Warlock

behind to monitor the city from the great television network in police headquarters on the lowest level. He had just informed them that the second level still contained no Oragonians.
        
        “Cutting torch forward,” Berlarak whispered.
        
        Two more mutants carried a tank of some combustible gas the Shaker could not identify. The nozzle of the cutting tool was lighted, and in moments the grill was cut loose from inside. They went through and headed quickly for the armory whose position all of them now knew-the sleep-teach machines having worked wonders for their coordination as a unit.
        
        The door to the armory was also cut open, beads of metal falling to the floor, there hardening and glistening like gems. The weapons inside were rifled in search of the most effective devices. Everyone was armed with the strange and deadly artifacts from another era, things designed to kill the Scopta'-mimas but also deadly enough when directed against men. Within ten minutes, they had returned to the secret passages of the air-conditioning spaces, and the violated grill had been pulled back into place. It would pass a casual examination from the other side, but not a careful inspection.
        
        But the Oragonians were not going to have time for inspecting anything…
        
        Encumbered by their weapons, they found the going even more difficult than before, but they soon reached the stairs and continued their ascent. Four floors later, on the sixth level of the city, the first floor above ground, One Squad was detached and sent off to the grill, there to make their way through and surprise the Oragonians who went about their plundering with little concern.
        
        This first squad consisted of Shaker Sandow, Gregor, Mace and Sergeant Crowler. Two mutants, detailed to cut open the grill for them, accompanied them, burned through the metal latches, then wished the four men luck and returned to the stairs to join the rest of the force for the journey to the higher levels. Since only Crowler was a trained fighter, this group had been given the level which contained the fewest Oragonians. There were but fifteen of the enemy established here, the television monitors reported, and such should be easy game for four men armed as these were.
        
        They were to wait here until word came through from Berlarak, on the radio which Crowler carried on his hip, that all the units were in position and that the strike could begin. That might be as much as an hour from now. In the time that they had to wait, reduced to silence lest they draw the attention of an enemy soldier and expose themselves and the plan they embodied, Shaker Sandow had ample time to consider the men with him and to speculate on them in the light of the new things he had learned on this long trek.
        
        Gregor was healed. The autodocs, those marvelous thinking machines, had swallowed him on a silver tray, had held him for three hours, and had spat him out in perfect health. There was not even a scar where his foot had been punctured, and he swore he felt no pain whatsoever. Yet, physically healed, his mental body was still wounded. He had never been so mortally hurt in his life, not even as his father had chased him with a mind to killing him when he was still a youth. Perhaps, in the years he had spent in the quietude of the Shaker's house, he had come to think of himself too specially. Perhaps he had begun to think that a magician's apprentice, soon to be a magician himself, was not vulnerable to the whims of fate. Now, having nearly perished, he understood differently. The scars of that rude awakening would require time to heal. He might lose some of that boyish streak of his, but he would gain a touch of manhood in its place. And that could only help. An immature Shaker does no one good, but plays pranks with his powers. Sandow had known one or two of those.
        
        He turned his gaze away from the boy and looked at the dimly outlined ruggedness of Mace.
        
        One time, not long ago, the Shaker would have said that he loved both Gregor and Mace but that, in the final analysis, perhaps he loved the young apprentice just a bit more than the hulking giant. He would have felt bad about such an admission, but he would have been honest in the making of it. Now, things had changed. There was no question in his mind that he loved Mace with every bit of his