"For once we have a chance to organize. Let's get at it! We must strike before Lohan brings up his red-striped palace guards and his aristocratic cruiser force. We must — "
"Ha!" snorted Heim. "We would not last a day. They will hunt you down like a snake, and the other ringleaders as well. Your purge, as you call it, will appear as child's play beside what the Mongoloids will do. Their memories are long and they are vicious and vindictive."
"Their memories are no longer than their records," retorted Winchester. "The records have been destroyed, as well as the men who made them. The agents who knew me by sight are dead now, every last one of them. Only Lohan himself could pick me out from this mob — and he dare not try.
"The instant I destroyed the files, the numbers on our backs became meaningless. There is no way for them to know whether you or I or any other man is more dangerous than some poor fellow, let us say, who was sent here simply because he failed to perform the kow-tow quickly."
Heim remained gloomily unconvinced.
"I meant to put the weapons in your hands. I was forestalled," Winchester went on in eager earnestness. "There, and there only, I failed. There is only one thing to do. We must make our weapons. We can still prevail!"
Heim laughed outright, and held out his open hands.
"What weapons?" he asked hollowly. "They have paralyzers, ray and electron guns that kill instantly and at a distance. And we are expected to attack them with sticks! Behind these guards we see stands the army — the picked force kept on Earth to protect the Khan.
"If by some miracle we could overcome the guards, they would send in the army. No. Empty-handed we can do nothing, except offer the same sullen resistance we have always presented."
"No alert man has to go empty-handed long," asserted Winchester, trying to bolster the man with his own assurance. "Long before the invention of such weapons as the paralyzer and the electron gun, men fought wars and killed each other. The history books were burned before your time, but not before mine. What weapons we need, we can make or improvise."
"Like what?" Heim demanded.
"I will show you," said Winchester quietly, and he began to make marks upon the floor.
CHAPTER XX
Final Challenge
Winchester had a little time, he knew. He grinned in triumph as he imagined the consternation reigning among the surviving AFPA men, now that they had learned how they had been tricked.
He had a vivid mental picture of their chagrin, as they poked among the ashes of the records, only to find that the work of two generations had gone up in smoke.
But the grimmest satisfaction of all was to be had from picturing Lohan's fury, as soon as the prince should come and learn the truth. It was easy to predict that in his mad rage, Lohan would have all the surviving guards at Central Station summarily executed.
Yes, the resourceful American had time — a few hours, at least.
He and Heim worked frantically to make the most of them. For the nucleus of the revolt, they chose but a hundred of their closest friends at first. These were sent scurrying about the machinery in the dome, gathering up the material Winchester had asked for.
In half an hour, piles of metal parts lay about, and men were plying their tools feverishly to fashion wooden stocks their leader had sketched out for them.
"Now, look, men," said Winchester, seeing everything needed was at hand. "In the old days before death rays were invented, men fought by hurling missiles. In my time, this was done by firing lumps of steel out of steel tubes by means of a powerful explosive. But long before the invention of the rifle and cannon, men had developed other ways.
"The one I am about to show you was among the most deadly. It is silent and makes no flash, yet will kill surely and efficiently at a considerable distance."
He picked up one of the hardwood stocks. A skilled workman handed him a slightly curved blade of metal. It was a leaf from a spring made for one of the small ore cars used on the Moon, but modified for its new purpose. Winchester fastened it to the small end of the stock.
Next he added a ratchet and a pawl and rigged them to the side of the stock, together with an operating lever. He inserted a trigger mechanism, last of all strung a short length of high-tensile wire from one end of the spring to the other.
"This is a crossbow," explained Winchester, "and I energize it thus."
He engaged the wire of the bow on the trigger, and began jacking it backward by turning the ratchet.
"The spring is now under great tension. I place an iron bolt in this groove and aim so..."
Winchester looked about him. Perched in a swinging gondola above them was one of the ever-present guards. At the moment he was not alert, since the conspirators had worked so quietly that no suspicion had been aroused. Winchester drew a careful bead on him, allowing for the curve of the trajectory. He squeezed the trigger.
There was a sharp, low twang — inaudible above the roar of the busy shop — and the bent spring sprang back to straightness with a jerk. The whizzing bolt had sped away, propelled by the powerful kinetic force released. The convicts followed its flight with eager eyes.
They saw a red blotch appear behind the guard's ear, saw him slump without a whimper to the floor of his hanging lookout.
They started, listening; but there was no other sound to follow. The general alarm did not ring. The stricken guard had had no time to give it, and no one else had heard or seen.
The prisoners needed no further demonstration. Each grabbed a set of parts laid out before him and began hastily assembling his own weapon. In a few minutes Heim was among them, whispering to each where he was to go, and passing out ammunition.
"Two of you will account for each guard," Winchester instructed them carefully.
"Just in case one misses. If we are lucky, we can knock them all off before they can muster their reserves. Then, as the relief shift comes on, we'll go at them while they are on their way to their posts."
The men nodded and slipped away in pairs.
Not all the guards were killed at the first shot, or even hit. Some heard the clang of the bolt against their armored niches and stood up to peer down at the throng below. The second or third bolt usually did its work. In no case did a sentry realize his danger in time to jab the button that would set the sirens howling.
Winchester's men swiftly climbed to the lookout perches and robbed the dead guardsmen of their weapons. A half hour later they lay in half a hundred separate ambushes. They brought down the new guard as it came in to relieve the old.
"We have a hundred paralyzers now," Winchester exulted, "and as many lightning guns. The next step will be to turn in the alarm. It should come from a distant building, while we wait here near the sally-port of the guardhouse. I have sent a man already; — he should be at his post at any moment."
Gongs began to clang and the sirens wail. Winchester ran, leading his resolute gang to an outside corner of the guardhouse. They arrived just as the gates swung open and the riot squad burst forth. The convict fire caught the guardsmen on the flank and unawares, since they were bent on getting to the building whence the false alarm had come.
The surprised soldiers went down in windrows under the hail of lightning bolts and paralytic rays.
"Never mind them — they're washed up!" yelled Winchester. "Into the guardhouse, quick, before the door is closed!"
The inner guards were quickly disposed of. But by that time the great triple-warning signal