"Let him up now, folks," said Sherman, "give him a swift kick and point him toward the door. He won't come back." And he rapidly adjusted the thought-helmet to his own head.
The Lassan at the other end was evidently disturbed. He had received the sound of the crash from the ape-man's brain and was asking querulously what it meant.
"What has happened?" the thought demanded insistently. "What is it that struck you? Have the fighting machines returned? Show a picture of what you see. Are the slaves escaping?"
"Everything's all right," Sherman sent back. "Something broke loose down below and I stumbled trying to look at it." He closed his eyes, forming a mental picture of the hall, with everything in order, then one of the passage, and reached up and detached the helmet, motioning to Murray for the knife. An instant's sawing and the device short-circuited with a fizzing of blue sparks.
"That will give that one a headache for a while," he remarked. "We'll have to hurry, though. When he comes to he'll investigate and then there'll be trouble."
"What's that?" asked Gloria, pointing across the hall at the aperture high up in the wall. A gleaming beak had been thrust out and the bright, intelligent eye of one of the dodo-birds was regarding them malevolently from the opening.
"Shoot, quick!" said Sherman, "For God's sake! They're telepathic. They'll have every Lassan in the place after us."
Gloria fumbled a second with the gun, located the finger hole, sent a spurt of light flying across the room. It missed the head, but found its mark somewhere in the body of the bird, for there was a squawk and the head disappeared. Sherman vaulted down the six-foot drop, landing with a bang. "Come on," he cried, "short-circuit every wire you can find; tear them loose if you can't cut them any other way—and make for the middle door at the back."
They ran across the hall toward the work benches. It seemed enormous; like a race in a dream, in which one seems to make no progress whatever. But the workers did not appear to notice them. Driven by the thoughts of the controlling Lassans, they were incapable of attending to anything else unless it was forced on their attention.
As they approached the benches, however, one flat-faced ape-man almost ran into them. His face took on an expression of puzzled inquiry and at the same moment a figure whose carriage plainly showed it human stepped down toward them from the half-completed green globe. Gloria paused, leveled her light-gun at the ape-man, and his face vanished in a spray of fire. The human advanced slowly as though struggling against some force that was too strong for him. Sherman reached him first, wrenched the helmet from his head and dropping it on the floor stamped on it till the fine mechanism was irretrievably ruined. The mechanical human fell to his knees.