of residential levels at the top, then a floor of retail stores, and below that amusement places, offices, and factories."

"But whatever food there was must be decayed by this time."

"The fresh food, yes. But there was a lot of canned stuff, and that is probably all right." He pushed open a door. In the eery light a well-furnished living room was revealed. "You wait here, and I'll see what I can rustle up."

"But I want to go with you."

Allan was inflexible. "Please do as I say. I have my reasons."

The girl turned away. "Oh, very well," she said flatly, "if you don't want me with you."

"That's a good scout. I'll be back just as quickly as I can. And, by the way, lock the door from the inside, and don't open it till you hear my voice."

The girl looked at him wonderingly. "But—" she began.

"Don't ask me why. Do it." There was a curious note in Allan's voice, one that cut off Naomi's question. The door shut, and Dane heard the bolt shoot home.

He stood in the corridor, listening intently, his face strained. There was no sound save that of Naomi's movements behind the locked door. Allan turned to search for the auxiliary staircase that must be somewhere near the bank of ascendor doors.

Silence was again around him, almost tangible in its heaviness. His footsteps reverberated through dead halls, the echo curiously muffled by the coating of slime that spread dankly green. Allan found the staircase well, descended cautiously, pausing often to listen. Not even the faint scuttering of vermin rewarded him.

At last, three stories down, he reached the stores level. Here, in a great open hall, were the numerous alcoved recesses of the shops. Once thronged, and gaudy with the varicolored goods brought by plane and heavy-bellied rocket-freighter from both hemispheres, the vast space was a desert of moldering dust heaps, brooding. There was a faint odor in the stagnant air—of spices, and rustling silks, of rare perfumes, of all the luxury of the Golden Age that Man's folly had ended.

Allan searched the long shelves feverishly, a nervous urge to complete his task and get back to Naomi tingling in his veins. Once he stopped suddenly, his body twisting to the stair landing. He seemed to have heard something, an indefinable thudding, the shadow of a sound. But it did not come again, and he dismissed it as the thumping of his own blood in his ears, audible in that stillness.

At the end of a long aisle, neat rows of cans greeted him, the labels rotted off, the metal rust-streaked, but apparently tight and whole. He found a metal basket, a roll of wire, twisted a handle for the basket and filled it, choosing the cans by their shape. He should have liked to explore further, but the urge to return tugged at him. He went up the stairs three at a time.

There was a dark, oblong break in the long glowing wall of the upper corridor! The door—it was the door of the apartment where he had left Naomi! He leaped down the hall, shouting. The portal hung open, shattered: the rooms were stark, staring empty. Allan reeled out again. There were the marks of footprints, of many footprints, in the green scum of the hall floor, their own among them, that had led the marauders straight to the girl!

Fool that he had been! He had thought she would be safer behind a bolted door! Allan berated himself. He had thought not to worry her. There had been only four bodies in the wreckage of the black plane—but how had the rest gotten here so soon?

There was a humming whine from above. Dane hurtled toward the roof stairs. He burst from the upper landing, fists clenched, face a furious mask. A helicopter was just rising. Allan jumped for it, his fingers caught and clung to the undercarriage. But the down-swing of his body broke his hold, and Dane crashed to the roof.

He watched the plane, saw it zoom up, turn east, saw it sink and land a half mile away, atop the building where he had found her. In the moonlight he marked the direction of the place, its distance. Then he was descending stairs, innumerable stairs. He could not hope to reach it in time to save Naomi. But—his eyes grew stony—he could avenge her.

Afterwards that nightmare journey through the murdered city was a detailless blur to Allan. He clambered over heaped rubble, forced himself through windrows of piled bones that crumbled to dust at his touch. Vines, and whipping creepers of triumphant vegetation everywhere halted him; he tore them away with bleeding hands and stumbled on. He fell, and scrambled up again, and plodded on the interminable path till he had reached his goal.

Here, at last, some modicum of reason penetrated into the numbed blankness of his brain. The dark arch of the entrance-way was somehow familiar. Still legible under the verdigris of the bronze plate on the lintel he read, "Transportation Substation—District L2ZX." Now he understood why he had not seen the black flier till it had leaped in pursuit: how it was that Naomi's captors had so quickly found another 'copter. A broad well penetrated the center of this building—its opening must be covered by the luxuriant vines so that he had not noted it—and dropped down to the midsection that was a hangar for local and private planes. His own little Zenith had been stored here on occasion. There must be other helicopters there, and a stock of fuel. A dim plan began to form at the back of his head.

But first he must find where they were, and what had happened to Naomi.

Allan removed his sandals, and began the endless climb. He made no sound on the steps, cushioned as they were with mold, but at each landing