Chapter III

In the abysmal darkness their atomo-torch was a pool of light that advanced before them. But Perlac unerringly went directly to a building whose front seemed to be an impenetrable, blank wall. She pressed a hidden mechanism near the far corner of the structure, and presently a door slid aside, revealing a passageway to the beam of the torch. Once within, Guerlan became aware it was some sort of dormitory, for stretched on rows of cots made of cheap plastic, the amnesiacs slept in their leaden tunics. These were the pitchblende workers who had but a brief life-period, due to the radiations.

In another corridor slept the brown-tunics, the organic-matter workers, blood-stained from their gruesome labors, their stertorous breathing witness to their exhaustion. Perlac kept on rapidly going from corridor to corridor until she stopped at a door leading to the cellar, opening it, she scrambled down a plastic ladder, followed by Guerlan, and finally into a sub-cellar gallery that wound tortuously into the very bowels of Neptune.

Here were the sightless wrecks who lived in eternal darkness and whose task was to tend the machinery that air-conditioned and kept reasonably warm the dreadful Fifth Level. Some seemed strangely twisted and had the loathsome whiteness of fungi, others mindlessly tottered by like automatons. Guerlan drew aside in a mixture of nausea and profound pity. A welling, terrible anger strove to rise within him at the sight of these horrors that went by like Dantesque shadows of the damned.

At last Perlac stopped and made six curious rasping sounds at a heavy rocky section of the dripping wall.

As if in a nightmare, Guerlan saw part of the stone surface pivot silently inward, and before them was another passageway. But this one was immaculately clean, completely sheathed in neutral grey hetero-plastic, and the aura-lumes diffused a gentle light that was soft and yet perfectly measured. The murmur of voices reached them, and the air was fresh and exhilarating after the fetid, miasmic air of the Fifth Level and the sub-cellars.

"We have arrived, Guerlan!" Perlac gazed at the young scientist, as if essaying to appraise his reactions to what he'd seen en route. "You're going to meet the leaders of the Irreconcilables ... not those poor creatures of the forests and jungles, but the real 'underground' that has but one purpose--Freedom from the Protectors. Now, do you understand why you were brought here?"

Guerlan nodded in silence. His face was impassive, but the odd, slanting green eyes were burning with lambent fires and his powerful hands were knotted.

* * * * *

Within seconds the passageway led them to an immense cavern--on Terra it would have been unthinkable, but in keeping with Neptune's bulk, the cavern was a gargantuan retreat. Stupendous stalactites pending from the ceiling defied adjectives, their bases lost in darkness. The walls as far as the eye could reach were sheathed in a gleaming plastic new to Guerlan. The floor, too, was resilient plastic, smooth and perfectly laid, as if an army of workmen and machines had labored on its perfection, which indeed they had. Buildings clustered at the far distant end, like a miniature city; and in the very center of the vast grotto, surrounded by an army of scientists and technicians, an atomo-Spacer, super-armored and longer than any Guerlan had ever seen, rested in its cradle in all its sleek, shining glory.

Testing and repair machines were scattered around the great subterranean chamber, driven by technicians and coordinators who worked feverishly, silently, as if engaged in a life-and-death race with time.

Toward the left, where the cavern extended into another vast grotto, an ordine-plastic building caught Guerlan's eye because of the fact that it was ordine. That plastic was used only where need for the staunchest material existed. Ordine, an adaptation of the plastic mineral principle, could withstand a siege--was practically indestructible, and Guerlan wondered what it housed. Perlac sensed his curiosity and gazed in turn at the great structure. Her eyes brooding and dark with an emotion he could not fathom slowly filled with tears.

"That's the psycho-clinic," she told him. "We try to neutralize the amnesiac treatment, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Under certain conditions, it can be neutralized, but remember the amnesiac treatment here on Level Five is an intensification of the treatment applied on Levels Three and Four.... They're practically lost when they come here, but our work in the higher levels is too dangerous to be carried out in large numbers. Care to go in and watch the therapy used?"

"Yes." Guerlan's laconic reply was an index of his mental state. Words came with difficulty in the face of this ghastly drama that had suddenly unfolded before his eyes.

He wondered about the other cities, Perdura, and Telluria and semi-tropical Columbia, with its warm springs and teeming soil where the most exquisite delicacies for the Inner Council, and to a lesser extent the First Order were grown. Wondered if they, too, were condemned to this inhuman rule of death and oppression.

Perlac made a signal to one of the technicians, and a two-seater "Treader" with its revolving belt instead of wheels moved out from among the parked vehicles. But before Guerlan and Perlac could enter the swift surface car, a dull roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the cavern paralyzed all movement, as if in a slow motion-picture of ancient days, a tremendous section of the cavern wall fell in a shower of rock and plastic, and through the gaping breach, rank upon serried rank of "Intermediates" poured through. They wore the Inner Council's conventional plastic armor, vividly scarlet, with tight-fitting helmets of crysto-plast. Silently they deployed with grim precision and aimed their atomo-rifles.

But if they had expected to wreak havoc aided by the element of surprise, they were mistaken. Technicians and scientists working on the super-spacer, instantly entered the armored ship, while the army of mechanics, graders, coordinators and workmen, who labored on treaders and tended the mechanical appliances and repair machines, took cover in and behind their charges.

For a second Guerlan had been frozen in his tracks. The thought that flashed into his mind was one of exultation instead of despair. Here was an enemy he could really fight. All the pent-up fury, the terrible anger of a decent man who has had all his beliefs swept away in a matter of hours, who had seen depths of human degradation he had never dreamed possible, was like a bath of cold fire that left him calm, determined and with one desire ... to exterminate.

As if she were a doll, Guerlan swept Perlac beside the armored "Treader" and without preamble snatched the Electro-Flash the girl wore at her waist. "Keep covered. Let me do the fighting!" He exclaimed, impervious to her outraged stare. Carefully he aimed at the foremost leader of the Intermediates, and the obscenely beautiful, sexless warrior, crumpled as part of him instantly dissolved. A vast, coruscating sheet of blue, atomic fire swept forward from the deadly atomo-rifles of the invaders, and vehicles, technicians, and several machines, became a welter of smoking flesh and melting metal.

It was then the super-spacer went into action with its two frontal atomo-guns, the thunderous echoes vibrated with tympani-shattering force, and Guerlan saw a phalanx of Intermediates vanish as if they were leaves in a wind.

* * * * *

Unaware of doing so, Guerlan was bellowing exultantly, as he played the Electro-Flash horizontally across another phalanx that had succeeded in gaining the proximity of the Spacer. They had seen him now, and the survivors aimed their atomo-rifles at the treader that sheltered them from the blue fire. But before they could bring their fire into focus, the supernal fire of the electro-flash had decimated them. A few managed to direct the stream of atomic fire on the treader, however, and half of it was a molten mass while the rest was already cherry red and the heat becoming unendurable.

Electro-rifles, atomo-pistols, the guns from the giant spacer and a few electro-flash weapons were concentrated on the Intermediates who by sheer force of numbers had gained the center of the Cave.

And then they were met by a wall of flesh. From the buildings at the further end and from every vehicle and machine a wall of humanity surged forward, firing ceaselessly, hacking with long-swords and poniards; and the carnage under the brilliant plastilumes was without quarter ... to the death. Slowly, inch by inch, the Intermediates were driven back. Scores had died, and the losses among the defenders were appalling; it seemed as if a Pyrrhic victory was to be the end. And then, like creatures from a nightmare, released from depths of living hell, a motley, ragged, maddened multitude came shrieking, shouting and hurling imprecations from the chaste building Perlac had called the Psycho-clinic. Like avenging furies, they flung themselves at the hard-pressed Intermediates. Wounds did not stop them; atomic-fire left gaping holes in their ranks, around which the survivors raced on. Impervious to pain, and welcoming death, these travesties of human beings fought with the savagery of madness.

They were the Amnesiacs. Deprived of the hypnotic drug, partly in possession of their faculties and their memories, they remembered! And remembering, they paid back for the torture of a lifetime!

Assailed from every side, the crack Inner Circle battalion of Intermediates split into two halves and strove to meet both fronts. But Guerlan with a cry that would have done credit to a Venusian _Calamar_, snatched the sword from a fallen technician and raced to where the Amnesiacs were tangled in a death struggle. With the electro-flash in his left hand, he stabbed and hacked at exposed limbs and through shattered crysto-plast. And the battle turned slowly, increasing in tempo until it was a rout that pressed the remaining Intermediates into a demoralized race of life. But they were not to escape. Out of all control, all semblance of humanity now, the remaining Amnesiacs were a screaming horror that pursued the quarry and pulled it down like the giant _Calamar_ of Venus pulls down its prey in the virgin forests, until only the moaning wounded and the dead remained on the blood-drenched plastic flooring of the titanic grotto.

Guerlan never knew when the battle was finally over. His tunic was a crimson stain from top to bottom; a long slash across his ribs to the center of his powerful chest, had left a shallow gash that dripped a slow gout of blood. His shoulder was seared by a slanting atomic-blast that would have taken half of him had it come any nearer. He became aware of the ghastly silence only when Perlac's marvelously slender hand was pressed to his cheek, and her melodious voice was repeating: "Guerlan, Guerlan, my dear!" He turned and saw her eyes were aswim with unshed tears.

He took her hand in his powerful ones without a word, and held it caressingly, while all about them was a shambles of death and wreckage.

"My initiation," he said slowly, huskily, with a hint of a smile in his long, green eyes.

"I knew I was not wrong in choosing you," Perlac replied and bravely essayed a smile, too; but she had reached the end of her physical resources and with a whispered, "Oh, my dear," she wilted unconscious in his arms.

Guerlan lifted her fragile form as if she were a precious doll and walked toward the super-spacer; a group of scientists who had emerged from its interior, watched his approach with a hint of anxiety as they motioned for him to hurry. Among them, a tall, elderly scientist of the second order, whose white mane was like an aureole about the pale, sharp-featured face, hurried forward as if unable to contain himself.

"Is Perlac wounded?" He inquired with a world of worry in his voice. "Tell me, man! Hurry!"

"Peace," Guerlan answered wearily. "She's not harmed, just fainted ... the miracle is that she's been able to stand as much as she has. Have you restoratives?"

"Bring her into the plane, we have everything needed, stranger. Praised be the Ultimate Power she has not been harmed!" Then he drew himself erect as he and Guerlan came abreast of each other, and said with quiet dignity:

"I am Paulan, ex-scientist of the first order, now Leader of the Underground. I saw you fight with us. Welcome, my son." His eyes were as clear and as blue as a child's, but the fires of a profound intellect shone from their depths.

* * * * *

"The time," Guerlan was speaking, "is now, not at some supposedly psychological moment logically thought by the Board. I'm a new member, true, but it is evident the Inner Circle has been aware of your activities for some time, or they wouldn't have sent such a well-armed, ultra-trained battalion of Intermediates. The time to strike is now! Unless you want to await an attack in such force that this cavern will become a hecatomb."

"We are already harassing them in every city," Paulan said thoughtfully. "Vats are exploding regularly, amnesiacs are being restored to usefulness and our forces are increasing day by day. What more would you propose, my son, an attack on the city of the sphere?"

All eyes in the heavily guarded and armed Board meeting room were upon the young scientist. At the head of the long, exquisite Platino-plastic table sat Paulan, the leader, and at his right sat Perlac. All down the length of the great table, scientists of the first and second orders, analysts, technicians, and even members of the lower strata chosen for their value to the movement, sat to consider the crisis. Their underground movement was in the open now, and they could expect nothing but extermination at the hands of the Inner Circle.

"That would be madness at present," spoke a tiny Venusian, not more than four and a half feet tall, wrapped in his long, scarlet wings that joined to the sides of his fragile body, reached from wrists to his ankles. "Although," he grinned impishly, "I would like to take a crack at them in their holy of holies!"

Morluc, the Martian, snorted.

"Mars will help, but we must have a share of the machinery and plastics of Neptune ... a _preferred_ share," he emphasized gazing disdainfully at the Venusian member.

"Equal shares!" the latter snapped dryly. "Mars' help is still to be seen, as your excellence is aware!" The Venusian drove his point home with emphatic gestures.

"We've offered our fleet!" Morluc, the Martian member, said stiffly. "Can any more be asked?"

Carladin, the Venusian, shrugged his shoulders. "We don't offer, Morluc, we've _delivered_ one hundred electro-flash pistols, and it took genius to analyze and copy the design and manufacture them secretly, not to speak of smuggling them here!"

"Peace!" Paulan thundered. "Scientist Guerlan is unable to reply to my question!"

Both the Martian and the Venusian members were silent, although they still glared at each other across the table. The rivalry of Venus and Mars was legendary and had endured for centuries. Little eddies of whispers and conversation, came to a standstill, and once more their eyes were turned expectantly toward Guerlan who stood up from his seat toward the foot of the table.

"I have a plan," he stated quietly. His bandaged shoulder and chest were living aches, and breathing was difficult, but a great enthusiasm transfigured his features until with eyes alight with the fire of a great purpose, he seemed boyish for all his magnificent height and musculature.

"Unless we divert the power of the Inner Circle.... I say _divert_, but decisively, we're doomed. Any army we can muster would be met by the legions of fanatical Intermediates who from pre-birth are conditioned and scientifically bred for battle. An Intermediate's glandular structure has been modified to heighten unbelievably the combative instinct. If atomo-rifles and atomic fire don't crush us, they'll start using electro-flash. Their fleet is legion, and they have at their command the Scientists of the First Order, as deluded as I was, not to speak of the Neophytes of the Inner Circle. Don't forget that the City of the Sphere has two million scientists, not counting the women.

"But, if we divert their Intermediates, cut off their sources of supply, and breed revolt _on every tier, in every city_, their forces will be divided, and we will have a chance to win. When I was a child, I had access to the ancient records which were translated by my father for the Inner Circle. Among them I came upon a parchment so ancient that it was ready to crumble into dust. After it had been treated for preservation, I read the translation made from that forgotten language by my father; it was about a great city that once ruled most of Terra, and their motto was--Divide and Rule. And that," Guerlan paused, "is my plan."

He sat down a little abashed when he realized the vehemence with which he had been talking. His eyes sought Perlac's, and a wave of color suffused his face as he saw the open admiration in the girl's eyes.

"Magnificent, if it works," Carladin said with a satirical smile in that husky voice of his that seemed too big for so small a body. "But, my friend, who is going to 'Muzzle the Calamar'? In other words, who is going to breed revolt in every city and tier ... and, above all, just how?"

"My son, you can't rouse emotions in amnesiacs--they haven't any, even in the higher levels where the treatment is mild. As for the scientists of the Second Order--they'd consider revolt blasphemy, not to speak of the First Order. Unless you have a complete, thought-out plan, I'm afraid you've been carried away by your own enthusiasm," Paulan said very gently.

"My plan _is_ complete, Paulan. And I have work for both Venus and Mars. I'm sure they would like to share in our victory. Listen!"