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HEADHUNTERS OF NUAMERICA
There was a stunned sensation in Downey's head as he slowly regained consciousness. He had the feeling of one who has been drugged, or sandbagged; and for a moment he could not quite recall where he was or what had happened to him. He was only aware of a dull, hammering sound from somewhere in the distance; and aware also of the aching pain and the stiffness in every joint and muscle of his body. It seemed to him at first that his eyelids were glued together, and would never open; and when at length he forced them apart, he realized that he was in darkness, except for a faint light that slowly widened at the further end of a narrow gallery.
A low moan from just ahead of him caused him to reach out; and, more by feeling than by sight, he recognized the slim form sprawled full-length on the floor. Judith Barclay! As this name flashed across his mind, recollection came back with a great leap, and his tortured brain reconstructed the scenes of the last hour or two. The announcement of the outbreak of war, followed almost immediately by the appearance of the raiding planes! His appeal to Judith, when for the twentieth time she had shrugged her thin shoulders and refused him; then the alarm, and their flight together through the panicky crowds toward the air-raid shelters! Their terrified halt, when a bomb plowed up the street just before them; and their dash into an immense section of concrete pipe, where some construction work was under way! And, finally, the thudding sound of a concussion; Judith's scream--and darkness!
"Well, by thunder, that shell pretty near got us!" he reflected, scarcely wondering at the changed appearance of the pipe, which he attributed to the explosion. Then, as he reached out and felt for the girl's arm, he asked, "How are you, Jude? Hurt?"
"No, I'm all right, Mort," she answered, weakly. "Only, a little--a little funny in the head."
He glanced out along the tapering dimness of the pipe, and saw the light at the further end slowly widening. At the same time, the noise of renewed hammering came to his ears. "Well, the rescuers are getting here pretty quick," he remarked. "Guess the raid's over."
"Thank heaven!" she sighed. "I--I don't think this was a very wise place to choose, Mort."
He bit his lip, wondering why, even in their present grim location, her least remark should have the power to torture him.
"Don't you--don't you smell something peculiar? A little like ether?" she went on, in faltering tones; while he, as the light at the end of the gallery brightened to a glare, tottered to his hands and knees, and then fell back to the floor of the tube, feeling sick in the head.
"There's something wrong with the air, by Christopher!" he muttered; and then cried out in astonishment, "Say, do you see that?"
Downey thought that the strangers started back in surprise; but all that he was certain of was that, after a second, they were motioning him to come out of the tube.
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