"We could try!" Lolan gave back. "If the plan succeeded—well, we number twenty thousand in Areeba to the Martians' two. Once their weapons were destroyed, the city would be ours!"
"Then it must be attempted!" Atarkus raised his fist high. "Irak—call the leaders. We must lay our plans tonight, for the struggle tomorrow!"
They met in a little alcove off the main room, ten men whose grim countenances stamped them as men ready to die for the cause. Lolan sensed immediately, as they took places around a long table, that he was being looked to as their leader. And old Atarkus willingly fell away to make room for younger, more dynamic blood.
When all were quiet, Prince Lolan stood up. It came to him strongly, the feeling that everything, the fate of every soul on Venus, hinged on what happened in this little room tonight. His voice came gravely, freighted with importance.
"I won't try to deceive you for one instant that our battle is going to be easy," he told them sternly. "It isn't. The odds are a hundred to one against us. But I will tell you this: The game is worth it! If we win Areeba, all Venus is ours. With improved weapons, the Martians' own, we'll be able to descend on the smaller settlements and conquer them before they know what has happened here. Then there will be the task of building up a space fleet. We can do it. If Mars sends a new army out to re-capture us, they'll find us ready, trained in their own modes of warfare and as brutal as they themselves. I have a theory that once we have won our independence, progress on Venus will be different. My experience has proved that all the Venusian lacks for a complete, balanced fighting personality is an abundance of ultraviolet light. We can provide that artificially, in street-lights, in the nursery, everywhere. It will be the beginning of the greater Venus. Yes, the game is worth the risk. We have all to win ... nothing to lose!"
Vesh-Tu, a squat, hairy little man, leaned forward. "But how are we to do it, Prince? The radite is guarded, is it not?"
"I have a plan—" Lolan murmured thoughtfully. "We can enter, I believe, by the sewers, following the river upstream to the holes and climbing them by their ladders. They will probably know immediately what we are doing, when their machines and guns begin to lose power. But by that time I hope to have the army mostly concentrated on the south side."
"How?" Irak demanded flatly.
"By starting fires, riots, dynamiting buildings—everything we can think of. Then, when the soldiers have been decoyed into the midst of our people, we will have destroyed the last of the radite and the revolution will begin in earnest!"
Atarkus rubbed his hands. "Suppose we set a zero hour—say twelve o'clock, for the time for fighting to begin. It would make for a concerted, simultaneous outbreak all over the city."