She merely smiled sweetly. "How," she asked, "do you operate this
gadget? I might need to know, later on."
Larry gave up. Grinning, he showed her.
The other Underlings knew their parts in the short play soon to be
enacted. It was a play with a simple plot. It required two stooges;
two who, daring swift annihilation, would go forth into the frequented
parts of the giant building of which this laboratory was but a section,
beard the Masters in their dens, and bring them down to this place.
Already such a pair had been selected from the number--the full fifty,
it had warmed Larry's heart to notice--who had volunteered. The rest
of the men were waiting ... just waiting. Hopefully. Uncertainly. But
hopefully.
Sert came to Larry's side.
"They have been gone a full ten minutes. Do you think, Larry Wilson, we
should send out others? Perhaps--"
Then he stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a commotion in one of
the corridors leading to the chamber, the scrape of running feet, the
clash of metal on metal. Larry grinned, his eyes bright, but there was
no humor in his grin.
"There's your answer, Sert!" he roared--and bent to his wave-length
howler. As he did so, the two messengers came flying into the machine
room. One was unharmed, but the other had, Larry noticed with a swift,
sickening distaste, lost an arm completely. It had not been cut off.
It had just vanished--and there hung from the man's shoulder a short
knob of flesh, seared and crisp at the point of cicatrice. So the
Masters, Larry thought, had other weapons in their bag? This must be a
needle-sharp heat ray--
* * * * *
There came a sharp impingement of thought on the brains of Larry and
Sandra; a command that was so clear and forceful that for a moment
Larry's hand stayed in its journey to the rheostat. "Surrender, rebels!
Surrender or you die!"
Then the Masters were racing into the room after their prey. A handful
of them at first, then more and more until they were a veritable
avalanche of tiny, gnome-like, nervous figures with bulbous heads,
curiously shaped guns in their wee, gnarled hands. It must have been a
rare thing, indeed, to find two rebellious subjects; the very rarity
had drawn a horde of dwarflings in full pursuit.
The Masters burst into the room and stopped stock-still, amazed, to
find that the loft harbored not two but a half hundred rebels!
It was this moment of shock that released Larry's hand from its
motionlessness. The Masters' thoughts died into confusion, and Larry's
brain was free. It would remain so, too, he promised himself. Not again
would he relax his vigilance thus.
Then, with a wild cry, "For freedom!" the Underlings, led by their
chieftain, Sert, sprang forward on their foes! For a split second the
Masters' surprise held; the little men stepped backward in stark fear,
and a half dozen went down beneath sledgehammer blows of crude weapons
clutched by Underlings.
But this moment passed too swiftly. Wee hands flew to studded belts,
and suddenly the room was brilliant with the shimmering glow of the
Masters' force-fields. Instantly the tide of battle turned. Here,
where some steel lever-handle, converted into a mace, was halfway to
a Masters' skull, the rod suddenly flew from its wielder's hands,
clanging useless across the floor. There an Underlings, grappling with
a Master, suddenly slumped into an inert heap. The retreat ended; the
Masters, assured again, and confident, stepped forward vengefully. Sert
cast a pleading glance at Larry.
"Swiftly, Larry Wilson, or we all perish!"
But Larry was already twisting the vernier; inside his box the howler
disc was spinning one way, the armature another, and from the mouth of
the electric siren was shrieking an unearthly wail. It ripped and tore
at Larry's own eardrums. Surely it would do the same--and worse--to
those delicate organs of the Masters if he could but find--
And suddenly he had it. Sandra gripped his shoulder with fingers that
bit and clung. "There, Larry! There!"
He stopped his frantic dialing. For now the menacing advance of the
Masters had indeed stopped. As one man, they had raised arms to their
heads, were pawing wildly at outraged ears tormented despite the
_menaudo_. Weapons fell from unheeding fingers; weapons which the
Underlings gathered up eagerly.
And now one Master, eyes bulging, the faint froth of madness whitening
his lips, opened his mouth and screamed with vocal cords never before
used. It was a piteous mewling sound; the first and the last the man
ever uttered. For as he cried out he turned off his force-field--and
the nearest Underling split him from crown to navel with one slash of a
mighty blade.
Nor was he the only one to die thus. All about the room Masters were
stumbling, reeling, falling like men overdrunk with the grape of sonic
torment. And wherever one succumbed to the temptation of turning off
his force-field current--there was death waiting for him. If he did not
turn it off, there was death anyway. Hideous and mind-blasting death
from Larry's screaming box.
Reinforcements came, stared once into the bloody chamber of
rebellion--and fled, hands clutching their ears. A few scattered
remnants of the first retribution party managed to escape the debacle.
And finally there came a moment when there were no Masters left alive
in the room. The battle was over--and the Underlings had won!
* * * * *
Then came Sert to Larry once again, and there was mingled joy and
sadness on his face as he held out his hand to the Earthman from long
ago.
"The field is ours, Larry Wilson. And it is you who made it so."
Larry said, "Mmm," absently, and turned off the now useless howler. He
looked about the room. "How many men did we lose, Sert?"
"Nine dead," replied his friend, "a few injured--but all before you
found their force-field's wave-length. A glorious victory, even at such
a cost. In the years to come the names of those who died here tonight
will be worshipped by a race of free men who were once Underlings."
Larry, brooding thoughtfully, brushed off his final words. "Skip the
flag-waving, pal. You sound like a politician back home. This scrap's
not over by a damn sight. I think you underestimate the Masters."
Sert said proudly, "And you underestimate our people, Larry Wilson.
The news of this battle will spread, and before the next work-period
thousands will flock to our standard. We will build more sonic
machines, perhaps portable ones, and--"
"Sure. And what are the Masters going to be doing while all this
goes on? I'll give even money that right now they're herding in the
Underlings from other parts of this city for a little wholesale
slaughter. It _is_ a city, isn't it?"
"Yes. One large city-state under a single _impervite_ dome operated
from a control chamber."
"Operated?" repeated Larry.
"But, certainly. It can be opened for fresh air to be admitted, or for
the egress and entrance of aircraft--"
"Larry!" It was Sandra who interrupted. "There's our answer, Larry.
Life is impossible without the protection of the dome. Whoever
possesses the dome control chamber holds the whip hand. We must take
that!"
Sert's face brightened. "She is right, Larry Wilson. We must take the
dome chamber--"
"Wait a minute!" Larry had been thinking swiftly. "Sandy's got
something there. But there are angles. First of all, we've got to
seize the control chamber, yes. But we also need more men. If we don't
get reserve strength--and good, strong fighting men, at that--sooner
or later they'll starve us and our little rebellion right out of our
cubby-holes.
"Right now the odds are temporarily balanced. We have fewer men, but
our men are more powerful. Theirs are the best weapons, but our single
weapon makes theirs useless. They control the dome--a point in their
favor. But we are fighting for life and freedom--a point in ours.
"So it's a stalemate. And one that will turn into defeat for us unless
we move swiftly. Before they recognize our pitiful weakness." He gazed
sharply at Sandra. "Sert is needed here, to rally recruits. So it's up
to you and me to get control of the dome chamber. I see one way to win.
It's a dangerous way, but--"
And he told them. When he had finished speaking, there was a heavy
flush on Sert's forehead. He cried, "But no, Larry Wilson! I will not
let you and this girl bear the burden of my oppressed race. We must
find another way."
"There is," Larry told him, "no other way. Sandy?"
The girl placed her hand in his. "It is the only way, Larry," she said.
"Darling," she added--and smiled.
V
It took but a short time to make their final preparations. Larry taught
a half dozen Underlings how to operate his howler, also taught them how
to build others like it.
"Now get to work," he told them grimly. "Make as many of these gadgets
as you can. And make 'em light and small, portable, so you can carry
them around with you."
He turned to Sert. "Well, this is it, pal. Keep your eye peeled for the
signal. 'One if by land and two if by sea.'"