"Yes, sir," the scientist replied, approaching. "What is it, sir?"
Still shifty and cringing was he, in presence of the masters; though with the men beneath him, at the vast plant--and now his importance had grown till he controlled more than eight thousand--rumor declared him an intolerable tyrant.
"Tell me, Herzog, what"s the condition of the plant, at this present moment?"
"Just how do you mean, sir?"
"Suppose there were to be trouble, of any kind, how are we fixed for it?
How"s the oxygen supply, and--and everything? Good G.o.d, man, unlimber!
You"re paid to know things and tell "em. Now, talk."
Thus adjured, Herzog washed his hands with imaginary soap and in a deprecating voice began:
"Trouble, sir? What trouble could there be? There"s not the faintest sign of any organization among the men. They"re submissive as so many rabbits, sir, and--"
"d.a.m.n you, shut up!" roared Flint. "I didn"t summon you to come up here and give me a lecture on labor conditions at the works! The trouble I refer to is possible outside interference. Maybe some kind of wild-eyed Socialist upheaval, or attack, or what not. In case it comes, what"s our condition? Tell me, in a few words, and for G.o.d"s sake keep to the point! The way you wander, and always have, gives me the creeps!"
Herzog ventured nothing in reply to this outburst, save a conciliatory leer. Then, collecting his thoughts, he began:
"Well, sir, in a general way, our condition is perfect. We"ve got two regiments of rifle and machine gunmen, half of them equipped with the oxygen bullets. I guarantee that I could have them away from their benches and machines, and on the fortifications, inside of fifteen minutes. Slade"s armed guards, 2,500 or so, are all ready, too.
"Then, beside that, there are eight "planes in the hangars, and plenty of men to take them up. If you wish, sir, I can have others brought in.
The aerial-bomb guns are ready. As for the oxygen supply, Tanks F and L are full, K is half filled, and N and Q each have about 6,000 gallons, making a total of--let"s see, sir--a total of just about 755,000 gallons."
"How protected? Have you got those bomb-proof overhead nets on, yet?"
"Not yet, sir. That is, not over all the lines of tanks. We ran short of steel wire, last week, and have only got eight of the tanks under netting. But the work is going on fast, sir, and--"
"Rush it! At all hazards, get nets over the rest of the tanks. If anything happens, through this delay, remember, Herzog, I shall hold you personally responsible, and it will go hard with you!"
"Yes, sir; thank you, sir," murmured the servile wretch. "Anything else, sir?"
Flint thought a moment, glaring at Herzog with angry eyes, then shook his head in negation.
"Very well, sir," said Herzog, withdrawing. "I"ll go to work at once. By tomorrow, everything will be safe, I guarantee."
He closed the door softly--as softly as he had spoken--as softly as he always did everything.
Flint glared at the door.
"The sneaking whelp!" he murmured. "He makes my very flesh crawl. I wish to heaven he weren"t so essential to us; we"d let him go, d.a.m.ned quick!"
"You forget," put in Tiger, "that he knows too much to be let go, ever.
No, he"s a fixture. And now, dismiss him from your mind, and let"s go over those telegrams and radiograms again. If there _is_ a new Socialist revolt under way--and I admit it certainly begins to look like it--we"ve got to understand the situation. Slade will have some more reports for us, in an hour or so. Till then, these must suffice."
Flint, curbing his agitation, sat down at the big table and turned on the vacuum-glow light, for the October afternoon was foggy--a fog that mingled with the spray of the vast Falls and hung heavy over the world--and already daylight was beginning to fail.
"Fools!" he muttered to himself. "Fools, to think they can rebel against _us_! Ants would have just as much show of success, charging elephants, as _they_ have against the Air Trust! By tomorrow they"ll be wiped out, smeared out, shattered and annihilated, whoever and wherever they are.
By tomorrow, at the latest. Again I say, blind, suicidal fools!"
"Right you are," a.s.sented Waldron, drawing up his chair. "They don"t seem to realize, even yet, that we own the whole round earth and all that is in it. They don"t understand that their rebelling is like a tribe of naked savages going against a modern army with explosive bullets. Ah, well, let them learn, let them learn! It takes a whip to teach a cur. Let them feel the lash, and learn!..."
At this same hour, in the last retreat, near Port Colborne, in the State of Ontario--once a province of Canada--half a dozen grim and determined men were gathered together. We already recognize Craig, Grantham and Gabriel. The other three, like them, all wore the Socialist b.u.t.ton and the little tab of red ribbon that marked them as members of the Fighting Sections.
"Tonight," Gabriel was saying, as he stood there in the gathering dusk--they dared not show a light, even behind the drawn curtains of their refuge--"tonight, comrades, the final die is cast. Everything is ready, or as nearly ready as we shall ever be able to make it. Our reports already show that every line of communication has been broken by one swift, sharp blow. True, in a few hours all these avenues can be opened up again. By morning, the Niagara works will be in receipt of messages; trains will be running; the troop-planes will be carrying their hordes at the command of Flint. By morning, yes. But in the meantime--"
He spread his fingers, upward, with an expressive gesture.
"By morning," Craig mumbled, "what will there be left to protect?"
A little silence followed. Each was busy with his own thoughts.
All at once, one of the three newcomers spoke--a tall, light-haired fellow, he seemed, in that dim light, with a strong Southern accent.
"Pardon me for asking, Gabriel," said he, removing a pipe from his mouth, "or for discussing details familiar to you all. But, coming as I _have_ come direct from the New Orleans refuge--they blew it up, last week, you know--of course I haven"t got things as clearly in mind yet, as you-all have. Now, as I understand it, while we manoeuvre over the plant, blow up the barricades and, if possible, "get" the oxygen-tanks, our men on the ground will pour in through the gaps and storm the place, under the command of Edward Hargreaves. Is that the idea?"
"Exactly, Comrade Marion," answered Gabriel. "You"ve hit it to a T."
Craig laughed grimly, as he drew at his pipe.
"Just as we"re going to hit those big tanks!" said he. "It"s tonight or never, comrades. They"re putting steel nets over them, already. By tomorrow the whole place will be protected by huge grill-work fully a hundred feet above the tops of the tanks. Oh, they seem to have thought of everything, those plutes! But they"ll be just a shade too late, this time; just a shade too late!"
Another silence, broken again by the tall Southerner.
"Just let me get this thing quite clear," said he. "We"re to start at 5:30, you say, walk past the Welland Ca.n.a.l Feeder out to the Monck Aviation Grounds, and find everything ready there?"
"Correct," said Gabriel. "All six of us. That"s our part of the program.
Comrades you don"t know, out there--comrades in the employ of the Air Trust itself--will have six machines ready. One of them will be the very machine that they tried to get us with, in the Great Smokies! So you see, we"re going to use the Air Trust equipment, their field and even their own telenite, to put them out of business forever and to free the world!"
"Poetic justice, all right enough!" laughed Marion. "At the same time that we"re attacking from an elevation of perhaps three thousand feet, the lateral attack will be delivered. About how many men do you count, on, for that?"
"Well," judged Gabriel, "within a ten-mile radius of the plant, at least a hundred thousand men are waiting, this very instant, with every nerve keyed up to fighting tension. Scattered in a vast variety of ingenious and cleverly-devised hiding places, with their chlorine grenades and their revolvers shooting little hydrocyanic acid gas bullets, they"re waiting the signal--a rocket in mid-heaven."
"Hydrocyanic acid gas!" exclaimed Marion, forgetting to smoke. "Why, one whiff of that is death!"
"It is," agreed Gabriel. "Remember, this is a war of extermination. It"s a case of _them_ or _us_! And if we"re worsted, the whole world loses; while if they are, then liberty is born! That"s why this gas is justifiable. They"ll try to use oxygen-bullets on us, never fear. But where they can kill ten, with those, we can annihilate a hundred with our kind. Swine, they have called us, and fools and apes. Well, we shall see, we shall see, when it comes to an out-and-out fight between Plutocrat and Proletarian, who is the better man!"
Again came silence. And this time it was Grantham who broke it.
"Comrades," said he, "after you"ve seen as many Socialists shot down as _I_ have--shot down and burned, as Brevard was--you"ll lose any lingering ideas of civilized warfare you may still retain. They hunt us like beasts, prison us in foul traps, ride us down, crush us, break and tear us, and burn us alive, because we struggle to be free men and women, not slaves. Now that our hour has struck, now that their lines of communication and defense are breached, and they--though they still don"t fully understand it--are penned there in their heaven-offending, monstrous, horrible plant at the Falls, no true man can hesitate to smash them down with no more compunction than as though they were so many rattlesnakes or scorpions!
"This isn"t 1915, when political and civil rights still existed, and we weren"t hunted outlaws. This is 1925, and conditions are all different.
It"s war, war, war to the death, now; and if war is h.e.l.l, then _they_ are going to get h.e.l.l this time, not we."
n.o.body spoke, for a little while; but Marion and Craig smoked contemplatively, and the others sat there in the dusk, sunk in thought.
All at once a door opened, and the vague form of a woman became visible.