Even so, seven apes died, cut down by axes or with their own heads twisted off. The quick-to-learn protein brains of the semiautomatons imitated the actions of their antagonists, if it was to their advantage.
A little further on in the hall, thick sheets of metal slid down before and behind them to block off advance or retreat. Wolff had forgotten this until just a second before the plates were lowered. They descended swiftly but not so swiftly that he did not have time to topple a marble stone pedestal with a statue on it. The end of the fallen column lay under the plate and prevented its complete closure. The forces driving the plate were, however, so strong that the edge of the plate began to drive into the stone. The party slid on their backs through the decreasing space. At the same time, water flooded into the area. If it had not been for the delay in closing the plate, they would have been drowned.
Sloshing ankle deep in water, they went down the hall and up another flight of steps. Wolff stopped them by a window, through which he cast an axe. No thunder and lightning resulted, so he leaned out and called Podarge and her eagles in to him. Having been blocked off by the plates, they had gone outside to find another route.
“We are close to the heart of the palace, to the room in which the Lord must be,” he said. “Every corridor from here on in has walls which hold dozens of laser beam-projectors. The beams can form a network through which no one could penetrate alive.”
He paused, then said, “The Lord could sit in there forever. The fuel for his projectors will not give out, and he has food and drink enough to last for any siege. But there’s an old military axiom which states that any defense, no matter how formidable, can be broken if the right offense is found.”
He said to Kickaha, “When you took the gate through the Atlantean tier, you left the crescent behind you. Do you remember where?”
Kickaha grinned and said, “Yeah! I stuck it behind a statue in a room near the swimming pool. But what if it was found by the gworl?”
“Then I’ll have to think of something else. Let’s see if we can find the crescent.”
“What’s the idea?” Kickaha said in a low voice.
Wolff explained that Arwoor must have an escape route from the control room. As Wolff remembered it, there was a crescent set in the floor and several loose ones available. Each of these, when placed in contact with the immobile crescent, would open a gate to the universe for which the loose one had a resonance. None of them gave access to other levels of the planet in this universe. Only the horn could affect a gate between tiers.
“Sure,” Kickaha said. “But what good will the crescent do us even if we find it? It has to be matched up against another, and where’s the other? Anyway, anyone using it would only be taken through to Earth.”
Wolff pointed over his back to indicate the long leather box slung there by a strap.” I have the horn.”
They started down a corridor. Podarge strode after them. “What are you up to?” she asked fiercely.
Wolff answered that they were looking for means to get within the control room. Podarge should stay behind to handle any emergency. She refused, saying that she wanted them in her sight now that they were so close to the Lord. Besides, if they could get through to the Lord, they would have to take her along. She reminded Wolff of his promise that the Lord would be hers to do with as she wished. He shrugged and walked on.
They located the room in which was the statue behind which Kickaha had concealed the crescent.
But it had been overturned in the struggle between apes and gworl. Their bodies lay sprawled around the room. Wolff stopped in surprise. He had seen no gworl since entering the palace and had taken it for granted that all had perished during the fight with the savages. The Lord had not sent all of them after Kickaha.
Kickaha cried, “The crescent’s gone!”
“Either it was found some time ago or someone just found it after the statue was knocked over,” Wolff said. “I have an idea of who did take it. Have you seen Abiru?”
Neither of the others had seen him since shortly after the invasion of the palace had started. The harpy, who was supposed to keep an eye on him, had lost him.
Wolff ran toward the labs with Kickaha and Podarge, wings half-opened, behind him. By the time he had covered the 3000 feet to it, Wolff was winded. Breathing hard, he stopped at the entrance.
“Vannax may be gone already and within the control room,” he said. “But if he’s still in there working on the crescent, we’d better enter quietly and hope to surprise him.”
“Vannax?” Podarge said.
Wolff swore mentally. He and Kickaha had not wanted to reveal the identity of Abiru until later. Podarge hated any Lord so much that she would have killed him at once. Wolff wanted to keep him alive because Vannax, if he did not try to betray them, could be valuable in the taking of the palace. Wolff had promised Vannax that he could go into another world to try his luck there if he helped them against Arwoor. And Vannax had explained how he had managed to get back to this universe. After Kickaha (born Finnegan) had accidentally come here, taking a crescent with him, Vannax had continued his search for another. He had been successful in, of all places, a pawn shop in Peoria, Illinois. How it had gotten there and what Lord had lost it on Earth would never be known. Doubtless there were other crescents in obscure places on Earth. However, the crescent he had found had passed him through a gate located on the Amerindian tier. Vannax had climbed Thayaphayawoed to Khamshem, where he had been lucky enough to capture the gworl, Chryseis, and the horn. Thereafter, he had made his way toward the palace hoping to get within.
Wolff muttered, “The old saying goes that you can’t trust a Lord.”
“What did you say?” Podarge asked. “And I repeat, who is Vannax?”
Wolff was relieved that she did not know the name. He answered that Abiru had sometimes disguised himself under that name. Not wanting to reply to any more questions, and feeling that time was vital, he entered the laboratory. It was a room broad enough and high-ceilinged enough to house a dozen jet airliners. Cabinets and consoles and various apparatuses, however, gave it a crowded appearance. A hundred yards away, Vannax was bent over a huge console, working with the buttons and levers.
Silently, the three advanced on him. They were soon close enough to see that two crescents were locked down on the console. On the broad screen above Vannax was the ghostly image of a third semicircle. Wavy lines of light ran across it.
Vannax suddenly gave an ah! of delight as another crescent appeared by the first on the screen. He manipulated several dials to make the two images move toward each other and then merge into a single one again.
Wolff knew that the machine was sending out a frequency-tracer and had located that of the crescent set into the floor of the control room. Next, Vannax would subject the crescents clamped to the console to a treatment which would change their resonance to match that of the control room. Where Vannax had gotten the two semicircles was a mystery until Wolff thought of that crescent which must have accompanied him when he passed through the gate to the Amerindian tier. Somehow, during the time between his capture and the flight, he had gotten hold of this crescent. He must have hidden it in the ruins before the ape had captured him.
Vannax looked up from his work, saw the three, glanced at the screen, and snatched the two crescents from the spring-type clamps on the console. The three ran toward him as he placed one crescent on the floor and then the other. He laughed, made an obscene gesture, and stepped into the circle, a dagger in his hand.
Wolff gave a cry of despair, for they were too far away to stop him. Then he stopped and threw a hand over his eyes, but too late to shut out the blinding flash. He heard Kickaha and Podarge, also blinded, shouting. He heard Vannax’s scream and smelled the burned flesh and clothes.
Sightlessly, he advanced until his feet touched the hot corpse.
“What the hell happened?” Kickaha said. “God, I hope we’re not permanently blinded!”
“Vannax th
ought he was slipping in through Arwoor’s gate in the control room,” Wolff said. “But Arwoor had set a trap. He could have been satisfied with wrecking the matcher, but it must have amused him to kill the man who would try it.”
He stood and waited, knowing that time was getting short and that he was not serving his cause or anyone else’s by his patience with his blindness. But there was nothing else he could do. And, after what seemed like an unbearably long time, sight began to come back.
Vannax was lying on his back, charred and unrecognizable. The two crescents were still on the floor and undamaged. These were separated a moment later by Wolff with a scribe from a console.
“He was a traitor,” Wolff said in a low voice to Kickaha. “But he did us a service. I meant to try the same trick, only I was going to use the horn to activate the crescent you hid after I’d changed its resonance.”
Pretending to inspect other consoles for boobytraps, he managed to get Kickaha and himself out of ear-range of Podarge.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he whispered. “But I’m going to have to. The horn must be used if we’re to drive Arwoor out of the control room or get him before he can use his crescents to escape.”
“I don’t get you,” Kickaha said.
“When I had the palace built, I incorporated a thermitic substance in the plastic shell of the control room. It can be triggered only by a certain sequence of notes from the horn, combined with another little trick. I don’t want to set the stuff off because the control room will then also be lost. And this place will be indefensible later against any other Lords.”
“You better do it,” Kickaha said. “Only thing is, what’s to keep Arwoor from getting away through the crescents?”
Wolff smiled and pointed at the console. “Arwoor should have destroyed that instead of indulging his sadistic imagination. Like all weapons, it’s twoedged.”
He activated the control, and, again, an image of the crescent shone on the screen. Curving lines of light ran across the plate. Wolff went to another console and opened a little door on the top to reveal a panel with unmarked controls. After flipping two, he pressed a button. The screen went blank.
“The resonance of his crescent has been changed,” Wolff said. “When he goes to use it with any of the others he has, he’ll get a hell of a shock. Not the kind Vannax got. He just won’t have a gate through which to escape.”
“You Lords are a mean, crafty, sneaky bunch,” Kickaha said. “But I like your style, anyway.”
He left the room. A moment later, his shouts came down the corridor. Podarge started to leave the room, then stopped to glare suspiciously at Wolff. He broke into a run. Podarge, satisfied he was coming, raced ahead. Wolff stopped and removed the horn from the case. He reached a finger into its mouth, hooked it through the only opening in the weblike structure therein large enough to accept his finger. A pull drew the web out. He turned it around and inserted it with its front now toward the inside of the horn. Then he put the horn back into the case and ran after the harpy.
She was with Kickaha, who was explaining that he thought he had seen a gworl but it was just a prowling eagle. Wolff said they must go back to the others. He did not explain that it was necessary that the horn be within a certain distance of the control room walls. When they had returned to the hall outside the control room, Wolff opened the case. Kickaha stood behind Podarge, ready to knock her unconscious if she started any trouble. What they could do with the eagles, besides sicking the apes on them, was another matter.
Podarge exclaimed when she saw the horn but made no hostile move. Wolff lifted the horn to his lips and hoped he could remember the correct sequence of notes. Much had come back to him since he had talked with Vannax; much was yet lost.
He had just placed the mouthpiece to his lips when a voice roared out. It seemed to come from ceiling and walls and floor, from everywhere. It spoke in the language of the Lords, for which Wolff was glad. Podarge would not know the tongue.
“Jadawin! I did not recognize you until I saw you with the horn! I thought you looked familiar—I should have known. But it’s been such a long time! How long?”
“It’s been many centuries, or millenia, depending upon the time scale. So, we two old enemies face each other again. But this time you have no way out. You will die as Vannax died.”
“How so?” roared Arwoor’s voice.
“I will cause the walls of your seemingly impregnable fortress to melt. You will either stay inside and roast or come out and die another way. I don’t think you’ll stay in.”
Suddenly he was seized with a concern and a sense of injustice. If Podarge should kill Arwoor, she would not be killing the man who was responsible for her present state. It did not matter that Arwoor would have done the same thing if he had been the Lord of this world at that time.
On the other hand, he, Wolff, was not to blame, either. He was not the lord Jadawin who had constructed this universe and then manipulated it so foully for so many of its creatures and abducted Terrestrials. The attack of amnesia had been complete; it had wiped all of Jadawin from him and made him a blank page. Out of the blankness had emerged a new man, Wolff, one incapable of acting like Jadawin or any of the other lords.
And he was still Wolff, except that he remembered what he had been. The thought made him sick and contrite and eager to make amends as best he could. Was this the way to start, by allowing Arwoor to die horribly for a crime he had not committed?”
“Jadawin!” boomed Arwoor. “You may think you have won this move! But I have topped you again! I have one more coin to put on the table, and its value is far more than what your horn will do to me!”
“And what is that?” Wolff asked. He had a black feeling that Arwoor was not bluffing.
“I’ve planted one of the bombs I brought with me when I was dispossessed of Chiffaenir. It’s under the palace, and when I so desire, it will go off and blow the whole top of this monolith off. It’s true I’ll die, too, but I’ll take my old enemy with me! And your woman and friends will die, too! Think of them!”
Wolff was thinking of them. He was in agony.
“What are your terms?” he asked. “I know that you don’t want to die. You’re so miserable you should want to die, but you’ve clung to your worthless life for ten thousand years.”
“Enough of your insults! Will you or won’t you? My finger is an inch above the button.” Arwoor chuckled and continued, “Even if I’m bluffing, which I’m not, you can’t afford to take the chance.”
Wolff spoke to the others, who had been listening without understanding but knew something drastic had happened. He explained as much as he dared, omitting any connection of himself with the Lords.
Podarge, her face a study in combined frustration and madness, said, “Ask him what his terms are.”
She added, “After this is all over, you have much to explain to me, O Wolff.”
Arwoor replied, “You must give me the silver horn, the all-precious and unique work of the master, Ilmarwolkin. I will use it to open the gate in the pool and pass through to the Atlantien tier. That is all I want, except your promise that none will come after me until the gate is closed.”
Wolff considered for a few seconds. Then he said, “Very well. You may come out now. I swear to you on my honor as Wolff and by the Hand of Detiuw that I will give you the horn and I will send no one after you until the gate is closed.”
Arwoor laughed and said, “I’m coming out.”
Wolff waited until the door at the end of the hall was swinging out. Knowing that he could not be overheard by Arwoor then, he said to Podarge, “Arwoor thinks he has us, and he may well be confident. He will emerge through the gate at a place forty miles from here, near Ikwekwa, a suburb of the city of Atlantis. He would still be at the mercy of you and your eagles if there were not another resonant point only ten miles from there. This point will open when the horn is blown and admit him to another universe. I will show you where it is after Arwoor goes through
the pool.”
Arwoor advanced confidently. He was a tall, broad-shouldered and good-looking man with wavy blond hair and blue eyes. He took the horn from Wolff, bowed ironically, and walked on down the hall. Podarge stared at him so madly that Wolff was afraid that she would leap upon him. But he had told her that he must keep his promises: the one to her and the one to Arwoor.
Arwoor strode past the silent and menacing files as if they were no more than statues of marble. Wolff did not wait for him to get to the pool, but went at once into the control room. A quick examination showed him that Arwoor had left a device which would depress the button to set off the bomb. Doubtless he had given himself plenty of time to get away. Nevertheless, Wolff sweated until he had removed the device. By then, Kickaha had returned from watching Arwoor go through the gate in the pool.
“He got away, all right,” he said, “but it wasn’t as easy as he had thought. The place of emergence was under water, caused by the flood he himself had created. He had to drop into the water and swim for it. He was still swimming when the gate closed.”
Wolff took Podarge into a huge map room, and indicated the town near which the gate was. Then, in the visual-room, he showed her the gate at close range on a screen. Podarge studied the map and the screen for a minute. She gave an order to her eagles, and they trooped out after her. Even the apes were awed by the glare of death in their eyes.
Arwoor was forty miles from the monolith, but he had ten miles to travel. Moreover, Podarge and her pets were launching themselves from a point 30,000 feet up. They would descend at such an angle and for such a distance that they could build up great speed. It would be a close race between Podarge and her quarry.