When they woke, the door to the room opened before they could get out of bed. A robot pushed in a table on which were trays filled with hot delicious food and glasses of orange or muskmelon juice. They ate, went to the bathroom, showered, and emerged. The robot was waiting with clothes that fitted them exactly.
Kickaha did not know how the measurements had been taken, but he wasn’t curious about it. He had more important things to consider.
“This red carpet treatment worries me. Ore is setting us up just to knock us down again.”
The robot knocked on the door. Anana told him to come in. He stopped before Kickaha and handed him a note. Opening it, Kickaha said, “It’s in English. I don’t know whose handwriting it is, but it has to be Ore.”
He read aloud, “Look out a window.”
Dreading what they would see, but too curious to put it off, they hastened through several rooms and down a long corridor. The window at its end held a scene that was mostly empty air. But moving slowly across it was a tiny globe. It was the lavalite world.
“That’s the kicker!” he said. “Ore’s taken the palace into space! And he’s marooned us up here, of course, with no way of getting to the ground!”
“And he’s also deaclived all the gates, of course,” Anana said.
A robot, which had followed them, made a sound exactly like a polite butler wishing to attract his master’s attention. They turned, and the robot held out to Kickaha another note. He spoke in English. “Master told me to tell you, sir, that he hopes you enjoy this.”
Kickaha read, “The palace is in a decaying orbit.”
Kickaha spoke to the robot. “Do you have any other messages for us?”
“No, sir.”
“Can you lead us to the central control chamber?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then lead on, MacDuff.”
It said, “What does MacDuff mean, sir?”
“Cancel the word. What name are you called by? I mean, what is your designation?”
“One, sir.”
“So you’re one, too.”
“No, sir. Not One-Two. One.”
“For Ilmarwolkin’s sake,” Anana said, “quit your clowning.”
They followed One into a large room where there was an open wheeled vehicle large enough for four. The robot got into the driver’s seat. They stepped into the back seat, and the car moved away smoothly and silently. After driving through several corridors, the robot steered it into a large elevator. He got out and pressed some buttons, and the cage rose thirty floors. The robot got behind the wheel and drove the vehicle down a corridor almost for a quarter of a mile. The car stopped in front of a door.
“The entrance to the central control chamber, sir.”
The robot got out and stood by the door. They followed him. The door had been welded, or sealed to the wall.
“Is this the only entrance?”
“Yes, sir.”
It was evident that Ore had made sure that they could not get in. Doubtless, any devices, including 1 beamers, that could remove the door had been jettisoned from the palace. Or was Ore just making it more difficult for them? Perhaps he had deliberately left some tools around, but when they got into the control room, they would find that the controls had been destroyed.
They found a window and looked out into red space. Kickaha said, “It should take some time before this falls onto the planet. Meanwhile, we can eat, drink, make love, sleep. Get our strength back. And look like mad for some way of getting out of this mess. If Ore thinks we’re going to suffer while we’re falling, he doesn’t know us.”
“Yes, but the walls and door must be made of the same stuff, impervium, as the room that held the cage,” she said. “Beamers won’t affect it. I don’t know how he managed to weld the door to the walls, but he did. So getting in to the controls seems to be out.”
First, they had to make a search of the entire building and that would take days even when traveling in the little car. They found the hangar which had once housed five fliers. Ore had not even bothered to close its door. He must have set them to fly out on automatic.