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.