Shannock ordered his men back from the door. They grouped themselves behind Birrel with the men who carried the portable transmitter in their center. "You better find it," Shannock said, "or--" His words were drowned in a roaring crash as the door was blown in. Weapons began to hiss and whine. "Hold them, hold them," Birrel begged. "Here it is--" The stone shifted under his fingers. The concealed door swung open. Birrel pushed Kara through it and then the men with the transmitter. They packed into the small lift and shot down, still firing as the automatic door slammed shut. They had lost four more in the office. "There's no guard in the cavern itself, they didn't want too many knowing about it," Birrel said. "But they'll soon be after us from this end." They wrecked the lift door as well as they could, hoping to cripple it, and then loaded themselves into the car and raced away down the dark tunnel. "They'll come after us, yes, but it'll take them a little time to walk," said Shannock. * * * * * The car rushed out of the dark and into the cavern, stopping by the lighted platform. And in this great space of looming, silent, ugly metal shapes, their voices and the noises they made seemed loud. Shannock rattled out orders. "Set up your transmitter on the shelf here. Wreck that car. Then we'd better split our forces. Half here to hold the tunnel, half down below in case they come in by some other way." Thile and Kara stayed with the technicians. They were going to have to do the talking. Birrel stayed at the tunnel mouth, with Shannock's lieutenant and half the men. Shannock and the rest of the men climbed down a spiral steel stair that dropped dizzily from the shelf to the cavern floor. They had collected extra weapons from their own fallen and from guards they had killed in the building, and with these they crouched down behind the barrier of the wrecked car. Birrel watched the technicians out on the shelf. He had gathered that they had ways of surmounting what would have been insurmountable difficulties on Earth, using types of impulses and rectifiers and carrier-beams unknown there. The equipment did not particularly resemble television equipment as he knew it. Anyway, the technicians seemed to know what they were doing. He hoped they did. It would be a pity to go to all this trouble for nothing. He saw Thile, and then Kara, making animated gestures as they talked into the transmitter. They were, apparently, going to have time at least to get the message on its way. Then, with terrifying unexpectedness, the voice of God seemed to speak from the air, deafening them. "Lay down your arms!" it said. "Surrender--you are surrounded on all sides--" "Amplifiers," said Birrel. "They must have needed them to order things done, in a place this size. Look out, now. They'll rush us any minute--" And they did, coming out of the dark tunnel in a fury of flashing beams from their weapons.