"I am Paulan, ex-scientist of the first order, now Leader of the Underground. I saw you fight with us. Welcome, my son." His eyes were as clear and as blue as a child's, but the fires of a profound intellect shone from their depths.
"The time," Guerlan was speaking, "is now, not at some supposedly psychological moment logically thought by the Board. I'm a new member, true, but it is evident the Inner Circle has been aware of your activities for some time, or they wouldn't have sent such a well-armed, ultra-trained battalion of Intermediates. The time to strike is now! Unless you want to await an attack in such force that this cavern will become a hecatomb."
"We are already harassing them in every city," Paulan said thoughtfully. "Vats are exploding regularly, amnesiacs are being restored to usefulness and our forces are increasing day by day. What more would you propose, my son, an attack on the city of the sphere?"
All eyes in the heavily guarded and armed Board meeting room were upon the young scientist. At the head of the long, exquisite Platino-plastic table sat Paulan, the leader, and at his right sat Perlac. All down the length of the great table, scientists of the first and second orders, analysts, technicians, and even members of the lower strata chosen for their value to the movement, sat to consider the crisis. Their underground movement was in the open now, and they could expect nothing but extermination at the hands of the Inner Circle.
"That would be madness at present," spoke a tiny Venusian, not more than four and a half feet tall, wrapped in his long, scarlet wings that joined to the sides of his fragile body, reached from wrists to his ankles. "Although," he grinned impishly, "I would like to take a crack at them in their holy of holies!"
Morluc, the Martian, snorted.
"Mars will help, but we must have a share of the machinery and plastics of Neptune ... a preferred share," he emphasized gazing disdainfully at the Venusian member.
"Equal shares!" the latter snapped dryly. "Mars' help is still to be seen, as your excellence is aware!" The Venusian drove his point home with emphatic gestures.
"We've offered our fleet!" Morluc, the Martian member, said stiffly. "Can any more be asked?"