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have had no fears about the climb. Within this casing, such movement was another matter.
But to shuck the suit might be far more dangerous. It might even be deadly dangerous to
continue to go helmetless here. Only the need for sight made him dare it.
As he had foreseen, the climb was difficult, and he had to pull himself up and along by
grasping both rails. The ladder was metal, a smooth surface on which his boots, unless
planted very carefully, were inclined to slip. Space suits were equipped with magnetic plates
in the soles to counter just such perils,
but on his suit they were no longer in service.
He traveled through another tube now, this rising straight up instead of running
horizontally as had the first. Again there were no breaks in the walls, no landings giving on
any level. Ayyar continued to climb, pausing every few steps to listen, sniff, await a warning
from his inner alert.
The light grew brighter as he advanced, near that of a moonlit night in the upper world.
Ayyar marveled at the walls; there were no signs of plate seams. The whole great tube might
have been cast in a single piece. There was a chill here, an alien feel that triggered his old
revulsion. Yet he was sure that the technology Naill Renfro had once known had nothing in
common with these burrows.
There was an end to the ladder stair at long last. He came into a second round area
from which again ran hallways. But none of these were doored by locks. Here he made the
daunting discovery that he could no longer depend upon his nose for guide. Too many
odors, all foul by Iftin standards, fought one another. He could take any one of those
passages and not be sure that it led him aright. Which way ?
"Try "
Ayyar half crouched, his hand on the sword hilt which was to him the natural
weapon. Then he knew that word had not been spoken in his ear as it had seemed for
one wild instant, but rather had formed in his mind.
That?
"Try sword " Again, and very faint, a shadow picture only, of a thin face, an Iftin face
the eyes closed in slumber or something deeper than slumber the cheeks a little sunken
Illylle! Not quite as he had seen her last, but still Illylle.
He did not cry her name aloud, but he strove to make it carry along his reaching
thought of her to bring him assurance that it was she who had sought him thus.
"Try the sword " The lips of that shadow face in his mind did move.
Ayyar drew the sword, swung to face the nearest hall. He did not know what he
expected, but there was nothing just the sword pointing. Slowly he turned to the next,
again nothing. But at the third ahhh
Not the green light that had once dripped from it, no, this was a spark only, flashing and
gone again in an instant. Warning or guide? He must believe the latter.
He passed at his suit-dictated shuffle into that passage, the sword, pointing now to the
floor, giving him no further sign. This was not a round tube. The ceiling was higher. And
now and then he saw scratches on the walls as if large, moving objects had forced their way
along with some difficulty.
"Illylle?" Once more he mind-called.
"Watch sword " No longer her face, just those words, and with them a sense of
danger, as if this communication could awaken some peril. So he broke contact. Yet he was
heartened; he no longer walked so alone in this place.
The hum in the walls was stronger. He could feel also a kind of pulsation in the air. The
stink of
machines, a strong stench that gave him the impression of age, of long entrenchment in this
place was heavy. There was the outline of a door in the wall to his left and above it a
shuttered slit. He paused to look within.
Vast dusky things he could not identify machines, he guessed. And from there the
hum was a muted roar not truly of sound, but of vibration. It was hard to equate this place
with the White Forest, wit hTha t as he had thought o fIt a power beyond such toys of
men, as was the Mirror of Thanth, and what reached through it, far beyond the knowledge
of the Iftin who had followed another path of life altogether.
What wa sThat ? He was beginning to revise his ideas. Or was all this merely used by
the servants here? Who had built all this and why?
After Ayyar left the place of machines, there were no more doors. But shortly he
passed between two crystal plates set facing each other. And his sword sparked.
Suspicion was triggered. He swung to the right, touched sword point to that sparkling
panel. A touch only, not hard enough to mar it, or so he had thought. But from the point of
that Iftin-forged blade, cracks spread in a web. The block became dull in an instant. At once
Ayyar turned and served the other panel in the same fashion. If that had been some warning
or control, as he suspected, then it would not operate again. But had the warning of his
coming already flashed ahead? Perhaps he had thus offered a challenge to what dwelt here.
He watched for more of the panels, intent upon breaking them before they could relay
his advance. There were two more such.
Perhaps he gained too much self-confidence by his small successes. He was not
prepared for what followed when he paused to rest by that last panel. Suddenly he found
himself walking, or rather the suit was walking, carrying him with it. In spite of his struggles,
his attempts to throw himself out of stride, even to the floor, it continued to carry him ahead.
By concentrating all his will on a single bit of action, Ayyar was able to force the hand
holding his sword to return that weapon to its sheath. He was afraid that whatever now
controlled the suit might drop or throw away that blade upon which he centered all his
hopes of ever coming out of this place alive. He had thought that the "heart" he had
removed from the suit had been its control. But it would seem that the covering in which he
was now a prisoner was still sensitive to outside command. It even moved more quickly,
with greater ease than he had been able to use. Ayyar was being transported, as much a
helpless captive as that off-worlder he had seen brought into this maze.
The suit bore him steadily past other doors, with only a short chance to look inside.
More machines but these smaller and always totally unfamiliar. Now, here was another
of the curving stairs and the suit confidently climbed.
Illylle, he longed to reach to her. Not that she could give him any answer to this last
disaster, but because he needed, oh, how greatly, some contact with reality. What was here
was not life as he knew it, rather something opposed to his species for all the ages.
Yet he dared not give his spirit that bolstering. How he knew that, he was not certain,
only that it was as true as any oath laid upon him. His hands lay helpless within the gloves,
reaching for fresh holds to draw him up each step his unwilling feet took. Up and up
where?
When he came out of that second stairway, he was not alone any longer. One of the
ovoid space suits rolled along. Ayyar waited for recognition, for the thing to make some
move toward him. Not until it had passed, was several paces away, did Ayyar realize that it
had not been sent to deal with him. But his suit thrust him along in its wake.
His inner sense was a warrior waiting battle, the kind of battle which is the last stand
against the assault of the enemy. Ayyar snarled. About him was a choking stench. His fear
was cloaked and armed with anger. Already he knew that it was all o fThat .
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