There came a sharp impingement of thought on the brains of Larry and Sandra; a command that was so clear and forceful that for a moment Larry's hand stayed in its journey to the rheostat. "Surrender, rebels! Surrender or you die!"
Then the Masters were racing into the room after their prey. A handful of them at first, then more and more until they were a veritable avalanche of tiny, gnome-like, nervous figures with bulbous heads, curiously shaped guns in their wee, gnarled hands. It must have been a rare thing, indeed, to find two rebellious subjects; the very rarity had drawn a horde of dwarflings in full pursuit.
The Masters burst into the room and stopped stock-still, amazed, to find that the loft harbored not two but a half hundred rebels!
It was this moment of shock that released Larry's hand from its motionlessness. The Masters' thoughts died into confusion, and Larry's brain was free. It would remain so, too, he promised himself. Not again would he relax his vigilance thus.
Then, with a wild cry, "For freedom!" the Underlings, led by their chieftain, Sert, sprang forward on their foes! For a split second the Masters' surprise held; the little men stepped backward in stark fear, and a half dozen went down beneath sledgehammer blows of crude weapons clutched by Underlings.
But this moment passed too swiftly. Wee hands flew to studded belts, and suddenly the room was brilliant with the shimmering glow of the Masters' force-fields. Instantly the tide of battle turned. Here, where some steel lever-handle, converted into a mace, was halfway to a Masters' skull, the rod suddenly flew from its wielder's hands, clanging useless across the floor. There an Underlings, grappling with a Master, suddenly slumped into an inert heap. The retreat ended; the Masters, assured again, and confident, stepped forward vengefully. Sert cast a pleading glance at Larry.
"Swiftly, Larry Wilson, or we all perish!"
But Larry was already twisting the vernier; inside his box the howler disc was spinning one way, the armature another, and from the mouth of the electric siren was shrieking an unearthly wail. It ripped and tore at Larry's own eardrums. Surely it would do the same—and worse—to those delicate organs of the Masters if he could but find—
And suddenly he had it. Sandra gripped his shoulder with fingers that bit and clung. "There, Larry! There!"