When it was within a few feet of the other wall blocking the corridor, it stopped and began moving back. The beams were still going off and on at intervals of a few seconds. Moreover, the angles of fire were changing. Where they had struck were bare spots. The paint had been burned off.
Burton backed up behind the wall. A ray streaked through the doorway and burned off the paint on the far wall. Another, at a higher angle, destroyed more paint.
De Marbot called, “Dick, are you all right?”
“I’m not hurt!” Burton yelled. “Don’t expose yourself!”
“I am not stupid!” the Frenchman screamed back.
But he was stupid; at least, from Burton’s viewpoint, he was. De Marbot ran past him and out into the corridor toward the machine. Burton cried out after him to stop. The Frenchman did not hesitate but leaped upon the back of the juggernaut and grabbed a rung near the top. Burton had expected him to be cut through by a ray, but the beams had stopped the moment de Marbot had run into the corridor. Later, Burton wondered if the rays that had been shot at him had only been to discourage him from getting close to it or following it when it left.
Now the machine rolled backward and past the opening to Loga’s room. De Marbot, clinging with one hand and smiling, waved at Burton.
“Get off it!” Burton shouted. “You can’t do anything to it! Get off before it kills you!”
“Where it goes, I go!” de Marbot yelled.
He lost his bravado then, because the machine, having halted, suddenly sped forward, its tires screaming as they burned on the floor. All the beams had been turned off, but now one sprang from the nose. The violet lance struck the brick wall and pierced it, and then the beam widened into a cone, the base of which melted the bricks within its area and made an opening just large enough for the machine to pass through.
De Marbot, screaming, had, however, loosed his grip before he was hit by the bricks at the edge of the breach. He lay face down, silent.
“That crazy frog!” Burton said. The machine was whipping around a distant corner, revealing that it was not solid but had articulations that permitted it to turn corners, though just barely. De Marbot was sitting up by then and was holding his head.
Burton ran to him, beating Aphra by a few steps.
“Are you hurt?”
De Marbot sat up, grimaced, then smiled.
“Only my pride. I became frightened. I screamed with fear.”
Assisted by Burton, he got to his feet. “I do have a few scratches, bruises, and contusions. I have taken worse spills many times from a horse while fighting for my glorious emperor. But never, never, have I had such a short ride!”
Aphra wrapped her arms around him and snuggled her face into his chest. “You stupid son of a bitch! You scared me to death!”
“You are most lively and reproachful for a corpse,” he said, hugging her. “Oh, my poor arm and shoulder! I cannot embrace you, little cabbage, with all my huge and accustomed strength and love!”
She freed herself and wiped her tears away with her fingers.
“Your little cabbage, hell! I am not a vegetable, I’m a woman! A woman who’s very angry with you and your heroics!”
“A rose with thorns, perhaps, is it not?”
Burton looked up and down the corridor. No one in sight.
“Why did you jump on it?” he said. “What did you expect to accomplish?”
“I was going to ride it to its lair, where I might find its master, the Snark, awaiting it. And then I would surprise him and take him prisoner or kill him if I had to. But I forgot, in the heat of combat, that the thing would only make a hole large enough for it to pass through.”
“You were lucky that your brains, such as they are, weren’t dashed out,” Burton said. He shared some of Aphra’s anger; he was very fond of the Frenchman. “It was magnificent, but it was not good soldiership.”
“Ah, you are just jealous because you did not think of doing it.”