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?"