The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

The boat headed straight through the choppy, fog-shrouded sea for the tower at a speed frightening to its passengers. Within two hours the image on the screen had become enormous. Then the image burst into a flame which covered the entire screen, and Akhenaten let the boat proceed very slowly. He punched a button, and they all cried out in fright and wonder as two round objects on the prow of the boat shot forth two bright beams of light.

Ahead lay a vast bulk-the tower.

Akhenaten punched a button indicated by the diagram. Slowly, a large, round door, a port, swung open from what had been a smooth, seamless surface. Light sprang into being. Inside was a wide hall, its walls of the same grey metal.

Akehnaten brought the boat alongside the entrance. Some of the crew grabbed the threshold. The Pharaoh pressed the button which shut off the invisible power that moved the boat. He stepped onto the side of the boat, which was just below the threshold. After jumping inside the hall, he took the ropes attached to the inside of the hull and secured them around hooks set into the hall. Apprehen­sively, silently, the others followed him.

All, that is, except for Paheri. The terror was now almost unen­durable. His teeth clicked uncontrollably. His knees shook. His heart beat in his frozen flesh like a frightened bird’s wings. His mind moved sluggishly, like winter mud flowing down a hillside warmed by the sun.

He was too weak to get up from the seat and step into the corridor. He was sure that if he could go on, he’d face his judge and be found wanting.

I’ll say one thing for Paheri. Two. He did have a conscience, and he wasn’t afraid to admit to Tom Rider that he’d been a coward. That takes courage.

Akhenaten, as if he had nothing to fear from The One God, walked steadily toward the end of the corridor. The others were bunched behind him at a dozen paces. One looked back and was surprised that Paheri was still in the boat. He gestured for him to come on. Paheri shook his head and hung oh to the gunwale.

Then, without a single cry from anyone, those in the corridor slumped to their knees, fell forward on their hands; tried to rise, failed, and sagged onto their faces. They lay as still and limp as putty models.

The door swung slowly shut. It closed silently, leaving no evi­dence that there was a door, not even a thin seamline, and Paheri was alone in the dark fog and the cold sea.

Paheri wasted no time in getting the boat turned around. It moved at its former speed, but now there was no signal on the scope, no bright image, to direct it. He could not find the cave, and so he went up and down the base of the cliff until he gave up trying to locate the cave. Finally, he directed it alongside the cliff until he came to the archway through which the sea rams into the mountains. He got through the long and giant cave there, but when he came to the great cataract, he could find no place to beach the boat. It was carried over the falls. Paheri remembered the bellowing of the waters, being turned over and over, and then . . . unconsciousness.

When he awoke from his translation, he was lying naked in the dark fog under the overhang of a grails tone. His grail-a new one, of course-and a pile of cloths lay by him. Presently he heard voices. The dim figures of people coming to place their grails on the stone approached. He was safe and sound-except for the terrible memory of the hall of the gods.

Tom Rider was translated to Paheri’s area after he’d been killed by some fanatical medieval Christians. He became a soldier, met Paheri, who was in the same squad, and heard his story. Rider worked up to a captaincy and then he was killed again. He awoke the next day in an area where Fanington lived.

Several months later they went up-River together in a dugout. Then they settled down for a while to build the Rattle Dazzle.