Chapter IV

Larry Wilson tossed a grin over his shoulder to the girl behind him. His fingers moved swiftly, deftly, twisting into strange, unnatural angles as he sought the combination that would open the smooth wall before him.

"Some fun, hey?"

Sandra said anxiously, "How much farther, Larry?"

"We're almost there now. Sert told me there were nine chambers between the one we were in and the machine room. They're all supposed to be unoccupied, too."

"But--if they're not?"

"Then our plans go up the creek. But Sert wouldn't be likely to make a mistake. He has more at stake than we--Ah! There she blows!"

Larry's fingers had finally moved into the right combination. The smooth wall slid back. The pair from the past moved into the next room of the labyrinth of the future. The door closed behind them, and Larry moved immediately to the wall fronting them.

"One more small chamber, and then--"

He stopped, shocked and alarmed. For just as his hand touched the wall, it moved backward and a figure loomed before him. Sandra screamed a little scream of fright. To be so near success, and then--

But the voice that spoke was that of a friend.

"Ah, Larry Wilson! You were long in coming. So I came to find you. But, come! Our council awaits you."

The three entered, then, the final and largest of the chambers. During the working hours of the day it was a machine shop in which Underlings toiled under the harsh supervision of their Master overseers. Now it was deserted save for rather more than twoscore conspirators similar in physique and coloring to the leader, Sert.

Introductions were a brief formality. It was evident that some of the Underlings could not comprehend the anomaly of Sandra and Larry's presence. But what these rebel serfs lacked in intellect they made up for in their lust for freedom. And the two young Americans, hailing from a land that, in its time, had been the bulwark of this precious inheritance, felt a kinship with the suppressed uprisers.

At length Sert said, "--so that is as far as our plans have gone, Larry Wilson. You see how pitifully inadequate they are.

"Not only do the Masters outnumber us, but theirs is the possession of the golden force-ray which no armament can pierce. None, that is, of the feeble type we own. The force of our greater strength ... tools converted into crude swords...."

He looked hopelessly at the massive machinery surrounding them. "Could we but find a way to destroy their protective force-field, we would tear these machines into bits to mold weapons for ourselves. But we cannot."

Larry said, "I've been thinking about that problem. And I've got an idea that may or may not work. Sert, it is only the Masters whose ears are sensitive to sound, isn't it? There's nothing wrong with your hearing?"

"That is right, Larry Wilson."

"Then sound--" began Larry.

Sert shook his head. "Do you forget the _menaudo_, my friends? The Masters wear it at all times. It blocks out the sound waves that would torture them, drive them mad."

"I haven't forgotten it," grunted Larry. "I'm trying to think of a way to pour sound over 'em without making 'em remove the football helmet. And I think I know how to do it. Strangely enough, you have to make them turn on the golden force-ray before it will work!"

"I don't understand," said Sert. Others edged in curiously as Larry explained.

"When the force ray surrounds them," he explained, "their bodies become, in effect, a helical core. Such a core can be made responsive to musical tones by what, in my day, we called C.E.M.F.--counter electromotive force. I suppose you know the method of manufacture of the force ray?"

"Not the details. But the purely mechanical part, yes. We wind the relays in this shop--"

"Then," said Larry crisply, "you've got 'em licked! We'll get to work--_now!_--and build an electrical resonator. One that shoots out plenty of noise on the wave length to which their force-fields are attuned. When this howler gets going, the force-field will act as a conductor, leading the sound directly into their bodies!"

Sert's face broke in a huge grin. "And if they turn off the force-field--" he howled.

"Right! You work out on them with whatever you can lay your hands on." Larry was suddenly all work. "Give me one or two technicians and I'll rig up the electrical siren in jig-time. The rest of you start gathering weapons. This rebellion starts the minute they find out what we're cooking up!"

* * * * *

Thus, for the next couple of hours, the room became once more a place of strenuous labor--but this time there was gladness and will in the way the Underling rebels went to work. With ruthless disregard for assigned uses, they tore apart a brace of mighty machines. Bellows sighed, lathes screamed, as rods, bars, balanced shafts became blunt-edged swords, lances and maces.

Meanwhile, in one corner, Larry Wilson cudgeled his brain to remember almost forgotten college physics. Finally his task was done. Before him lay a box some two feet square; within it were two tubes, a slide condenser, and an armature turning on a "howler" disc, pierced with circles of varying diameter. Larry lugged the contraption to Sert's side and crossed his fingers.

"Here it is," he said. "Salvation or the bum's rush in one small package. It'll work as a radio, I know that, but I'm not sure it will pull the trick against the force-field. I've rigged a rheostat control which gives a certain choice of wave-lengths. But if the field blocks 'em all out--"

He shook his head ruefully. But Sert laid a hand on his shoulder. "It will work, my friend," he said. "It will work because--it must! And, now--" He turned to the others gathered about him. "And, now we will strike! For freedom!"

Larry turned to Sandra Day. "This," he said, "is going to be no place for you, darling. Not in a few minutes. So grab yourself a box-seat in the background somewhere and after the fireworks are over I'll--"

The girl said, "L-Larry--what did you say?"

"Beat it. Over in one of the other chambers--"

"No. I mean before that. You called me--" She flushed. That was one thing, Larry discovered, about these clothes of the future. A flush was a real flush, no halfway thing. It started from--

He said, suddenly gentle, "I called you 'darling.' Do you mind--darling?"

"I think," she replied softly, "it's the prettiest word I ever heard." Then she applied that fine feminine attribute for which there is no allowance in man's equations; a woman's logic. "But it is _not_ the word to make me get out of here. I stay, Larry. Beside you--where I belong."

Larry protested, "Now, look here, Sandy--"

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.