ALL AT ONCE Mura’s weight was gone, the strain on his
shoulders no longer pulled him apart. Dane looked over the edge of
the wall. A series of holes, black near him, still glowing red
farther down, were clear to see in the gloom. His aching fingers
released hold on the belts and they clattered to the floor.
When the red faded from the last of the holes the blaster had
cut, Dane pulled on the gloves, clipped to his tunic cuffs against
the cold of Limbo, and swung over to test the ladder. Though it
ended well above the floor, he dropped the last few feet without
difficulty.
Mura had out his aid kit and was working on Ali’s beaten
face as Dane came up.
“The torch,” the steward ordered impatiently,
“give me some light here !”
So Dane provided the light needed for the job of temporary
patchwork. When the steward was done, Ali was able to see a little
and had been supplied with a vita-cube and a limited drink of
emergency stimulant. He could not twist his battered features with
a smile, but some of the old light tone was back in his voice as he
spoke:
“How did you get here—by flitter?”
Mura got to his feet and gazed up into the vast dome which
arched above the maze.
“No. But one could be of use here, yes—”
“Yes is right!” Torn and swollen lips kept
Kamil’s words a mumble, but the engineer-apprentice was
determined to talk. “I thought I was coasting with dead jets
all right until you showed up. When that Rich shut me in here he
said there was a way out if I were just clever enough to find it.
But I didn’t think it meant you had to have wings!”
”What is this anyway?” Dane asked. “Their
prison?”
“Partly that, partly something else. You know what’s
going on here?” Ali’s voice was shrill with excitement.
“They’ve found an installation left by the
Forerunners—and the thing still runs! It brings down any ship
within a certain range—smashes ’em up here. Then this gang of Patrol
Posteds goes out and loots the wrecks!”
“They’ve got the Queen pinned down,” Dane told
him. “If she tries to lift she’ll
crash—”
“So that’s it! They have had to run the machine at a
more steady pace than usual and there was some talk—before
they threw me in here—about how long it will go without a
rest. Seems that before it switched on and off mechanically after
some impulse pattern they don’t understand. Anyway, the key
to the whole set up is somewhere here in this blasted puzzle
house!”
“The installation in here?” Mura eyed the walls
about them as if he were ready to pull the secret out of their very
substance.
“Either that, or something important concerning it. There
is a way through here—if you know the trail. Twice since
I’ve been wandering around I heard people talking, once just
on the other side of a wall. Only I never could get through to the
right halls—” Ali sighed. “I had about reached
the end of my orbit when you came jetting out of the
ether.”
Dane buckled his belt around him and now he drew his blaster.
With it on the lowest pressure he began to use it, methodically
burning a series of holds up to meet those Mura had left at a
higher level.
“We can go and see,” he said as he worked.
“You will go,” Mura told him. “And you will do
it with secrecy—avoiding as much as possible any trouble. Ali
cannot walk the walls, not now. But see if from above you can find
this trail he talks of. Then with your guidance we can
move—”
That was sensible enough. Dane waited for the pocks to cool,
listening to Mura explain all that had happened since Ali had
disappeared, hearing in turn Kamil’s account of his own
adventures.
“There were two of them waiting in ambush and they jumped
me,” he said with open disgust at his own lack of caution.
“They had individual flyers!” There was awe in his
tone. “Something else they found here. Great Space, this
place is a storehouse of Forerunner material! Rich is using things
he doesn’t know the meaning of—or why they work—or anything! These mountains are a regular warehouse. Well, with
those flyers on they nipped me up and out—knocked me out. And
when I came to I was tied up on one of those worm crawlers of
theirs. Then I had a little question session with Rich and a couple
of his burn-off boys—” Ali’s voice sounded grim
and he did not go into details, his face gave evidence enough of
that period. “Afterwards they made a few bright remarks and
shoved me in here and I’ve probably been going around in
circles ever since. But—do you realize—this place,
it’s what everyone had been hunting for for years! Forerunner
material—good as the day it was made. If we can get out of
here—”
“Yes, first the getting out,” Mura cut in.
“Also the matter of the
installation—”
Dane glanced at the top of the wall. “How am I going to
find you here again?”
“You will take bearings, Also,” Mura brought out his
torch, set it up on end and snapped the low power button.
“When you are aloft, see what kind of guide this
makes—”
Once more Dane made use of the holds and scrambled up on the
wall. He looked back. Yes, the beam from the torch cut straight up
in the gloom. In a very inferior way it was not unlike the beacon
on the Queen. He waved his hand to the two below and started out,
heading for the centre of the maze where Ali believed the secret of
the installation lay.
Walls angled, curved, took him right or left, so he had to
retrace time and again. And nowhere did he see any hall below which
led through the puzzle without interruption. If there was such a
one, its doorways might be controlled by sonics and so hidden to
the casual search.
But through his body coursed the heavy beat of the hidden
machine. He must be nearing the source. Then he was conscious of a heightened glow in the greyness ahead. It had none of the
sharp quality of a torch ray—rather it was as if the spectral
radiance of the walls had been stepped to a more concentrated
degree in that section. He slowed his pace to a shuffle as he
neared that centre, afraid that the click of his metallic boot
plates might betray him.
What he came to first was a double wall forming an oval area, a
space of three feet between the two smooth surfaces. Determined to
see what lay within, he made a risky jump from one to the next and
then crouched on his hands and knees, creeping up to peer down into
a room which was in stark contrast to the territory about it.
There were machines here—huge towering things—each
sealed into a box coating. And a good third of the encircling wall
was a bank of controls and dials, centred by a wide plate of smooth
metal which bore a likeness to the visaplates he knew.
But that screen mirrored no scene from the outer world on its
surface. Instead it was uniformly black and across it moved sparks
of light.
Watching this were three men. And, by the brighter light, Dane
was able to recognize Salzar Rich as well as the Rigellian who had
come in on the Queen. The third man, in a seat just before the
screen, his hands resting on a wide keyboard, was one he had never
seen before.
This was it! This was the rotten heart of Limbo which rendered
the blasted planet a menace to her particular corner of space! And
as long as that heart beat, as it was doing now in waves which he
could feel through his whole body, the Queen was tied to danger and
her crew were helpless—
But were they? Dane felt a tiny thrill of excitement. Rich was
making use of machines he did not really understand. And under
other hands the whole set-up could be rendered harmless. Perhaps by
watching now he himself could discover how to control the broadcast
which kept the Queen a prisoner.
The points of light moved on the screen and the three men
watched with a concentration of interest which argued of some
anxiety. None of them made any move to touch the levers or buttons on the panel. Dane wriggled on his belly towards a point
from which he could overhear any orders Rich might give. So he was
flattened out of sight a few minutes later when the sound of
running feet startled him. Someone was coming through the maze. It
was one of the outlaws and he wove a path from the crooked hall to
angled room in a manner which proved that he knew the secret. As he
came up against the barrier he threw back his head and shouted, his
voice ringing in the vast dome over their heads:
“Salzar!”
Rich whirled and then he flung out his right hand and made some
adjustment on the panel. A section of the wall slid back to admit
the newcomer.
Rich’s voice, chilly with irritation, floated up to the
watcher above:
“What’s the matter?”
The runner was still puffing, his beefy face showing flushed.
“Message from Algar, chief. He’s coming in—with
the Patrol riding his fins!”
“Patrol!” the man at the keyboard half turned in his
chair, his mouth slightly agape.
“Did you warn him that the pull was on?” demanded
Rich.
“Sure we did. But he can’t evade much longer. He
either earths or the Patrol nets him—”
Rich stood very still, his head slightly cocked so that he could
see the vision plate. His other assistant, the Rigellian, spoke
first:
“Always said we needed a com hook-up down here,” he
stated, with some of the content of one who is at last proved to be
right in a long argument.
The man at the controls had a quick answer for that.
“Yes—and how are you going to cut through the
interference to hear anything over it?” he began when Rich
snapped an order to the messenger:
“Get back up there and tell Jennis to order Algar to go
inert at once. In exactly two hours,” he was consulting his
watch, “we’ll off the pull for an hour—an hour,
that’s all. He’s to set down, make the best landing he can under power. It doesn’t
matter if he smashes the ship—he’ll work to save his
own skin all right. Then we’ll snap on the power and net the
Patroller when she comes in for the kill. Get it?”
“Two hours and then off pull—keep it off for one,
and he’s to make a landing then—then on pull,”
parroted the messenger. “Got it!”
He turned and pounded out of the room, back into the maze. For a
moment Dane longed to be twins so that he might follow that flight
and so find the way out of the puzzle. But it was more important
now to see how Rich was going to manipulate the installation to
neutralize the power for the landing of his subordinate’s
ship.
“Think he’ll make it?” asked the man at the
control board.
“Twelve to two he does,” snapped the Rigellian.
“Algar’s a master pilot.”
“He’ll have to take the pull coming in and be ready
to snap on his braking rockets the minute it fades—tricky
stuff—” It was plain that the other was dubious.
Rich was still watching the vision plate. Two new lights
appeared on its surface. But their fluttering across it was so
erratic that Dane, not being briefed on the use of this alien
recorder, could make nothing of that weird dance.
Rich’s lips were moving, counting off seconds, his eyes
going from his watch to the plate and back again. The atmosphere
grew more tense. At the control board the man’s shoulders
were hunched, his attention glued to the row of buttons at his
finger tips. While the Rigellian strode with the peculiar gliding
walk of his kind to the far end of the wall panel, his scaled,
bluish six-fingered hand outstretched to one lever there.
“Wait—!” It was the man at the keyboard.
“It’s pulsing again—!”
Rich spat a blistering oath. On the screen the dots were moving
up and down in a crazy race. And Dane was conscious that the hum of
the installation varied, that the beat had developed a tripping
accent.
“Get it back!” Rich sped to the keyboard. “Get
it back!”
The man showed a face damp with sweat. “How can I?”
he demanded. “We don’t know why it does
this.”
“Shorten the beam—that helped once before,”
that was the Rigellian. Of the three he showed the least
emotion.
The man pressed two buttons. All three stared at the screen for
the results of that move. The wildly flying dots settled down to a
pattern not far different from the one they had made when Dane had
first come upon the scene.
“How far out does it pull now?” asked Rich.
“Atmosphere level.”
“And the ships?”
His underling squinted at the board and consulted some dials.
“They won’t come into the pull for one—maybe two
hours. When we cut like that it takes time to build up the power
again. Anyway this doesn’t affect that blasted trader
any—she can’t lift.”
Rich took a small box from his pocket, poured some of its
contents into the palm of his hand and licked it up. “It is
pleasant to know that something is going right,” he
observed with a chill in his voice which made Dane’s skin
prickle.
“We don’t know much about this,” the man
thumbed the edge of the keyboard. “None of us has been
trained to use it right. And it was alien made to begin
with—”
“Let me know when and if you can get it back on full power
again,” was all the answer Rich made.
Two hours before they could turn on the full power, Dane
thought. Now if in those two hours he and Mura—and maybe
Kosti and Ali—could move—that lever the Rigellian had
reached for—it must control something important. And if they
could take over this room and the men in it, they would learn even
more about its operation. Suppose the Patrol ship could make a safe
landing on the tail of the outlaw they were pursuing—! What
should be his next move?
Rich decided it for him. His jaws moving in a rhythmical
chewing, the outlaw leader walked towards the hidden door.
“You say two hours,” he spoke over his shoulder as he
went. “It’ll be much better all around if you halve
that, understand? I’ll be back in an hour—be ready to cut in the full
beam then.” He nodded curtly to the Rigellian and stepped
through the opening in the wall.
And this time Dane was ready to follow. He allowed Rich a good
start and trailed the other through the winding ways which the
outlaw threaded with the ease of much practice. Before they had
drawn level with the small beacon provided by Mura’s torch, a
beacon Rich could not sight from the floor, Dane had the secret of
the maze. Two right turns, then one left, and then three right once
more, skip the next passage opening and repeat. Rich had made the
same pattern four times and Dane was sure that it would continue to
carry him to the outer door of the puzzle. But, having learned
that, the Trader waited on the wall for the other to work his way
five corridors ahead before he crossed to the room where he had
left Mura and Ali.
He found Kamil up and walking about now, restored by the
steward’s first aid. And as Dane climbed down their crude
ladder they closed in on him.
“—That’s it,” he ended his report.
“The Patrol’s riding in on this bird’s jet
stream. As long as they both stay out of the atmosphere
they’re safe. But once the pull is working full power
again—” he snapped his fingers.
“Our move!” Kamil got out the words between his
swollen lips. “We’ve got to cut that power
off—totally!”
“Yes,” Mura crossed to the holds on the wall.
“But first we collect Kosti—”
“How can you get him here? He said he can’t walk the
walls—”
“A man can do anything if he is forced to it,” Mura
replied. “You will stay here—I shall bring Kosti. But
first show me the route which takes one to this
‘heart’—”
Dane reclimbed the wall behind the steward, led the way across
the three intervening spaces to that corridor he had seen Rich
traversing. And there he repeated the pattern the outlaw had
followed. Mura smiled his placid smile.
“It is very simple, is it not? Now, you wait with
Kamil—and do nothing foolish until I return. This is most
interesting—”
Dane obediently went back to the room where they had left the
engineer-apprentice. Kamil sat on the floor, his back against one
of the walls, his battered face turned to the torch light. As
Dane’s boots hit the pavement he turned his head.
“Welcome aboard,” he mouthed. “Now tell me
about that installation—” he went on into a series of
questions about what Dane had seen, which sometimes left the
cargo-apprentice floundering. Of the machines he had seen little
because of their casings. And he could not describe the control
panel very well, having been at the time more intent on the actions
of the men by it. He admitted this with some of his old feeling of
inadequacy. A Trader kept his eyes open, a Trader had to use both
his eyes and his brain at one and the same time. Here he had had
another opportunity which he had apparently muffed. And a little of
the old antagonism sparked to life inside him.
“What is their source of power?” Ali demanded of
the room about them. “We’ve nothing like
it—nothing at all! There must be things here which will put
us years ahead—generations—”
“Providing of course,” Dane broke in a little
sourly, “that we get to use them. We aren’t the winners
yet.”
“Neither are we licked,” Ali retorted.
It was as if their roles had been reversed. Now it was Kamil who
was building castles, Dane who did the under-mining.
“If Stotz and I could have a couple of hours in that
place! By the Black Hole, we did pick a winner when we bid on
Limbo—”
Ali seemed able to ignore the fact that Rich was still very much
in command of the situation, that the Queen was pegged down, and
that the enemy had a force which could render their headquarters
impenetrable. The more Kamil enlarged on the future to come, the
more flaws Dane could see in their actions in the immediate
present. But they were both lifted out of their thoughts by a soft
hail from above.
“Mura!” Dane jumped to his feet. The steward had
been successful in his mission, a second man stood on the wall
above, one hand resting on the steward’s shoulder.
“Yes,” was hissed down at them. “Now it is for
you to climb. Up quickly, both of you, time runs out !”
Ali went first, and once or twice he bit off an exclamation as
his exertions wrung his sore body. Dane caught up the beacon torch,
snapped it off, and went after.
“Now this is what we shall do,” Mura was clearly in
command, as he had been all the time since they had entered the
mountain. “Kosti and Ali shall go by the regular path to the
room of the installation. While you and I, Thorson, will take the
route along the wall top. They are expecting Rich to return there.
Your entrance in his place should surprise them long enough for us
to go into action. We must get at that switch and immobilize it.
And do whatever else we can to make this devil thing incapable of
action in the future. So—now we move—”
They made their way back to the path Rich had used, Kosti
walking slowly with his hand on the steward’s shoulder,
visible shudders shaking his big body. There once more they used
the linked belts and lowered the jetman and Ali to the floor of the
maze.
The brighter glow of the installation section was their guide
now and they reached the oval wall easily. Mura gestured at Kosti
and the jetman raised his voice in the same call the messenger had
given earlier. The other three stood tense, ready to move if it
worked.
“Salzar!”
Dane’s attention was fixed on the Rigellian. The
Alien’s head went up, his round eyes sought the hidden
doorway. It was going to work because that blue hand went to the
proper button among the controls. And outside the barrier Kosti
stood waiting, his blaster drawn and ready to fire, the unarmed Ali
behind him.
ALL AT ONCE Mura’s weight was gone, the strain on his
shoulders no longer pulled him apart. Dane looked over the edge of
the wall. A series of holes, black near him, still glowing red
farther down, were clear to see in the gloom. His aching fingers
released hold on the belts and they clattered to the floor.
When the red faded from the last of the holes the blaster had
cut, Dane pulled on the gloves, clipped to his tunic cuffs against
the cold of Limbo, and swung over to test the ladder. Though it
ended well above the floor, he dropped the last few feet without
difficulty.
Mura had out his aid kit and was working on Ali’s beaten
face as Dane came up.
“The torch,” the steward ordered impatiently,
“give me some light here !”
So Dane provided the light needed for the job of temporary
patchwork. When the steward was done, Ali was able to see a little
and had been supplied with a vita-cube and a limited drink of
emergency stimulant. He could not twist his battered features with
a smile, but some of the old light tone was back in his voice as he
spoke:
“How did you get here—by flitter?”
Mura got to his feet and gazed up into the vast dome which
arched above the maze.
“No. But one could be of use here, yes—”
“Yes is right!” Torn and swollen lips kept
Kamil’s words a mumble, but the engineer-apprentice was
determined to talk. “I thought I was coasting with dead jets
all right until you showed up. When that Rich shut me in here he
said there was a way out if I were just clever enough to find it.
But I didn’t think it meant you had to have wings!”
”What is this anyway?” Dane asked. “Their
prison?”
“Partly that, partly something else. You know what’s
going on here?” Ali’s voice was shrill with excitement.
“They’ve found an installation left by the
Forerunners—and the thing still runs! It brings down any ship
within a certain range—smashes ’em up here. Then this gang of Patrol
Posteds goes out and loots the wrecks!”
“They’ve got the Queen pinned down,” Dane told
him. “If she tries to lift she’ll
crash—”
“So that’s it! They have had to run the machine at a
more steady pace than usual and there was some talk—before
they threw me in here—about how long it will go without a
rest. Seems that before it switched on and off mechanically after
some impulse pattern they don’t understand. Anyway, the key
to the whole set up is somewhere here in this blasted puzzle
house!”
“The installation in here?” Mura eyed the walls
about them as if he were ready to pull the secret out of their very
substance.
“Either that, or something important concerning it. There
is a way through here—if you know the trail. Twice since
I’ve been wandering around I heard people talking, once just
on the other side of a wall. Only I never could get through to the
right halls—” Ali sighed. “I had about reached
the end of my orbit when you came jetting out of the
ether.”
Dane buckled his belt around him and now he drew his blaster.
With it on the lowest pressure he began to use it, methodically
burning a series of holds up to meet those Mura had left at a
higher level.
“We can go and see,” he said as he worked.
“You will go,” Mura told him. “And you will do
it with secrecy—avoiding as much as possible any trouble. Ali
cannot walk the walls, not now. But see if from above you can find
this trail he talks of. Then with your guidance we can
move—”
That was sensible enough. Dane waited for the pocks to cool,
listening to Mura explain all that had happened since Ali had
disappeared, hearing in turn Kamil’s account of his own
adventures.
“There were two of them waiting in ambush and they jumped
me,” he said with open disgust at his own lack of caution.
“They had individual flyers!” There was awe in his
tone. “Something else they found here. Great Space, this
place is a storehouse of Forerunner material! Rich is using things
he doesn’t know the meaning of—or why they work—or anything! These mountains are a regular warehouse. Well, with
those flyers on they nipped me up and out—knocked me out. And
when I came to I was tied up on one of those worm crawlers of
theirs. Then I had a little question session with Rich and a couple
of his burn-off boys—” Ali’s voice sounded grim
and he did not go into details, his face gave evidence enough of
that period. “Afterwards they made a few bright remarks and
shoved me in here and I’ve probably been going around in
circles ever since. But—do you realize—this place,
it’s what everyone had been hunting for for years! Forerunner
material—good as the day it was made. If we can get out of
here—”
“Yes, first the getting out,” Mura cut in.
“Also the matter of the
installation—”
Dane glanced at the top of the wall. “How am I going to
find you here again?”
“You will take bearings, Also,” Mura brought out his
torch, set it up on end and snapped the low power button.
“When you are aloft, see what kind of guide this
makes—”
Once more Dane made use of the holds and scrambled up on the
wall. He looked back. Yes, the beam from the torch cut straight up
in the gloom. In a very inferior way it was not unlike the beacon
on the Queen. He waved his hand to the two below and started out,
heading for the centre of the maze where Ali believed the secret of
the installation lay.
Walls angled, curved, took him right or left, so he had to
retrace time and again. And nowhere did he see any hall below which
led through the puzzle without interruption. If there was such a
one, its doorways might be controlled by sonics and so hidden to
the casual search.
But through his body coursed the heavy beat of the hidden
machine. He must be nearing the source. Then he was conscious of a heightened glow in the greyness ahead. It had none of the
sharp quality of a torch ray—rather it was as if the spectral
radiance of the walls had been stepped to a more concentrated
degree in that section. He slowed his pace to a shuffle as he
neared that centre, afraid that the click of his metallic boot
plates might betray him.
What he came to first was a double wall forming an oval area, a
space of three feet between the two smooth surfaces. Determined to
see what lay within, he made a risky jump from one to the next and
then crouched on his hands and knees, creeping up to peer down into
a room which was in stark contrast to the territory about it.
There were machines here—huge towering things—each
sealed into a box coating. And a good third of the encircling wall
was a bank of controls and dials, centred by a wide plate of smooth
metal which bore a likeness to the visaplates he knew.
But that screen mirrored no scene from the outer world on its
surface. Instead it was uniformly black and across it moved sparks
of light.
Watching this were three men. And, by the brighter light, Dane
was able to recognize Salzar Rich as well as the Rigellian who had
come in on the Queen. The third man, in a seat just before the
screen, his hands resting on a wide keyboard, was one he had never
seen before.
This was it! This was the rotten heart of Limbo which rendered
the blasted planet a menace to her particular corner of space! And
as long as that heart beat, as it was doing now in waves which he
could feel through his whole body, the Queen was tied to danger and
her crew were helpless—
But were they? Dane felt a tiny thrill of excitement. Rich was
making use of machines he did not really understand. And under
other hands the whole set-up could be rendered harmless. Perhaps by
watching now he himself could discover how to control the broadcast
which kept the Queen a prisoner.
The points of light moved on the screen and the three men
watched with a concentration of interest which argued of some
anxiety. None of them made any move to touch the levers or buttons on the panel. Dane wriggled on his belly towards a point
from which he could overhear any orders Rich might give. So he was
flattened out of sight a few minutes later when the sound of
running feet startled him. Someone was coming through the maze. It
was one of the outlaws and he wove a path from the crooked hall to
angled room in a manner which proved that he knew the secret. As he
came up against the barrier he threw back his head and shouted, his
voice ringing in the vast dome over their heads:
“Salzar!”
Rich whirled and then he flung out his right hand and made some
adjustment on the panel. A section of the wall slid back to admit
the newcomer.
Rich’s voice, chilly with irritation, floated up to the
watcher above:
“What’s the matter?”
The runner was still puffing, his beefy face showing flushed.
“Message from Algar, chief. He’s coming in—with
the Patrol riding his fins!”
“Patrol!” the man at the keyboard half turned in his
chair, his mouth slightly agape.
“Did you warn him that the pull was on?” demanded
Rich.
“Sure we did. But he can’t evade much longer. He
either earths or the Patrol nets him—”
Rich stood very still, his head slightly cocked so that he could
see the vision plate. His other assistant, the Rigellian, spoke
first:
“Always said we needed a com hook-up down here,” he
stated, with some of the content of one who is at last proved to be
right in a long argument.
The man at the controls had a quick answer for that.
“Yes—and how are you going to cut through the
interference to hear anything over it?” he began when Rich
snapped an order to the messenger:
“Get back up there and tell Jennis to order Algar to go
inert at once. In exactly two hours,” he was consulting his
watch, “we’ll off the pull for an hour—an hour,
that’s all. He’s to set down, make the best landing he can under power. It doesn’t
matter if he smashes the ship—he’ll work to save his
own skin all right. Then we’ll snap on the power and net the
Patroller when she comes in for the kill. Get it?”
“Two hours and then off pull—keep it off for one,
and he’s to make a landing then—then on pull,”
parroted the messenger. “Got it!”
He turned and pounded out of the room, back into the maze. For a
moment Dane longed to be twins so that he might follow that flight
and so find the way out of the puzzle. But it was more important
now to see how Rich was going to manipulate the installation to
neutralize the power for the landing of his subordinate’s
ship.
“Think he’ll make it?” asked the man at the
control board.
“Twelve to two he does,” snapped the Rigellian.
“Algar’s a master pilot.”
“He’ll have to take the pull coming in and be ready
to snap on his braking rockets the minute it fades—tricky
stuff—” It was plain that the other was dubious.
Rich was still watching the vision plate. Two new lights
appeared on its surface. But their fluttering across it was so
erratic that Dane, not being briefed on the use of this alien
recorder, could make nothing of that weird dance.
Rich’s lips were moving, counting off seconds, his eyes
going from his watch to the plate and back again. The atmosphere
grew more tense. At the control board the man’s shoulders
were hunched, his attention glued to the row of buttons at his
finger tips. While the Rigellian strode with the peculiar gliding
walk of his kind to the far end of the wall panel, his scaled,
bluish six-fingered hand outstretched to one lever there.
“Wait—!” It was the man at the keyboard.
“It’s pulsing again—!”
Rich spat a blistering oath. On the screen the dots were moving
up and down in a crazy race. And Dane was conscious that the hum of
the installation varied, that the beat had developed a tripping
accent.
“Get it back!” Rich sped to the keyboard. “Get
it back!”
The man showed a face damp with sweat. “How can I?”
he demanded. “We don’t know why it does
this.”
“Shorten the beam—that helped once before,”
that was the Rigellian. Of the three he showed the least
emotion.
The man pressed two buttons. All three stared at the screen for
the results of that move. The wildly flying dots settled down to a
pattern not far different from the one they had made when Dane had
first come upon the scene.
“How far out does it pull now?” asked Rich.
“Atmosphere level.”
“And the ships?”
His underling squinted at the board and consulted some dials.
“They won’t come into the pull for one—maybe two
hours. When we cut like that it takes time to build up the power
again. Anyway this doesn’t affect that blasted trader
any—she can’t lift.”
Rich took a small box from his pocket, poured some of its
contents into the palm of his hand and licked it up. “It is
pleasant to know that something is going right,” he
observed with a chill in his voice which made Dane’s skin
prickle.
“We don’t know much about this,” the man
thumbed the edge of the keyboard. “None of us has been
trained to use it right. And it was alien made to begin
with—”
“Let me know when and if you can get it back on full power
again,” was all the answer Rich made.
Two hours before they could turn on the full power, Dane
thought. Now if in those two hours he and Mura—and maybe
Kosti and Ali—could move—that lever the Rigellian had
reached for—it must control something important. And if they
could take over this room and the men in it, they would learn even
more about its operation. Suppose the Patrol ship could make a safe
landing on the tail of the outlaw they were pursuing—! What
should be his next move?
Rich decided it for him. His jaws moving in a rhythmical
chewing, the outlaw leader walked towards the hidden door.
“You say two hours,” he spoke over his shoulder as he
went. “It’ll be much better all around if you halve
that, understand? I’ll be back in an hour—be ready to cut in the full
beam then.” He nodded curtly to the Rigellian and stepped
through the opening in the wall.
And this time Dane was ready to follow. He allowed Rich a good
start and trailed the other through the winding ways which the
outlaw threaded with the ease of much practice. Before they had
drawn level with the small beacon provided by Mura’s torch, a
beacon Rich could not sight from the floor, Dane had the secret of
the maze. Two right turns, then one left, and then three right once
more, skip the next passage opening and repeat. Rich had made the
same pattern four times and Dane was sure that it would continue to
carry him to the outer door of the puzzle. But, having learned
that, the Trader waited on the wall for the other to work his way
five corridors ahead before he crossed to the room where he had
left Mura and Ali.
He found Kamil up and walking about now, restored by the
steward’s first aid. And as Dane climbed down their crude
ladder they closed in on him.
“—That’s it,” he ended his report.
“The Patrol’s riding in on this bird’s jet
stream. As long as they both stay out of the atmosphere
they’re safe. But once the pull is working full power
again—” he snapped his fingers.
“Our move!” Kamil got out the words between his
swollen lips. “We’ve got to cut that power
off—totally!”
“Yes,” Mura crossed to the holds on the wall.
“But first we collect Kosti—”
“How can you get him here? He said he can’t walk the
walls—”
“A man can do anything if he is forced to it,” Mura
replied. “You will stay here—I shall bring Kosti. But
first show me the route which takes one to this
‘heart’—”
Dane reclimbed the wall behind the steward, led the way across
the three intervening spaces to that corridor he had seen Rich
traversing. And there he repeated the pattern the outlaw had
followed. Mura smiled his placid smile.
“It is very simple, is it not? Now, you wait with
Kamil—and do nothing foolish until I return. This is most
interesting—”
Dane obediently went back to the room where they had left the
engineer-apprentice. Kamil sat on the floor, his back against one
of the walls, his battered face turned to the torch light. As
Dane’s boots hit the pavement he turned his head.
“Welcome aboard,” he mouthed. “Now tell me
about that installation—” he went on into a series of
questions about what Dane had seen, which sometimes left the
cargo-apprentice floundering. Of the machines he had seen little
because of their casings. And he could not describe the control
panel very well, having been at the time more intent on the actions
of the men by it. He admitted this with some of his old feeling of
inadequacy. A Trader kept his eyes open, a Trader had to use both
his eyes and his brain at one and the same time. Here he had had
another opportunity which he had apparently muffed. And a little of
the old antagonism sparked to life inside him.
“What is their source of power?” Ali demanded of
the room about them. “We’ve nothing like
it—nothing at all! There must be things here which will put
us years ahead—generations—”
“Providing of course,” Dane broke in a little
sourly, “that we get to use them. We aren’t the winners
yet.”
“Neither are we licked,” Ali retorted.
It was as if their roles had been reversed. Now it was Kamil who
was building castles, Dane who did the under-mining.
“If Stotz and I could have a couple of hours in that
place! By the Black Hole, we did pick a winner when we bid on
Limbo—”
Ali seemed able to ignore the fact that Rich was still very much
in command of the situation, that the Queen was pegged down, and
that the enemy had a force which could render their headquarters
impenetrable. The more Kamil enlarged on the future to come, the
more flaws Dane could see in their actions in the immediate
present. But they were both lifted out of their thoughts by a soft
hail from above.
“Mura!” Dane jumped to his feet. The steward had
been successful in his mission, a second man stood on the wall
above, one hand resting on the steward’s shoulder.
“Yes,” was hissed down at them. “Now it is for
you to climb. Up quickly, both of you, time runs out !”
Ali went first, and once or twice he bit off an exclamation as
his exertions wrung his sore body. Dane caught up the beacon torch,
snapped it off, and went after.
“Now this is what we shall do,” Mura was clearly in
command, as he had been all the time since they had entered the
mountain. “Kosti and Ali shall go by the regular path to the
room of the installation. While you and I, Thorson, will take the
route along the wall top. They are expecting Rich to return there.
Your entrance in his place should surprise them long enough for us
to go into action. We must get at that switch and immobilize it.
And do whatever else we can to make this devil thing incapable of
action in the future. So—now we move—”
They made their way back to the path Rich had used, Kosti
walking slowly with his hand on the steward’s shoulder,
visible shudders shaking his big body. There once more they used
the linked belts and lowered the jetman and Ali to the floor of the
maze.
The brighter glow of the installation section was their guide
now and they reached the oval wall easily. Mura gestured at Kosti
and the jetman raised his voice in the same call the messenger had
given earlier. The other three stood tense, ready to move if it
worked.
“Salzar!”
Dane’s attention was fixed on the Rigellian. The
Alien’s head went up, his round eyes sought the hidden
doorway. It was going to work because that blue hand went to the
proper button among the controls. And outside the barrier Kosti
stood waiting, his blaster drawn and ready to fire, the unarmed Ali
behind him.