CHAPTER IX

Birrel had been close to death before, but never closer. Those hands clamped down, shutting off voice and breath, and the weight of a powerful body bore on him, holding him. He heard quick harsh breathing, and then the booming of his own blood in his ears drowned it out. He clawed at the wrists that would not be moved, and felt the first cold edge of darkness sliding over him.

Then memory circuits clicked over--circuits long unused, but needing only the right stimulus to activate them.

Birrel put his two clenched fists together and rammed them upward with the desperate strength of an animal that knows it has to shake itself loose or die. The fists hit something and there was a noise in the dark above him. The hands on his throat loosened a little and he thrashed his arms up and back at the same time he got what purchase he could with his feet and heaved.

The hands let go. The body floundered on him, not wanting to be thrown off. He pounded at it, wildly, viciously, gasping air into his lungs. He felt hair under his fingers. He grabbed a fistful of it and hauled it sideways. Someone whimpered and cursed, not making much noise about it. He hauled and heaved and the body rolled off him and thumped onto the floor. Instantly, Birrel threw himself on top of it.

And now it was his turn.

He dug his knee into a yielding belly and heard the breath go out. Fists flailed at his face but he kept his head pulled in between his hunched-up shoulders. He pawed in the dark and found an ear, and then another one, and he held onto them like handles and beat the skull between them up and down on the floor.

"Who is it?" he snarled. "Vannevan? No, he doesn't like his odds this even. But he sent you, didn't he?"

A hoarse, half-articulate "_No!_" came from the man pinned beneath him.

Birrel paused. "The devil he didn't."

"The devil he did. I'd kill that murdering bastard too, if I could get my hands on him." The man squirmed and sobbed for breath. "Anyway, why would Vannevan want to kill you? You're going to help him."

"How do you know?" asked Birrel, his eyes narrowing in the dark.

"The whole underground knows it. You're helping him get fissionables from your world. Why do you think I'm here? To keep you from doing it!"

He erupted into sudden action, catching Birrel off guard as he grappled with this new concept of an Irrian underground opposed to Vannevan. It wasn't too surprising, remembering those sullen faces in the streets. But then they were rolling over, clawing and pounding at each other. Now, though, Birrel's movements were chiefly defensive.

"Hold it," he panted. "Hold it! I've got an idea that we're on the same side."

The man laughed hoarsely and went on hunting for his throat.

"All right," said Birrel. "We'll play it your way."

He gave the man a slashing blow with the edge of his hand, guessing at the distance. It hit a little low on the shoulder, but it jarred him enough to slow him down. Birrel moved quickly. In a second he had his forearm under the man's chin, in a strangle-hold. He applied pressure, and the man became quiet.

He let up. "Now will you listen?"

The man whispered, "Yes."

"There's an underground movement here, against Vannevan and Wolt and the other oligarchs?"

"Against war. We're sick of it. You must have seen what it's done to our world. So we organized ourselves when this plan to steal fissionables from another solar system came up." He struggled against Birrel's grip. "Today we heard Vannevan had brought back an Earthman who was going to help--"

"Relax," said Birrel. "I'm not going to help Vannevan do anything." He explained rapidly. "I was stalling for time, waiting for a chance to make a break. Get me out of here, and I'll prove it."

The man remained unconvinced.

* * * * *

Impatiently, Birrel hauled him to his feet. "Two friends of mine, Ruunites, are somewhere in this building. If you could get to me, you can get to them. I want them freed. And I want to talk to the leaders of your underground. Between us I think we might have a chance to stop Vannevan and his party for good. Anyway, what have you got to lose? If your people have me, I can't help Vannevan."

The man said, grudgingly, "Well, all right. I can get to your friends if you really want them freed. I helped build this place." He stepped away from Birrel, rubbing his throat. "Take off your shoes and any metal you have on you."

Birrel did as he was told.

"Now reach up toward the grating. You'll find a knotted rope. Be as quiet as you can."

Birrel climbed the rope, to a place where the duct became level enough to crawl in. He heard the man replace the grating behind them. Then he joined him, and they began a slow mole-like journey through the maze of air-ducts that supplied these inner cells of the Ministry's private prison.

The man found his way quite easily. At every intersection of the ducts luminous code-numbers glowed--"To help us when we make repairs," the man whispered, and laughed. "We use the ducts all the time for spying. I suppose tonight will finish their usefulness, but we'll find some other way."

The underground had known where Thile and Kara were prisoned almost as soon as they had been put there. Twice the knotted rope was let down and twice gratings were removed and then replaced. Birrel went down after Kara himself and took a second or two to hold her in his arms before he lifted her into the duct.

Some time later, he had no idea how long, they had worked their way down below the level of the building and into a dry conduit that their guide said was left over from an earlier day, before the city was rebuilt. The conduit took them for some distance, and then they climbed a flight of wooden stairs into a cellar, and from there went up into the main room of a modest house, where half a dozen active and hard-faced men sat waiting.

They sprang up when Birrel and the others came in, two or three of them pulling weapons. There was a period of heated conversation, and then one of the men shouted for order and got it.

"Now then," he said, "let's hear about it. You first."

He listened, and the others listened, and all the time they watched Birrel with hatred and distrust.

Impatiently, before the man was through telling why he had not killed the Earthman, Birrel broke in on him to speak to Thile and Kara.

"They showed me something today," he said. "Vannevan and Wolt. A cavern full of armaments--enough to blow Ruun out of the sky as soon as they get the fissionable material they need."

Thile said, "We had an idea there was such a place, but we could never pin it down."

"Neither could we," said the man who seemed to be the leader of the group. He looked hard at Birrel. "It's a mighty well-kept secret."

"There's a direct way into it from Wolt's office," Birrel said, and described it. "Now listen. If we can get away, get word to Ruun--"

"If you're thinking of ships, it's impossible. They're too well guarded on the ground, and the batteries would blow you apart before you could clear the atmosphere."

"Well, then," said Birrel, "is there any way to send a message? Can you communicate from world to world?"

"Quite easily," said Thile. "But there it comes down to the same old thing. Proof."

"For God's sake," said Birrel, "how much proof do they need?"

"Quite a bit, to get them to act in time. I assume that's what you have in mind, isn't it? Blast the cavern and destroy the armaments?"

"I want to stop that fleet from taking off for Earth. If he hasn't any way to use fissionable matter, Vannevan may not be in such a rush to get it."

The other men were listening now with intense interest. They seemed to have forgotten a lot of their distrust in the excitement of learning about the cavern. The leader, who said his name was Shannock, said fiercely,

"Those armaments have taken years of work and a fortune in money, taxed out of our pockets. They've kept us poor, when we might have been building up trade and business on a peaceful world. If they were wiped out, the war party would go with them."

Thile said wistfully, "It's a beautiful thought. But by the time our cautious leaders on Ruun have assured themselves that they're not making a mistake, it'll be far too late."

"There must be some way," Birrel said, striding around in an agony of frustration. "_Some_ way. Some--listen, can you transmit visually, from world to world? Could you send a picture to Ruun?"

"Of course," said Shannock, rather shocked at his ignorance. "The interplanetary automatic relay system has been working ever since we learned how to build spaceships."

Then a queer look came over his face.

"You mean to transmit right from the cavern?"

"That would be proof enough, wouldn't it?" Birrel demanded. "If we showed them the actual cavern, down to the actual armaments?"

* * * * *

Looking a little stunned, Thile said it ought to be proof enough for anyone. "There's just one question. How are you going to do it?"

"Technically, can it really be done?"

"With a special type of transmitter, yes."

Birrel looked at the men of the underground. "If you'll help, we ought to be able to make a pretty good try. How many men can you muster in a hurry--armed?"

"About twenty," Shannock said. "Besides us."

"And can you get portable equipments?"

"Easy. We can get into the Ministry building, too, by a way we know. But from then on we'll have to fight. Likely some of us won't make it."

"Likely," Birrel admitted, thinking privately that probably none of them would make it all the way. "But since we're all due for the gallows one way or another, this looks like our only chance to make Wolt and Vannevan sweat. Want to try it?"

"Give me half an hour," said Shannock. His eyes blazed with a feral light.

Birrel waited. It was a little less than a half hour and it seemed like no time at all because he spent it talking to Kara, and the things he wanted to say to her would have taken hours. Perhaps years. When finally, armed now and accompanied by twenty-seven determined men of the underground, he and Thile started back through the conduit, Kara went with them. There was no safe place to leave her, and in any case Kara was a soldier, share and share alike. She carried a weapon and walked beside Birrel, and after a while it didn't seem strange to him that she should do so, but rather as it should be.

This time they did not enter the duct system. They came through a drainage pit into an unused cellar, and from there directly into the main hall of the Ministry.

It was past midnight and the building was quiet. The guards stood at their posts, but the eruption of armed men into the hall came so suddenly that they had only time for a few scattered shots before they were dropped. Shouts and sounds of alarm and running feet came from other parts of the building. Leaving one man on the floor of the hall, the attacking party rushed into Wolt's office and barred the door.

"Hold it," Birrel panted, "while I find the right stone."

He pawed frantically at the wall, trying to remember exactly where Wolt had placed his hand. Outside there was a tramping of feet and a growing clamor of voices. "Can't you find it?" Thile said.

Shannock ordered his men back from the door. They grouped themselves behind Birrel with the men who carried the portable transmitter in their center. "You better find it," Shannock said, "or--"

His words were drowned in a roaring crash as the door was blown in. Weapons began to hiss and whine. "Hold them, hold them," Birrel begged. "Here it is--"

The stone shifted under his fingers. The concealed door swung open. Birrel pushed Kara through it and then the men with the transmitter. They packed into the small lift and shot down, still firing as the automatic door slammed shut. They had lost four more in the office.

"There's no guard in the cavern itself, they didn't want too many knowing about it," Birrel said. "But they'll soon be after us from this end."

They wrecked the lift door as well as they could, hoping to cripple it, and then loaded themselves into the car and raced away down the dark tunnel.

"They'll come after us, yes, but it'll take them a little time to walk," said Shannock.

* * * * *

The car rushed out of the dark and into the cavern, stopping by the lighted platform. And in this great space of looming, silent, ugly metal shapes, their voices and the noises they made seemed loud.

Shannock rattled out orders. "Set up your transmitter on the shelf here. Wreck that car. Then we'd better split our forces. Half here to hold the tunnel, half down below in case they come in by some other way."

Thile and Kara stayed with the technicians. They were going to have to do the talking. Birrel stayed at the tunnel mouth, with Shannock's lieutenant and half the men. Shannock and the rest of the men climbed down a spiral steel stair that dropped dizzily from the shelf to the cavern floor.

They had collected extra weapons from their own fallen and from guards they had killed in the building, and with these they crouched down behind the barrier of the wrecked car.

Birrel watched the technicians out on the shelf. He had gathered that they had ways of surmounting what would have been insurmountable difficulties on Earth, using types of impulses and rectifiers and carrier-beams unknown there. The equipment did not particularly resemble television equipment as he knew it. Anyway, the technicians seemed to know what they were doing. He hoped they did. It would be a pity to go to all this trouble for nothing.

He saw Thile, and then Kara, making animated gestures as they talked into the transmitter. They were, apparently, going to have time at least to get the message on its way. Then, with terrifying unexpectedness, the voice of God seemed to speak from the air, deafening them.

"Lay down your arms!" it said. "Surrender--you are surrounded on all sides--"

"Amplifiers," said Birrel. "They must have needed them to order things done, in a place this size. Look out, now. They'll rush us any minute--"

And they did, coming out of the dark tunnel in a fury of flashing beams from their weapons.

From behind the wrecked car someone threw an energy-grenade and then another. The results were a little too good. The whole roof of the tunnel fell in, effectively blocking it to the enemy, but also sealing off any possibility of fighting their way back out through it.

Birrel looked around. Thile and Kara and the technicians were still sticking to their task. Down below, on the cavern floor, Shannock had driven back an attack, but from up here Birrel could see the men hiding among the looming machines and knew how badly Shannock was outnumbered.

He flung himself down the spiral stair, and the others followed. The loudspeakers roared monotonously overhead, ordering them to surrender. Birrel took up a position behind a huge looming metal bulk and then looked up at the shelf. Thile, Kara and the technicians had disappeared. A second later he saw them coming at breakneck speed down the stair, and in almost the same second something exploded with a blinding flash on the shelf and the transmitter vanished.

"Surrender," said the amplifiers. "We will grant you a fair trial if you do, but if you do not you will be killed to the last one. Surrender--"

Thile and Kara joined Birrel behind his metal bulwark, panting.

"Did you get through?" he cried.

"We don't know. There wasn't time to receive acknowledgement."

"Here they come!" yelled Shannock.

* * * * *

And they came, slipping among the looming shapes of potential destruction, firing, killing, being killed, being for the second time driven back.

And now for a moment the amplifiers fell silent and another voice spoke close at hand. Vannevan's voice.

"Count your dead. You can't replace them, but we can. How long can you hold out?"

"As long as there's one of us left!" Shannock shouted back.

"That won't be long, will it? Don't be a fool, man. Surrender."

Birrel answered him. "You'll be the one to surrender, when the ships come from Ruun."

Vannevan laughed. "The Earthman. You still think the Ruunites will fight, eh? They won't."

They attacked again, and were again fought off--or rather, Birrel thought, they withdrew, content to hack away at their opponents' numbers without exposing themselves any more than they had to.

The amplifiers spoke again. But suddenly the voice had a different tone, and it did not talk about surrender.

"A message has just been received from Ruun. Ruunite ships will position over this target in one hour and destroy it. All persons are warned to get clear of the area at once. I repeat that message. Ruunite ships will position--"

Pandemonium broke out in the rebel ranks.

"You hear that, Vannevan?" Birrel shouted. "You're through."

Vannevan did not answer.

The amplifiers fell silent. Birrel looked at Thile, and then at Shannock, who said,

"They're not going away."

"Vannevan," said the amplifiers, "this is Wolt. I am leaving as of now and I advise you to do so. There's no virtue like knowing when it's time to run."

Still there was no sound or sign from Vannevan.

The amplifiers were silent. In the distance were noises made by people going away.

One of the men, impatient, sprang up and into the open aisle between the machines. "Hell," he said, "they must have gone. We'd better--"

He died between words, and suddenly from where they had crept close seven or eight men sprang out and rushed, firing. Vannevan led them. There would be no peace, no surrender, no flight for Vannevan.

He saw Birrel with Thile and Kara and he smiled and flung his weapon up, and Birrel shot him just before his finger touched the firing-stud.

Those of the seven or eight who were still alive threw their weapons down.

Shannock said, "I guess we can go now."

They followed the captive soldiers to the far entrance of the cavern, leaving Vannevan where he had fallen among the machines.

An hour later, Birrel stood with the others in the forefront of a close-packed crowd outside the city, and watched the great Ruunite ships position over a particular spot. Mighty lightnings crashed downward from their bellies. Smoke and dust and shattered rock rose in a vast cloud, and settled again, and there was a huge gaping hole in the ground, and still the lightnings pounded at it until there was nothing left of the cavern or anything it had contained.

Shannock and his men cheered mightily. The bulk of the Irrian crowd watched silently, not used yet to the idea of peace.

Birrel, oddly enough, was not thinking of Ruun or Ir, but of Earth.