Norman Spinrad

"Surely you're not afraid of a hole in the ground, Bogel!" Waffing japed.

"There's no point in risking the life of the Supreme Commander of Heldon needlessly," Bogel said. "What a fiasco if something should happen to Feric at this moment in history!"

Clearly, Bogel's point was well taken. Personal wishes aside, Feric realized that he had a sacred duty to the people of Heldon to take reasonable measures to protect his own safety.

"Very well," he said. "Waning, fetch ten SS lads and have them bring portable electric globes."

Minutes later, Feric was leading his High Commanders and ten tall blond SS men down the flight of stone steps through a dank, cool shaft, with an electric globe in his left hand and the Steel Commander at the ready in his right. Although Feric himself left his submachine gun slung over his shoulder, the others had their guns cocked, prepared, indeed eager, for action.

The stairs descended into the earth for well over a hundred feet, finally debouching into a passageway hewn from the solid rock, its walls dewy with moisture.

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"This has the look of some sort of bomb shelter to me,"

Waning said. "Be on your toes!" he told the SS men somewhat superfluously as Feric led the party down the corridor. The passage led away into the darkness for perhaps a hundred yards, then abruptly terminated in another steel hatch quite similar in design to the one that had sealed the entrance cubicle. Clearly, if there was anything alive in this dank grotto, it would be behind that hatch. Moreover, the doubly sealed structure of this final redoubt made it exceedingly probable that anything which had reached the shelter before the bombardment would indeed still be living.

Feric silently ordered the others to stand back, then raised the Steel Commander high over his head and struck the hatch a prodigious blow, while at the same time leaping sideways out of the possible line of fire of anything within. With a terrible clatter that reverberated all up and down the passageway, the Great Truncheon of Held cleaved the steel hatch in twain, and the pieces fell to the stone floor at Feric's feet.

Instantly, the ten SS men were at Feric's side, their submachine guns leveled, their icy blue eyes gleaming with hyper-alertness like chips of polished steel. But there was no gunfire from within; instead, a nickering orange light poured forth into the stone corridor. Cocking the Great Truncheon, Feric lead his party through the hatch and into a small chamber carved from the rock and lit by a ring of guttering torches.

Inside the chamber was naught but a single small instrument console behind which stood an ancient, wizened, crook-backed Dom with huge sunken black eyes and the evil broken grin of a ferret. This monstrosity was garbed in Zind gray set off with all manner of gold braid, precious jewels, and golden brightwork, giving the effect of some fetid rodent stuffed into a royal uniform as part of a particularly vile schoolboy prank.

Nevertheless, the dominance pattern exuded by the sordid brain of this grandfather of all Dominators was the most powerful Feric had ever felt. It was all he could do to keep from obeying the powerful impulse to toss away the Great Truncheon which ripped through his mind.

Behind him, he heard a great clatter of metal on stone as the High Commanders and the SS guard discarded their weapons at .the foul creature's bidding—only Feric's will was strong enough to resist this incredibly powerful Domi-231

nator, and even his muscles were frozen into immobility, paralyzed in the conflict of mighty wills between himself and the ancient Dom.

"Welcome human filth," the Dominator croaked in a grisly dry parody of a human voice. "Needless to say, I've been expecting a visit. However, the presence of Feric Jaggar himself was too much to hope for. I shall enjoy watching your face, Jaggar, as the human genotype is wiped from the face of the earth for all time!"

The creature was clearly mad, somehow mistaking the final destruction of his own loathsome kind for that of true humanity! Feric threw every ounce of his will into the struggle to break the dominance pattern long enough to dash the wretch's brains out with the Steel Commander, but succeeding in effecting only slight movement.

The Dominator threw a switch on the console before it, then laughed maniacally until a thin spittle sprayed from its leathery lips.

"Thus is sealed the fate of your worthless kind. Jag'

gar!" the old Dom cackled. "The activating signal has been sent to an installation of the ancients far to the east of here which our creatures have revived. In minutes, a huge nuclear explosion will take place in the wildlands, spewing millions of tons of radioactive dust into the air.