Chapter 24: The Ending of It All

Impassively, oblivious of the invasion about them, the workers kept on at their machines like ants when their nest is broken open. Sherman and Gloria dodged around one of them, avoiding the direct line of sight of the robot who worked at it and walked rapidly toward the door giving on the car-tracks. The man on duty had no weapon, but paid them no attention, being occupied in watching a car just sliding in to the station. “It’s a shame” began Gloria, but “Shoot!” insisted Sherman and the light-ray struck him in the back of the neck fusing head and neck to a single mass. As he sank to the floor he turned partly over.

“Good heavens, it’s Stevens!” said Gloria, “the man who organized the rebellion against Ben Ruby in New York and brought the dodos down on us.”

“Never mind. Hurry,” her companion urged in a fever of activity. The doors of the car were opening and half a dozen mechanical men stepped out, mostly with the foolish visages and shambling steps of the ape-men, but two whose upright walk proclaimed them human.

“Listen, everybody,” called Sherman, quickly. “We’re from outside. We’re trying to bust up this place. Get back in the car, quick, and come help us.” Suiting the action to the word, he leaped for the first compartment, reached it just as it was closing and wedged himself inside.

The car had a considerable run to make. In the dimly-lighted compartment, Sherman was conscious of turns, right, left, right again, and of a steady descent. He wondered vaguely whether he had taken the right method; whether the cage rooms lay near one another or were widely separated. At all events the diversion in the hall of the green globes would hold the attention of the Lassans for some time, and the short-circuiting of so many lines would hamper their methods of dealing with the emergency...

The car came to a stop. Sherman heard a door or two open, but his own did not budge, and he had no needle to stir it. He must wait, hoping that Gloria had not been isolated from him. She had the ray-gun at all events, and would not be helpless. Then the door opened again.

He was released into a cage that seemed already occupied, and one look told him that his companion was an ape-man.

“Gloria!” he called.

“Right here,” came the cheerful answer from two cages down. “This is a swell thing you got me into. How do we get out of here?”

“Have you got a pin or needle of any kind?” he asked.

“Why--yes. Turn your back.” She did something mysterious among her feminine garments and held up an open safety-pin for him to see across the intervening cage.

“Stick your arm through the bars and see if you can toss it down the track. If I don’t get it, you’ll have to blast your way out with the light-gun, but I don’t like to do that. Don’t know how many shots it holds and we need them all.”

She swung with that underarm motion which is the nearest any woman can achieve to a throw. The pin struck the gleaming car-rail, skidded, turned and came to rest before Sherman’s cage. He reached for it, but the ape-man in the cage, who had been watching with interested eyes, was quicker. Fending Sherman off with one huge paw, he reached one of his feet through the bars for the object and held it up before his eyes admiringly.

Sherman grabbed, but this only fixed the ape-man in his evident opinion that the object he held was of value. He gripped it all the tighter, turned an amiable face toward Sherman and gibbered. Losing patience at this unfortunate contretemps when time was so precious, the aviator lifted an iron foot and kicked him, vigorously and with purpose, in the place where kicks do the most good. The ape-man pitched forward, dropping the fascinating pin, then rose and came toward Sherman, his expression clearly indicating his intention of tearing the American limb from limb. The cage was narrow: the ape-man the bigger of the two. Sherman thought hard and fast. The oil-ball!

He leaped for the lectern, snatched it open, seized the ape-man’s oil-ball and held it aloft as though to throw it out into the corridor. With a wail of anguish the simian clutched at the precious object. Sherman squeezed it enough to let a little stream run forth, holding it just out of his reach, and as he stabbed for it again, tossed it back into a corner of the cell. The ape-man leaped upon it covetously, and Sherman bent over the bars, fumbling in his nervous haste to unlock them.

Luckily the safety-pin fitted. With a subdued click the bars swung inward and he was out in the corridor. Another moment and Gloria was free also.

“Any more people in here?” Sherman called. Three voices answered and he hurried from cage to cage, setting them free as the warning blue lights that prohibited shouting began to flicker around the roof.

“Come on,” he called, “we must get out of here, quick!”

They hesitated a moment between the two doors, chose that at the upper end. As they raced through it, they heard a panel clash somewhere. The Lassans were investigating.

They were in one of the passages through which the cars ran, with alternate bars of light and dark across it marking the termination of side-passages. “Look!” said Gloria. Into the cage-room they had just quitted a car was coming, its featureless front gliding noiselessly along the track. “In here,” said Sherman, pulling the others after him down the nearest lighted passage.

Followed by the other four Sherman followed it steadily along to the right, where it ended at a door.

“What now?” said someone.

“In,” decided Gloria. “Likely to be a cage-room as not.”

Sherman searched for the inevitable finger-holes, found them and pressed. The door swung back on--

A Lassan reclining at ease on one of the curious twisted benches beside which stood a tall jar of the same yellow-flecked green material they had seen the others devouring. The room was blue-domed but very small, and its walls were covered with soft green hangings in pendulous drops. A thought-helmet was on the elephant-man’s head; its other end was worn by one of the mechanical people whose back was to the door as they entered, and who appeared to be working some kind of machine that punched little holes of varying shape in a strip of bright metal.

As the five Americans pressed into the room, the Lassan rose, reached for his ray-gun, but Gloria pushed the one she held into his face and he relaxed with a little squeal of terror, while Sherman reached into his pouch and secured the weapon.

As he did so the Lassan reached up and snapped loose the thought-helmet; the metal figure turned round and gazed at them.

“Marta!”

“The boy friend!”

The Lassan was very old. His skin was almost white and seamed with sets of diminutive wrinkles, and as he regarded the two mechanical people, locked in each other’s embrace an expression of puzzlement and distaste came over his features, giving place to one of cool and lofty dignity as he perceived that Gloria did not mean to kill him on the spot. Lifting his trunk, he motioned imperiously toward the thought-helmet which Marta had cast aside, then set the other end of it on his own head.

To the invading Americans, crowded into the little room, it seemed for a moment as though they had somehow burst into a temple. Sherman’s face became grave, and following the Lassan’s direction, he picked up the helmet and fitted it on his head. The thought that came through it gave a feeling of dignity and power such as he had never experienced before; almost as though it were some god talking.

“By what right,” it demanded, “do you invade the room of scientific composition? Why are you not in your cages? You know you will receive the punishment of the yellow lights in the greater degree for this unauthorized invasion. Save yourself further punishment now by retiring quietly. You can take my life, it is true, but I am old and my life is of no value. Think not that I am the only Lassan in the universe.”

“Sorry,” Sherman gave him back, “but this is a rebellion. You are not familiar with the history of this planet, or you would know that Americans can’t be anybody’s slaves. Let us go in peace and we will let you return to your own planet.”

“Let us go!” came the Lassan’s answer. “Your obstinate presumption surprises me. Do you think that the Lassans of Rigel, the highest race in the universe will let go where they have once grasped?”

“You will or we’ll jolly well make you,” replied the American. “Do you think your silly green globes are going to do you any good? The last one fell beside us tonight.”

Sherman could sense the sudden wave of panic in the Lassan’s thought at this unexpected answer. He had evidently assumed that they were from the underground labor battalions and were not familiar with events outside. But he rallied nobly.

“And do you imagine, foolish creature of a lower race, that the green globes are our last resource? Even now I have perfected a device that will wipe your miserable people from the planet. But if it did not, rather would we Lassans perish in the flames of a ruined world than abandon a task once undertaken; we who can mold the plastic flesh to enduring metal and produce machines that have brains; we who can control the great substance that underlies all life and matter.”