A faint shadow flickered across the diminutive one's face. "A recent
disturbance," he proclaimed, "amongst slaves whom we call the
'Underlings' has wakened in us, the Masters, recognition that for too
many generations we have allowed our brains to expand whilst our bodies
failed in strength.
"We now find this to be an unworthy situation. We have decided to once
again become a prolific race--but in so doing we are going to breed in
such a way that our children will retain our keen intellects and the
perfect bodies of men from the past. After some thought on the matter,
and with an enticing example to help solve the question--" Here he
fastened a greedily appreciative eye on Sandra, "--we have decided that
we shall draw the mothers of our new race from _your_ period!"
Sandra gasped.
"But--but you can't do that! They won't want to leave their own age,
mate with strangers--"
"What," demanded Harg icily, "are the petty desires of barbarians to
the Masters of Earth? Yes, my charming aborigine, soon you will have
companionship with many women from your own Time. It will be pleasant
company for you, I know." He paused. Then, in an expectant tone, "You
may express your thanks, if you wish."
Sandra was speechless. But the words made a sort of sense to Larry;
the kind of sense he did not care for. In a grating voice he demanded,
"Thanks? Thanks for what?"
The little scientist smiled serenely, arching his brows.
"Because now," he answered, "she will not become a subject for the
dissecting table. Her life will be spared. Yet an even greater glory is
in store for her. She will not be mated to one of the lesser Masters.
She will become the first and favored mate of myself, the great
Harg-Ofortu!"
* * * * *
For a moment, a vast and terrible rage shook Larry Wilson. Then it
evaporated, dissipated before another emotion. His fists unclenched,
the frown that had sprung to his brow disappeared in a network of
crinkles, and laughter bellowed from his throat, shook him, exhausted
him, doubled him.
Sandra laughed, too, hysterically at first, then as completely giving
way to amusement as Larry. Harg looked at first one, then the other.
He was alternately surprised and startled; then, as the full import of
their laughter burst upon him, he became a diminutive phial of wrath.
His goitrous eyes flamed with bitterness, his tiny body stiffened,
and his hands jerked toward the studs on his harness. His thought, a
maelstrom of vitriolic hatred, became a seething hell that stifled the
young couple's mirth.
"You are amused? That is interesting. Perhaps you will be the less so
when you lie upon the table beneath the scalpel, screaming, pleading
for the boon of death I can give or withhold!" Harg's mouth was
twisting with venom. "When that moment comes, O fool, remember that as
your life ebbs new life will spring within this woman--Well, what is
it?"
He turned and shot the final query to the pair of guards who had
appeared in the doorway. The foremost stepped forward, dragging into
view a pair of manacled Underlings.
"We found these two rebels skulking about the laboratory, Master. We
brought them that you might put them to the question."
"Take them away!" fumed Harg. "I have no time for them now. Destroy
them as a lesson to all rebels."
"But, Master, they may know--"
Harg, thoroughly enraged now, stamped his foot in sheer spite. "Destroy
them, I told you! Cast them outside the dome!"
Larry and Sandra looked at each other in swift relief. They had seen,
if Harg had not, the quick recognition in the captives' eyes as they
entered the room; had feared that under the questioning their part
in the rebellion would be learned. Then all, indeed, would have been
in vain. It was unfortunate that two Underlings must die, but it was
better that two should perish than that a plan should fail.
"Well, get along!" Harg told the guards. "Throw them through the Ground
Gate--No, wait a minute!" He glared malevolently at Larry. "Take this
savage with you; let him behold the agony of their destruction. It will
teach him that one does not safely taunt Harg-Ofortu! The woman stays
with me."
Sandra's glance stayed Larry's movement. Her lips moved silently but he
caught their message. He allowed the guards to lead him, with the two
captives, out of the room and down one of the interminable passages of
the labyrinth.
Even here he continued to count turnings, memorize passages, so that he
might know his way back to the laboratory and--more important still--to
the dome control turret. They walked in silence, coming at last to the
huge, doubly barred and intricately locked door which was deepset in
the _impervite_ perimeter of the Dome.
Here, for the first time, the proud hauteur of the captive Underlings
broke. Until this time they had maintained their courage; now, as one
guard disengaged the locks, a glazed look of fear crept into their
eyes. The great door swung open, a tendril of outside air, chill and
thin as hoar frost, stirred the fusty atmosphere of the labyrinth. And
one of the captives cried out desperately, fell to his knees groveling,
pleading, pawing at the guard's spindling shanks with futile hands.
"Down, slave!" came the guard's contemptuous command. But it was not
his words that salvaged the blubbering Underling. It was the other
Underling who stepped to his comrade's side, laid a firm hand on his
shoulder. And--
"Come, Borl!" he said quietly. "Let us die as men should die--that our
Cause may live!"
* * * * *
Beneath his touch the other calmed. The febrile terror left his eyes
and something new glistened there. He rose, nodded, straightened his
shoulders. Then proudly, almost triumphantly, the two exiles strode
into the tunneled path to death. They turned there, boldly, and their
voices joined in a single cry, "For freedom!"
Then the door clanged shut, and through the adjacent _impervite_
transparency Larry Wilson saw two staunch figures march boldly down the
tunnel to the barren world beyond.
Beside him one of the guards commented wonderingly to the other,
"Remarkable! They are the first I ever saw go through the Ground Gate
so gallantly--to death."
Larry asked, "But is it death? The outside atmosphere surrounded them
the moment they stepped through the gate. Yet they walked away."
The guard answered tauntingly, "It is death. Make no mistake about
that. The ancient archives will tell you that. It was Outside that our
ancestors died. No man has yet returned who dared venture beyond the
Gate." He stirred himself. "Now let us return this one to the Master
Scientist and be about our work. The Underlings still--"
Then Larry stumbled. And as he did so one swiftly outthrust hand caught
in the harness of the nearest guard, tugged, ripped. The studded belt
snapped at the catch, flew halfway across the corridor.
The man scrambled after it, alarmed. But even as he took his first
step, Larry wheeled and threw one hundred and eighty pounds of bone
and muscle at his companion's face. Puny jawbones splintered, blood
spurted, and the guard went down as if pole-axed. Momentum swept Larry
over his prostrate body to the weaponless guard; his fist raised and
fell once--and that was all!
He rose, stripped both hairless pates of their precious _menaudos_,
slung both studded belts over his shoulder. Armed now, he oriented
himself and set off at top speed for the control turret.
Only once was his progress threatened; then but for an instant. The
single Master who met him racing down a side corridor had neither time
to give alarm, draw his heat-ray pistol, or snap on his force-shield.
Larry's reflexes worked at lightning speed, and this was no time for
stupid mercy. He sheared a crisp and smoking hole in the Master's
breast with a single blast of his gun and sped on toward his goal.
That moment while his fingers sought the mitogenic combination of the
turret lock was the longest he had ever lived through. It turned out
to be the most elaborate he had yet encountered; ultimately operated
on the placement of the fingers of both hands. While he sought the
responsive chord he was dangerously exposed to any who might come near.
But Fate, for once, rolled him a natural. He broke into the control
turret, stared once wildly, bewilderedly, at the dazzling array of
levers and studs therein, then tugged desperately at that which seemed
largest, most impressive....
Then sprang to the still open doorway and looked at the leaden-gray
roof of _impervites_ above him. And as he looked, a great quartered
section of the roof slid back, disclosing a bright blue sky in which
the sun rode, gold and dazzling!