Illustrated by FRANK R. PAUL Copyright, 1927, by E. P. Co., Inc....

In a previous record of my adventures in the early part of the Second War of Independence I explained how I, Anthony Rogers, was overcome by radioactive gases in an abandoned mine near Scranton in the year 1927, where I existed in a state of suspended animation for nearly five hundred years; and awakened to find that the America I knew had been crushed under the cruel tyranny of the Airlords of Han, fierce Mongolians, who, as scientists now contend, had in their blood a taint not of this earth,

One of our Wyoming girls, on contact guard near Pocono, blundered into a hunting camp of the Bad Bloods, one of the renegade American Gangs, which occupied the Blue Mountain section North of Delaware Water Gap. We had not invited their cooperation in this campaign, for they were under some suspicion of having trafficked with the Hans in past years, but they had offered no objection to our passage through their territory in our advance on Nu-Yok. Fortunately our contact guard had been able to lea

Boss Handan , of the Winslows, a giant of a man, a two-fisted fighter and a leader of great sagacity, had been selected by the council as our Boss pro tem , and having given the scatter signal to the council, he retired to our general headquarters, which we had established on Second Mountain a few miles in the rear of the fighting front in a deep ravine. There, in quarters cut far below the surface, he would observe every detail of the battle on the wonderful system of viewplates our ultrono eng

At this period the Hans of Nu-Yok had only one airship equipped with their new armored repeller ray, their latest defense against our tactics of shooting rockets into the repeller rays and letting the latter hurl them up against the ships. They had developed a new steel alloy of tremendous strength, which passed their rep ray with ease, but was virtually impervious to our most powerful explosives. Their supplies of this alloy were limited, for it could be produced only in the Lo-Tan shops, for i

Our own engineers, working in shielded laboratories far underground, had established such control over the "de-atomized" electrons as to dissect them in their turn into sub-electrons . Moreover, they had carried through the study of this "order" to the point where they finally "dissected" the sub-electron into its component ultrons , for the fundamental laws underlying these successive orders are not radically dissimilar. And as they progressed, they developed constructive as well as destructive

But to return to my narrative, and my swooper , from which I was gazing at the interior of the Han ship. This ship was not unlike the great dirigibles of the Twentieth Century in shape, except that it had no suspended control car nor gondolas, no propellers, and no rudders, aside from a permanently fixed double-fishtail stabilizer at the rear, and a number of "keels" so arranged as to make the most of the repeller ray airlift columns. Its width was probably twice as great as its depth, and its l

Certainly my situation was no less desperate. Unless I could find some method of compensating for my lost ballast, the inverse gravity of my inertron ship would hurl me continuously upward until I shot forth from the last air layer into space. I thought of jumping, and floating down on my inertron belt, but I was already too high for this. The air was too rarefied to permit breathing outside, though my little air compressors were automatically maintaining the proper density within the shell. If

Some twenty minutes later the ship arrived. It settled down slowly into the ravine on its repeller rays until it was but a few feet above the tree tops. There it was stopped, and floated steadily, while a little cage was let down on a wire. Into this I was hustled and locked, whereupon the cage rose swiftly again to a hole in the bottom of the hull, into which it fitted snugly, and I stepped into the interior of a craft not unlike the one with which I had had my fateful encounter, the cage being

My position among the Hans, in this period, was a peculiar one. I was at once a closely guarded prisoner and an honored guest. San-Lan told me frankly that I would remain the latter only so long as I remained an object of serious study or mental diversion to himself or his court. I made bold to ask him what would be done with me when I ceased to be such. "Naturally," he said, "you will be eliminated. What else? It takes the services of fifteen men altogether, to guard you; and men, you understan

San-Lan's attitude toward me underwent a change. He did not seek my company as he had done before, and so those long discussions and mental duels in which we pitted our philosophies against each other came to an end. I was, I suspected, an unpleasant reminder to him of things he would rather forget, and my presence was an omen of impending doom. That he did not order my execution forthwith was due, I believe to a sort of fascination in me, as the personification of this (to him) strange and myst

Many times during the months I remained prisoner among the Hans I had tried to develop a plan of escape, but could conceive of nothing which seemed to have any reasonable chance of success. While I was allowed almost complete freedom within the confines of the city, and sometimes was permitted to visit even the military outposts and disintegrator ray batteries in the surrounding mountains, I was never without a guard of at least five men under the command of an officer. These men were picked sol

The American barrage had been a long distance bombardment, designed, apparently, to draw the Han disintegrator ray batteries into operation and so reveal their positions on the mountain tops and slopes, for the Hans, after the destruction of Nu-Yok, had learned quickly that concealment of their positions was a better protection than a surrounding wall of disintegrator rays shooting up into the sky. The Hans, however, had failed to reply with disintegrator rays. For already this arm, which former

We had little time, however, to waste in endearments, and very little to devote to informing me as to the American plans. The essential thing was that I report the Han plans and resources to the fullest of my ability. And for an hour or two I talked steadily, giving an outline of all I had learned from San-Lan and his Councillors, and particularly of the arrangements for drawing off the population of the city to new cities concealed underground, through the system of tunnels radiating from the b

" How did you know I had been taken to Lo-Tan as a prisoner?" I asked the little group of Wyoming Bosses who had assembled in Wilma's tent to greet me. "And how does it happen that our gang is away out here in the Rocky Mountains? I had expected, after the fall of Nu-Yok, that you would join the forest ring around Bah-Flo (Buffalo I called it in the Twentieth Century) or the forces beleaguering Bos-Tan." They explained that my encounter with the Han airship had been followed carefully by several

The news which caused me to change my plans was grave enough. As I have explained, the American lines lay roughly to the east and the south of the city in the mountains. My own Gang held the northern flank of the east line. To the south of us was the Colorado Union, a force of 5,000 men and about 2,000 girls recruited from about fifteen Gangs. They were a splendid organization, well disciplined and equipped. Their posts, rather widely distributed, occupied the mountain tops and other points of a

I had gone five miles, and had paused for a moment, half way up the slope of the valley to get my bearings, when a figure came hurtling through the air from behind, and landed lightly at my side. It was Wilma. "I put Bill Hearn in command and followed, Tony. I won't let you go into that alone. If you die, I do, too. Now don't argue, dear. I'm determined." So together we leaped northward again toward the battle. And after a bit we pulled up close behind the barrage. Great, blinding flashes, like