Their first labor trouble was a welcome interlude in the creeping boredom. The docile labor battalion suddenly discovered they were being overworked. Just what they could have done in Firth's world with shorter hours, no one knows. They staged a spotty, amateurish strike; speakers made reference to the labor laws applicable on the Earth and demanded better pay. To what end, it's hard for us to say. If the first colonists had turned over all their wealth, the workers would have had no more use for it. John Firth was unusually alarmed by the threatened strike. He reacted with excessive violence and the other colonists followed his lead. Three of the leaders of the uprising were executed; others were brutally whipped. The Outlaw Pit was built then. Thereafter, at the first hint of any dissatisfaction, workers were condemned to it. The violence taught the workers resentment. Silently, sullenly they passed on their hatred to their children. The aristocracy created the revolution, and nurtured it; for it would have made no real difference if they had surrendered entirely to the strikers' demands. The children of the first colonists made no pretense of using Firth's world to advance knowledge, invention or art. They were hedonists, bred to luxury, supported by slaves. The slaves, for their part, felt no emotion but hatred. From their parents they learned that the aristocracy had violated the labor law. The children knew nothing about the law or the distant Earth where it applied, but it was held in deep and sacred reverence. The laboratories and the university stood empty; only the recreation cavern held any interest for the new aristocracy. A change took place among the slaves too. Their parents had been hand-picked morons. But neither brilliant achievement nor the moronic mind is hereditary. Most of the workers' children had an average intelligence; one or two would have been classified as geniuses. To their hatred the second generation joined intelligence, and Firth's world was ready to blow apart. They struck the light plant first. Sudden and unexpected violence surged through the dark, stone-walled corridors. John Firth led a band of men against the enemy. But his attack failed and the workers seized the Atomic Power Core--the heart of our world. If they shut down the reactors, they would stifle not only our lights, but the gravitators and the air machines as well; they would kill us all. The workers knew that. They were willing to risk suicide. Every bargaining counter was on their side. It was John Firth who surrendered. Firth's world died then. In the bitter depths of the Pit, John Firth remembered what Adam Boetz had said to him so many years before, "We've become a brain without a body. We can formulate the orders, but we've neither arms nor legs to carry them out.