"Very well. Be it remembered among each of you that the Owners, those who near the goal of the creation of life, and who are long since the masters of death, command you." Then it was over, and Cragin waited in the hot, dank hull, sweating inside his helmet, in which there was an endless supply of his own unique atmosphere. His own helmet, because it was far from being so perfect, had been taken from him upon completion of the test. Such was the case with each of the others, and the textures and colorations of the stuff they breathed or absorbed was as varied as the planets on which they were spawned. And there was hardly any helmet of the same shape or design as another. The waiting did not last long, but Cragin's plan was in his head as completely as he could fashion it when he felt the landing jar. If it were to work, it would be executed with split-second speed and precision, or again, the alternative would be destruction. It was evident that to use his advantage to the utmost, it must be coupled with the dual advantages of immediacy and surprise. The airlock opened; with the rest, Cragin filed through it. He took glancing note of the positions of the few guards; kept their pattern of surveillance stenciled in his memory. The file was split--a quick maneuver placed him at the end of his own section as it was led to the opening of a shaft even darker than the leaden twilight which hung low like a weighted shroud over the entire sphere. It would be in a moment, or a month, or a year.... The slave ship had not prepared yet for take-off; its tubes smoked lazily, cooling. A month, even a day, would be too long. If it was to be attempted at all, it was to be NOW. * * * * * And Cragin had the squat guard on a grip which broke his spine before his heart had time to beat again. The gloom helped; the din that issued dully from the mine's lower levels covered the near silence of the death which Cragin had meted out. The weapon was the guard's only insigne of identity, and Cragin had it cradled in his own arms before the thick, broken body hit the ground. Then he ran, laboring against a slightly stiffer gravity than his Earth-muscles had been born to, waving the weapon above him with all the strength he had! Toward the ship and its smoking tubes--gesturing, pointing toward the cave-mouth, and yelling his head off, wondering how closely the time-lapse would match between the time he reached the ship and the other guards, even now running their first steps toward the cave mouth toward which he pointed, would realize that although he was giving alarm, he was running away from, not toward, the indicated trouble point. He was within the airlock by the time the first guard to answer his cry of distress had taken twenty running steps, and had, upon taking the twenty-first, realized that Cragin was going in the wrong direction. But the margin had been enough-- The lock slammed shut.