But at last they were up and over the wall and all in the road to the outside. In the corridor Kosti pulled the hands of the Rigellian behind him and tied them with the man’s own belt before ordering him ahead. Their progress was necessarily slow as even with an aiding hand Ali could not keep a fast pace. And now they were in virtual darkness-the light only a ghostly reflection of the former glow.
Mura snapped on his torch. “We’ll use these one at a time. Save the charges for when we need them most.”
Dane wondered about that. Torch charges were not easily exhausted, they were made to be in use for months. But the ring of light which guided them now was oddly pallid, greyish, instead of yellow-bright as they expected.
“Why not turn it up?” Ali asked after a moment.
There was a snicker out of the gloom from the direction of the Rigellian. Then Mura answered:
“It is up-top strength-”
No one commented, but Dane knew that he was not the only one to watch that faint circle anxiously. And when it faded to a misty light extending hardly a foot beyond, somehow he was not surprised. Kosti, alone, asked a question:
“What’s the matter? Wait-!” The beam of his own torch struck out into the thick darkness. For perhaps two minutes it was clear, uncut, and then it, too, began to diminish as if something in the atmosphere sapped it.
“All energy within this space,” the Rigellian’s voice expounded, “is affected now. There is much of the installation we do not understand. Light goes, and later the air, also-”
Dane drew a long, testing breath. To his mind the chilly atmosphere was the same as it had always been. Perhaps that last embellishment was merely a flight of imagination on the part of their prisoner. But their pace quickened.
The pallid circle of the torch did not fade totally away for some time and they were able to follow the pattern which Rich had betrayed-the one which should guide them out of the labyrinth. There was a vast and brooding silence now that the great machine had stopped and in it the ring of their boots awoke strange echoes. At length Kosti’s torch was sucked dry and Dane’s pressed into use. They threaded on, from one room to another, down this short corridor to that, trying to make the best possible use of the dying light. But there was no way of gauging how close they were to the outer door.
When the last flicker of Dane’s light was in turn swallowed up, Mura gave a new order.
“Now we link ourselves together-”
Dane’s right hand clipped into Mura’s belt, his left closed about Ali’s wrist, providing one link in the chain. And they went on so, a soft murmur of sound telling the cargo-apprentice that the steward in the lead was counting off paces, seeming to have worked out some method of his own for getting them from one unseen point to the next.
But the dark pressed in upon them, thick, tangible, with that odd sensation that darkness on this planet always possessed. It was like pushing through a sluggish fluid and one lost any belief in ground gained, rather there was the feeling of being thrust back for a loss.
Dane followed Mura mechanically, he could only trust that the steward knew what he was doing and that sooner or later he would bring them to the portal of the maze. He himself was panting, as if they had been running, and yet the pace was the unhurried, ground-covering stride of the Pool parade ground which they had fallen into insensibly as they advanced in line.
“How many miles do we have to go, anyway?” Kosti’s voice arose.
He was answered by another snicker from their prisoner. “What difference does it make, Trader? From this there is no way out-once you smashed that switch.”
Did the Rigellian really believe that? If he did why wasn’t he more alarmed himself? Or was he one of those fatalistic races to whom life and death wore much the same face?
There was a surprised grunt from Mura and a second later Dane piled up tight against the steward while Ali and the two following him ploughed up in a tangle. To Dane there was only one explanation for that barrier before them-somewhere Mura had miscounted and taken a wrong turn in the dark. They were lost!
“Now where are we?” Kosti asked.
“Lost-” the Rigellian’s voice crackled dryly with a cold amusement crisping its tone.
But Dane’s hand was on the wall which had brought them up short and now he moved his fingers across its surface. This was not fashioned of the smooth material manufactured by the Forerunners, instead it had the grit of stone. They had reached the native rock of the cave! And Mura confirmed that discovery.
“This is the rock-the end of the maze.”
“But where’s the way out?” persisted Kosti.
“Locked-locked when you broke the switch,” the Rigellian replied. “All openings are governed by the installation-”
“If that is so,” Ali’s voice rose for the first time since they had begun that march, “what happened in the past when you shut off the machine? Were you locked in then until it was turned on once more?”
There was no reply. Then Dane heard a rustle of movement, and queer choking noise, and hard on it the jetman’s husky tone:
“When we ask questions, snake man, we get answers! Or take steps. What happened when you shut off that switch before?”
More scuffling sounds. And then a hoarse answer: “We stayed in here until it was switched on again. It was only off occasionally.”
“It was off for days while Survey was poking about here,” Dane corrected.
“We didn’t come near here then,” returned the Rigellian promptly-a little too promptly.
“Someone must have stayed in here-to turn it on again when you wanted that done,” Ali pointed out. “If the doors were locked you couldn’t have got in or out-”
“I’m not an engineer,” the Rigellian had lost some of his detachment, he was sullen.
“No, you’re just one of Rich’s lieutenants. If there’s a way out of here, you’ll know it.” That was Kosti.
“How about your pipe?” Dane asked Mura, whose continued silence puzzled him.
“That I have been trying,” the steward answered.
“Only it doesn’t work, eh? All right, snake man, spill-!” More sounds of a scuffle and then Ali’s voice across them-
“If this is rock, and it is the right place-how about using a blaster?”
To cut through! Dane’s hand went to his holster. A blaster could cut rock, cut it with greater dispatch than it had shorn through the tougher material of the maze. The idea struck Kosti too-the muffled noise made by his “persuasion” methods ceased.
“You’ll have to pick just the right spot,” Ali continued. “Where is the door-”
“That can be found by this old snake here, can’t it?” purred the jetman.
There was an inarticulate whimper in answer to that. Kosti must have heard it as an assent for he pushed past Dane, shoving the captive before him.
“Right there eh? Well, it better be, blue boy, it just better be!”
Dane nearly lost his balance as the Rigellian was thrust back upon him. He elbowed the man back against the wall and stood waiting.
“That you, Frank? Get back man-all of you get back!”
A second body was pushed against Dane and he gave ground, retreating with the Rigellian and the other.
“Look out for a back wash, you fool!” Ali called out. “Give it low power ‘til you see how that cuts-”
Kosti laughed. “I was flipping a polishing rag, son, when you were learning how to walk. You let the old man show his stuff now. Up ship and out!” With that wild slogan which had resounded in countless bars when the Traders hit dirt after long voyages, blazing light spewed out, blinding them all.
Dane peered between the fingers of a shielding hand and watched that core of brilliance centre on the rock, saw the stone glow red and then white before rippling in molten streams to the floor. Heat, waves of roasting heat blasted back at them, forcing retreat for all except that one big figure who stood his ground, pointing the weapon at the rock, his helmet, its protecting visor snapped into place, nodding a little in time with the force bolts which jerked his arm and body as they burst from the weapon in his hand to crash against the disintegrating wall. How could Kosti stand up to that back wash? He was taking more than was possible for a man to endure.
But the beam held steady on the point and hole grew as stone flaked away in patches, the inner rot spreading. The stink of the discharge filled their throats, gave them hacking coughs, cut at their eyes until tears wet their cheeks. And still Kosti stood in his place, with the stability of a command robot.