"Come, Borl!" he said quietly. "Let us die as men should die—that our Cause may live!"
Beneath his touch the other calmed. The febrile terror left his eyes and something new glistened there. He rose, nodded, straightened his shoulders. Then proudly, almost triumphantly, the two exiles strode into the tunneled path to death. They turned there, boldly, and their voices joined in a single cry, "For freedom!"
Then the door clanged shut, and through the adjacent impervite transparency Larry Wilson saw two staunch figures march boldly down the tunnel to the barren world beyond.
Beside him one of the guards commented wonderingly to the other, "Remarkable! They are the first I ever saw go through the Ground Gate so gallantly—to death."
Larry asked, "But is it death? The outside atmosphere surrounded them the moment they stepped through the gate. Yet they walked away."
The guard answered tauntingly, "It is death. Make no mistake about that. The ancient archives will tell you that. It was Outside that our ancestors died. No man has yet returned who dared venture beyond the Gate." He stirred himself. "Now let us return this one to the Master Scientist and be about our work. The Underlings still—"
Then Larry stumbled. And as he did so one swiftly outthrust hand caught in the harness of the nearest guard, tugged, ripped. The studded belt snapped at the catch, flew halfway across the corridor.
The man scrambled after it, alarmed. But even as he took his first step, Larry wheeled and threw one hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle at his companion's face. Puny jawbones splintered, blood spurted, and the guard went down as if pole-axed. Momentum swept Larry over his prostrate body to the weaponless guard; his fist raised and fell once—and that was all!
He rose, stripped both hairless pates of their precious menaudos, slung both studded belts over his shoulder. Armed now, he oriented himself and set off at top speed for the control turret.