Two Black Sellers, or so Kickaha presumed they were from the caskets attached to their backs by harnesses, lay dead. Their necks were twisted almost completely around. ,Two Sellers, each holding a hand-beamer, were talking excitedly. One held what was left of the black cube in his hand. Kickaha grinned on seeing it. It had been damaged by the beamer and so must have stopped its relay. Thus, the Sellers would not know why the talos had attacked them or what the message was in the cube.
“Twenty-nine down. Twenty-one to go,” Kickaha said. He withdrew his head.
“They’ll be on their guard now,” he muttered. “The armory would’ve been unguarded, probably, if this hadn’t happened. But now that they know something’s stalking upwind, they’ll guard it for sure. Well, we’ll try another way. It could be dangerous, but then what isn’t? Let’s go back up the stairs.”
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He led Do Shuptarp to a room on the sixth story. This was about six hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide and contained stuffed animals, and some stuffed sentients, from many universes. They passed a transparent cube in which was embedded, like a dragonfly in amber, a creature that seemed to be half-insect, half-man. It had antennae and huge but quite human eyes, a narrow waist, skinny legs covered with a pinkish fuzz, four skinny arms, a great humped back, and four butterfly-like wings radiating from the hump.
Despite the urgency of action, Do Shuptarp stopped to look at the strangeling. Kickaha said, “That exhibit is ten thousand years old. That kwiswas, coleopter-man, is the product of Anana’s biolabs, or so I was told, anyway. The Lord of this world made a raid on his sister’s world and secured some specimens for his museum. This kwiswas, I understand, was Anana’s lover at that time, but you can’t believe everything you hear, especially if one Lord is telling it about another. And all that, of course, was some time ago.”
The monstrously large eyes had been staring through the thick plastic for ten millennia, five thousand years before civilization had set in on Earth. Though Kickaha had seen it before, he still felt an awe, an uneasiness, and insignificance before it. How strongly and cleverly had this creature fought to preserve its life, just as Kickaha was now fighting for his? Perhaps as vigorously and wildly. And then it had died, as he must, too, and it had been stuffed and set up to observe with unseeing eyes the struggles of others. AH passed . . .
He shook his head and blinked his eyes. To philosophize was fine, if you did so under appro-
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priate circumstances. These were not appropriate. Besides, so death came to all, even to those who avoided it as ingeniously and powerfully as he! So what? One extra minute of life was worth scrapping for, provided that the minutes that had gone before had been worthy minutes.
“I wonder what this thing’s story was?” Do Shuptarp muttered.
“Our story will come to a similar end if we don’t get a move on,” Kickaha said.
At the end wall of the room, he twisted a projection that looked as fixed as the rest of the decorations. He turned the projection to the right 160 degrees, then to the left left 160, and then spun it completely around twice to the right. A section of wall slid back, Kickaha breathed out tension of uncertainty. He had not been sure that he remembered the proper code. The possibility was strong that a wrong manipulation would have resulted in anything from a cloud of poisonous gas or vapor to a beam which would cut him in half.
He pulled in Do Shuptarp after him. The Teutoniac started to protest.