"I think," she replied softly, "it's the prettiest word I ever heard." Then she applied that fine feminine attribute for which there is no allowance in man's equations; a woman's logic. "But it is not the word to make me get out of here. I stay, Larry. Beside you—where I belong."
Larry protested, "Now, look here, Sandy—"
She merely smiled sweetly. "How," she asked, "do you operate this gadget? I might need to know, later on."
Larry gave up. Grinning, he showed her.
The other Underlings knew their parts in the short play soon to be enacted. It was a play with a simple plot. It required two stooges; two who, daring swift annihilation, would go forth into the frequented parts of the giant building of which this laboratory was but a section, beard the Masters in their dens, and bring them down to this place.
Already such a pair had been selected from the number—the full fifty, it had warmed Larry's heart to notice—who had volunteered. The rest of the men were waiting ... just waiting. Hopefully. Uncertainly. But hopefully.
Sert came to Larry's side.
"They have been gone a full ten minutes. Do you think, Larry Wilson, we should send out others? Perhaps—"
Then he stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a commotion in one of the corridors leading to the chamber, the scrape of running feet, the clash of metal on metal. Larry grinned, his eyes bright, but there was no humor in his grin.
"There's your answer, Sert!" he roared—and bent to his wave-length howler. As he did so, the two messengers came flying into the machine room. One was unharmed, but the other had, Larry noticed with a swift, sickening distaste, lost an arm completely. It had not been cut off. It had just vanished—and there hung from the man's shoulder a short knob of flesh, seared and crisp at the point of cicatrice. So the Masters, Larry thought, had other weapons in their bag? This must be a needle-sharp heat ray—