“We’ll weep a little later,” he said. “Do you have any idea where Wolff and Chryseis could be?”
She said no, which was what he had expected.
“Then we’ll use the Horn until we’ve opened every gate in the house. But it’s a big house, so . . .”
He explained to her that Urthona and his men would be coming after them. “You look around for weapons, while I blow the Horn.”
She joined him ten minutes later and showed him what looked like a pen but was a small beamer. He told her that he had found two more gates but both were disappointments. They passed swiftly through all the rooms in the second story while he played steadily upon the Horn. The walls remained blank.
The first floor of the house was as unrewarding. By then, forty minutes had passed since the men had left the house. Within a few more minutes, Urthona should be here.
“Let’s try the room under the stairs again,” he said. “It’s possible that reactivating the gate might cause it to open onto still another world.”
A gate could be set up so that it alternated its resonances slightly and acted as a flipflop entrance. At one activation, it would open to one universe and at the next activation, to another. Some gates could operate as avenues to a dozen or more worlds.
The gates activated upstairs could also be such gates, and they should return to test out the multiple activity of every one. It was too discouraging to think about at that moment, though they would have to run through them again. That is, they would if this gate under the stairs did not give them a pleasant surprise.
Outside the door, he lifted the Horn once more and played the music which trembled the fabric between universes. The room beyond the door suddenly was large and blue-walled with bright lights streaming from chandeliers carved out of single Brobdingnagian jewels: hippopotamus-head-sized diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and garnets. The furniture was also carved out of enormous jewels set together with some kind of golden cement.
Kickaha had seen even more luxurious rooms. What held his attention was the opening of the round door at the far end of the room and the entrance through it of a cylindrical object. This was dark red, and it floated a foot above the floor. At its distant end the top of a blond head appeared. A man was pushing the object toward them.
That head looked like Red Orc’s. He seemed to be the only one who would be in another world and bringing toward this gate an object that undoubtedly meant death and destruction to the occupants of this house.
Kickaha had his beamer ready, but he did not fire it. If that cylinder was packed with some powerful explosive, it might go up at the touch of the energy in the ray from a beamer.
Quickly, but silently, he began to close the door. Anana looked puzzled, since she had not seen what he had. He whispered, “Take off out the front door and run as far as you can as fast as you can!”
She shook her head and said, “Why should I?”
“Here!”
He thrust the Horn and the case at her. “Beat it! Don’t argue! If he . . .”
The door began to swing open. A thin curved instrument came around the side of the door. Kickaha fired at it, cutting it in half. There was a yell from the other side, cut off by the door slamming. Kickaha had shoved it hard with his foot.
“Run!” he yelled, and he took her hand and pulled her after him. Just as he went through the door, he looked back. There was a crash as the door under the stairs and part of the wall around it fell broken outward, and the cylinder thrust halfway through before stopping.
That was enough for Kickaha. He jumped out onto the porch and down the steps, pulling Anana behind him with one hand, the other holding the beamer. When they reached the brick wall by the sidewalk, he turned to run along it for its protection.