_The Earthlings Make Ready_
"I too, am with you!" came the voice of Gerd.
"Spoken like a child!" snapped Dalis. "For you are as much a child as
this third of the dreaming Sarkas! The scheme is mad, madder even than
Jaska intimates! The scheme I once proposed, in which I was cheated by
the grandfather of this madman, was times and times more feasible and
practicable!"
"Suppose," came the soft voice of Sarka the First, interrupting Dalis,
"that you put the matter up to your Gens, O wise and noble Dalis, and
see which scheme they would endorse if given the choice in the
matter--and were your scheme still possible!"
This quickly silenced the vituperation of Dalis, but in no wise
prevented his continuance as a rather loud antagonist of the plan.
"How," he demanded, "can you return the Earth to its orbit, even
granting you are able to take this initial step? How keep life on the
Earth during its flight on this rainbow-chasing voyage you propose?"
"All these things have been taken into consideration, O Dalis!" retorted
Sarka. "All of my scheme is practicable, as I think you will agree when
I have told you its details. What think you of the plan, Klaser? And
you, Durce? Boler? Vardee? Prull? Yuta? Aal? Vance? Hime?"
When the Spokesmen had answered, some of them hesitantly, for the people
all this time had remained silent--and none of the Spokesmen could be
sure how his own Gens would feel in the matter--it developed that seven
of the Spokesmen were for the scheme, if it should prove to be possible.
"If this is the voice of the majority of the Gens," snapped Dalis,
"given thus by their Spokesmen, then I vote with the majority! I shall
call upon you immediately, Sarka, for a conference!"
* * * * *
"I am glad," said Sarka softly, "that the majority of the Spokesmen are
with me. Especially am I glad that Dalis and Cleric vote with me. For
the others I have only this to say: I have thought this matter over for
almost a century, and I know that the time has come when we must act, to
save ourselves from self-destruction. Had you not decided with me, I
should have acted alone!"
"Yes?" snapped Dalis. "How?"
"I have, here in my laboratory," replied Sarka, "the power whereby to
accomplish the scheme of which I have told you! Had all the Gens defied
me, I would have nevertheless sent the Earth outward on its voyage,
bringing it within reach of the denizens, first of the Moon, second of
Mars--and you people of little courage would have been compelled to
fight to save yourselves!"
"You would have forced us into war?" came the quavering voice of Prull,
the first Spokesman aside from Dalis to take active part in the
discussion. "Then why, if you had the means in the beginning to enforce
your will upon us, confer with us at all?"
Sarka thrilled with satisfaction, for this question gave him the excuse
he sought. He had been wondering and scheming how to compel the
Spokesmen of the Gens to obey his will.
"I wanted your opinions," he said shortly. "But I also wish you to know
that I have the power to go on, whether you wish it or not--_and you
must obey me!_"
* * * * *
How would the twelve Gens take this ultimatum of Sarka? For breathless
moments after he had spoken he waited, and the Spokesmen with him. Then
came the voice of Cleric, addressing his people, yet leaving the
contacts open so that Sarka and the other Spokesmen might hear.
"What say you, O Gens of Cleric?" he cried, his voice an exultant,
clarioning paean of rejoicing. "Do we follow this man who promises us
life again? Do we follow this man who promises us that once again we
shall dwell in plenty, without the blood of relatives and neighbors on
our hands? Answer this man, O Gens--for I say unto you that wheresoever
he leads I would follow him!"
Silence for a heartbeat. Then a murmuring like the sound of the waves of
the long-vanished seas sounded in the laboratory, wherein all things
were seen, all sounds were heard. A monster voice, loud and savage, from
the Gens of Cleric.
"We follow Cleric wherever he leads!" Finally the words became
intelligible. "It matters not to us whom Cleric follows, so long as we
may follow Cleric!"
"Well spoken, O Gens of Cleric!" snapped Sarka when the murmuring died
down to a whisper, then faded out entirely. "Deck yourselves in the
white garments of Cleric! Emblazon upon your backs and breast the Red
Lily of his House! Prepare for war! These are your orders; the details I
leave to Cleric!"
There came the voice Dalis.
"Give your orders to my Gens direct, O Sarka!" rasped Dalis. "For I
leave this very moment to come to you!"
"Thank you," said Sarka, a great wave of exaltation sweeping over him.
He had expected Dalis to be the last and most difficult to manage. Then
to the Gens of Dalis, as the blue light on the table in the laboratory
showed Sarka that Dalis was already winging toward him: "Deck yourselves
in the green garments of Dalis! Wear as your insignia the yellow star of
his House, and prepare for war! Make new and modern Ray Directors!
Refurbish your rotting machines of destruction! Make ready, and make
haste! For the Gens of Dalis will be the first of all the Gens to move
in attack against the Dwellers Outside! When the time comes I shall tell
you where you shall dwell--if you win the land I shall show you!"
* * * * *
The humming of myriad voices inside the laboratory was now almost
continuous, but ever the words of Sarka went out to the Spokesmen and to
the Gens, though, save in the case of Cleric and of Dalis, he did not
speak to the Gens direct, because he did not wish in one iota to usurp
the authority of the Spokesmen themselves.
But when less than an hour had passed, he realized that the first step
had been successfully taken, and that from now on the success or failure
of the scheme rested in his own hands. Perspiration bedewed his
forehead, and for a second he prayed.
"God of our fathers! Grant that we be not mistaken! Grant that we be
right in what we plan! Grant that success attend our arms! Grant that
this scheme of mine lead us not to catastrophe--for if this should
develop, only I am guilty, and only I should be punished!"
"Amen!"
As one voice, the Spokesmen of the Gens spoke the word, and Sarka heard
it. He had forgotten for the moment that the Spokesmen still could hear
him.
"That is all," he said huskily. "Prepare your Gens, each of you, for
such battle as even our histories never have recorded! For we go against
foemen whose strength we do not know, whose manner of life we do not
know, and we must not fail! Make haste with your preparations! Your time
is short! And Spokesmen, counsel your Gens that they put aside at once
all personal differences, all family quarrels, all quarrels with their
neighbors! That each adult individual, each unmarried woman, and such
married woman as have all their children grown, and who no longer need
them, prepare to go forth to battle! From this laboratory, within a
brief space, Dalis and the Sarkas will give you further word!"
* * * * *
Then he dimmed the lights, and severed contact with the Spokesmen of the
Gens. Only two lights he did not dim, at the moment, and to two men he
spoke softly.
"My father and my father's father! Come to me at once! For there shall
be need of the combined genius of the Sarkas if my scheme is to
succeed!"
From both Sarkas, as though they had rehearsed the words against this
need of them, came answer:
"Aye, son, we come!"
From that moment on until Dalis and the Sarkas were ready to take the
most momentous step ever taken in the history of the world, the humming
within the laboratory did not cease. For the people, the millions and
billions of people of the hives, were busy, eagerly and feverishly busy,
preparing new armament, new engines of destruction, against the time
when there should be need of them. And for perhaps the first time in
centuries, the people were happy.
For not even the passage of a thousand centuries, or a thousand thousand
centuries, could flush from the warm hearts of men the love of conflict!
Sarka smiled wanly, his face very pale. He had spoken, his people were
busy with preparations, and now there could be no turning back. The
world, when he spoke the word, would rush outward to glorious
conflict--or to destruction!
A buzzer sounded near the Exit Dome. Sarka raced to give the "Enter"
Signal--and Dalis, he of the hawk-eyes, the sharp nose and sharper
tongue, entered the presence of the man who, in a twinkling, had made
himself master of the world.
"Well," he said harshly, "I am here! What do you wish of me?"
"We Sarkas," said Sarka easily, "wish to assure ourselves that you will
do nothing to obstruct our plans! Dalis, of the Gens of Dalis, you are
prisoner of the Sarkas until you have passed your word!"
"That I will never do!" said Dalis calmly. "I have passed my word to go
forward with you; but I meant, and you knew I meant, to go forward only
as far as to me seemed right and reasonable!"