Kickaha removed the Horn from the case and began to test for resonant points as he had at Red Orc’s. He went from room to room, working out from Urthona’s bedroom and office because the gates were most likely to be there. The Horn sent out its melodious notes in vain, however, until he stuck it into a large closet downstairs just off the bottom of the staircase. The wall issued a tiny white spot, like a tear of light, and then it expanded and suddenly became a hole into another world.
Kickaha got a glimpse of a room that was a duplicate of the closet in the house in which he stood. Anana cried out softly then and pulled at his arm. He turned, hearing the noise that had caused her alarm. There were footsteps on the porch, followed by the chiming of the doorbell. He strode across the room, stopped halfway, turned and tossed the Horn to her, and said, “Keep that gate open!” While the notes of the Horn traveled lightly across the room, he lifted the curtain a little. Three uniformed policemen were on the porch and a plainclothesman was just going around the side. On the street were two patrol cars and an unmarked automobile.
Kickaha returned to her and said, “Urthona must have had a man outside watching for us. He called the cops. They must have the place surrounded!”
They could try to fight their way out, surrender, or go through the gate. To do the first was to kill men whose only fault was to mistake Kickaha for a criminal.
If Kickaha surrendered, he would sentence himself and Anana to death. Once either of the Lords knew they were in prison, they would get to their helpless victims one way or the other and murder them.
He did not want to go through the gate without taking some precautions, but he had no choice. He said, “Let’s go,” and leaped through the contracting hole with his beamer ready. Anana, holding onto the Horn, followed him.
He kicked the door open and jumped back. After a minute of waiting, he stepped through it. The closet was set near the bottom of a staircase, just like its counterpart on Earth. The room was huge with marble walls on which were bright murals and a many-colored marble mosaic floor. It was night outside, the light inside came from many oil-burning lamps and cressets on the walls and the fluted marble pillars around the edges of the room. Beyond, in the shadows cast by the pillars, were en-trances to other rooms and to the outside.
There was no sound except for a hissing and sputtering from the flames at the ends of the cressets.
Kickaha walked across the room between the pillars and through an antechamber, the walls of which were decorated with dolphins and octopuses. It was these that made him expect the scene that met him when he stepped out upon the great pillared porch. He was back on Earth Number Two.
At least, it seemed that he was. Certainly, the full moon near the zenith was Earth’s moon. And, looking down from the porch, which was near the edge of a small mountain, he would swear that he was looking down on the duplicate of that part of southern California on which Los Angeles of Earth Number One was built. As nearly as he could tell in the darkness, it had the same topography. The unfamiliarity was caused by the differences in the two cities. This one was smaller than Los Angeles; the lights were not so many nor so bright, and were more widely spaced. He would guess that the population of this valley was about one thirty-second of Earth Number One’s.
The air looked clear; the stars and the moon were large and bright.
There was no hint of the odor of gasoline. He could smell a little horse manure, but that was pleasant, very pleasant. Of course, he was basing his beliefs on very small evidence, but it seemed that the technology of this Earth had not advanced nearly as swiftly as that of his native planet.
Evidently, Urthona had found gates leading to this world. He heard voices then from the big room into which he had emerged from the closet. He took Anana’s arm and pulled her with him into the shadow of a pillar. Immediately thereafter, three people stepped out onto the porch. Two were men, wearing kilts and sandals and cloth jackets with flared-out collars, puffed sleeves, and swallow tails. One was short, dark and Mediterranean, like the servants of Red Orc. The other was tall, ruddy-faced and reddish-haired. The woman was a short blonde with a chunky figure. She wore a kilt, buskins and a jacket also, but the jacket, unbuttoned, revealed bare breasts held up by a stiff shelf projecting from a flaming red corselet. Her hair was piled high in an ornate coiffure, and her face was heavily made up. She shivered, said something in a Semitic-sounding language, and buttoned up the jacket. If these were servants, they were able to ride in style. A carriage like a cabriolet, drawn by two handsome horses, came around the corner and stopped before the porch. The coachman jumped down and assisted them into the carriage. He wore a tall tricorn hat with a bright red feather, a jacket with huge gold buttons and scarlet piping, a heavy blue kilt, and calf-length boots.