Chapter 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.'"

Sert said puzzledly, "What's that?"

"Skip it. What I mean is, watch the dome. If you smell something funny, that'll be fresh air, and it'll mean Sandy and I have taken the fort. Attack then. We'll be in a position to crack a whip over the runts." He held out his hand. "Be seein' you, guy! Let's go, Sandy."

Together they made their way through the labyrinth of chambers to their own cell. This time Larry fumbled less with the mitogenic locks that barred their progress; it took them but a few minutes to make the journey.

Yet even at that they barely returned in time. As they came through the chambers, Larry reminded Sandra, "We're banking on the fact that Harg doesn't know we've been out of our coop. That's our story and we're stuck with it. If by any chance he or a guard happened in while we were out, we're sunk, but--"

"It's a chance worth taking," nodded the girl.

"Yes. The big idea is to get to that control chamber. I think we can do it because Harg, big-shot as he may be, has one bad failing. Human vanity. So remember, play up to whatever I say."

"Okay, boss!" said Sandra meekly. But there was a crinkle of laughter in her eyes.

Then they were back in their own cell, the door behind them was sliding closed--and almost immediately the one before them was sliding open to admit Harg-Ofortu and a brace of armed guards!

There was fretfulness on the little scientist's face, fretfulness that turned to swift suspicion as Larry and Sandra started guiltily. His eyes swept the room, returned to Larry. Larry felt the raw demand of Harg's first directed thought, "Can these two--?" then he felt the tenuous fingers of Harg's probing mentality seeking information from his mind. With an effort he forced himself to think of simple, unimportant things. He concentrated on the tag end of an old nonsense rhyme--

/P
"Oh, do I is? And am I be?
Or couldn't I have used to be?
Oh, cruel fate, which was to me; I used to ain't!"
P/

--and chuckled inwardly to catch the shocked repercussion of Harg's amazed, "Incredible! These barbarians are simple minded children!" Then Harg spoke. Or directed a thought to the Twentieth Century couple, his equivalent of speech.

"You will come with me!"

Larry pretended alarm. "Why? We are comfortable here. We don't want to--"

"I am doing," Harg advised him crisply, "that which is best for you. There has been a little--er--disturbance in the city. I am removing you to safer quarters. I will not have my experiments upset by--"

"By--?" prodded Larry.

"That is not your concern. Come!"

* * * * *

Harg led the way through the corridors. Larry and Sandra followed docilely. With suspicious alacrity, had the little man but known it. As they walked, Larry deliberately made his thoughts clear that Harg might interpret them. "He can't be anyone important around here. He's just one of the small fry. Obviously, he isn't very intelligent--"

Harg heard--he could not help but hear. And he understood. He could not help but understand. His wizened cheeks gained an unexpected color. He turned to Larry angrily.

"It might interest you to learn, my dear savage," he snapped, "that your thoughts are crystal clear to me. I take it you doubt my importance?"

Larry made a good job of looking embarrassed. So Sandra might know what was going on he mumbled aloud, "Well, I just couldn't help thinking--I mean, I figured you aren't really the big man around these parts. All this talk about a Time warp machine, and all--"

Harg said crisply, "Then you don't believe there is such a thing? Well, you err, barbarian. There is. And it was the genius of Harg-Ofortu that constructed it. I--"

Here Sandra stepped in with a word to Larry.

"It's all nonsense, Larry. Don't believe a word he says. He's done nothing but lie since we've met him. He told me the most impossible tale about a 'dome' and a 'dome control chamber.' Of course such things are absurd!"

"So!" Harg's thought had the crackle of audible sound. "Know, then, my two young innocents, that you choose to mock genius. Genius never lies. Behold!" He turned abruptly from the course they were traveling, led them down a side corridor, fingered open a door and showed them, glistening across a wide expanse of metal flooring, a turret-like structure from which emanated, like the sprawling arms of an octopus, vast cables. From the hemispherical roof of this turret emanated a wide, unwavering cone of light, blinding in its brilliance.

"Behold," mocked Harg, "the dome control chamber in which you presumed to disbelieve. From this heart emanates the life of our city-state--and I am its sole supervisor. Even so, it is a tiny thing compared with the greater invention which was, and is, my own. The Time-warp machine. You still doubt? Let me show you, that you may marvel at the brain of Harg--About, guards! We return to the laboratory!"

One of the guards blinked the thick soft lids of his bulging eyes, said nervously, "But, Master of Masters--"

"We return, I said!" Harg was icy cold, even more nettled because a guard had dared question his decision, determined to exact admiration from his audience.

They turned about, began to retrace their steps. Larry marked carefully the corridor which led to the control turret. He would not forget it, nor how to reach it. And as they walked he caught Sandra's eye for a brief moment. Harg did not see the swift wink that passed between them, nor the way Sandra's hands clenched before her in a delighted gesture of approbation....

But he did see, and gloried in, the amazement mirrored in the eyes of Sandra and Larry when at last they stepped into the chamber which housed the Time-warping machine. It was a huge structure, its inner chamber alone being large enough to house a battalion of men. But its core was small, being an oddly shaped, angular object spinning endlessly on a bar of crystalline material.

Displaying all the vanity Larry had hoped for, the little scientist pointed to the twirling object first, then at a great, banked keyboard like that of some gigantic organ.

"The end product of man's genius," he boasted vaingloriously, "for a thousand millenia! The machine which can span Time. You do not comprehend the object which spins upon the bar, no? I fear it is beyond your puny concept, friends from an unenlightened age. It is a tesseract; the infinite cube of four dimensions. Your eyes see but a cross section of its fullness, which is beyond seeing. Yet I, Harg-Ofortu, conceived and built it!

* * * * *

"These banks control the ages that Have-Been and the ages that are Yet-to-Be. Through their relays are disrupted the world-line of any given thing at any given time. I would demonstrate, but terrific power is expended each time I bring a new object from the past; I would not now waste power to convince such savages as you.

"Yet by pressing a button--so--and deflecting a lever--so!--I can, if I will, bring across the negation or Time-that-Was-Not creatures like yourselves from any period of time. The ages in which I angle are clearly marked here; the position on this sphere called 'Earth' from which I draw my experiments I determine by means of this mapped globe."

He paused, smirking with pride, so blinded with self-glory that he did not even notice the studiousness of Sandra's and Larry's eyes. But when he spoke again, it was to say words that dragged Larry back to earth with a start.

"And it will interest you to know, Sandra Day, that a great tribute is shortly to be paid to you."

Sandra said, "A--a tribute?"

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!