“Look who’s talking about right. You’re not going to beg, are you? You, a lord among the Lords?”
Urthona straightened his shoulders. “No. But if you think you’ve seen the last of me …”
“I know. I’ve got another think coming. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll bet you have a gate to some other world concealed in a boulder. But you aren’t letting on. Think you’ll catch me by surprise some day, heh? After you find the boulder-if you do. Good luck. I may be bored and need some stiff competition. Get going.”
Urthona walked up to the wall. Anana spoke sharply. “Kickaha! Stop him!” He yelled at the Lord, “Hold it, or I’ll shoot!” Urthona stopped but did not turn. “What is it, Anana?”
She glanced at a huge chronometer on a wall. “Don’t you know there’s still danger? How do you know what he’s up to? What might happen when he gives the codeword? It’ll be better to wait until the last minute. Then Ore can go through, and you can shut the gate behind him. After that, we’ll go through ours. And then Urthona can gate. But he can do it with no one else around.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Kickaha said. “I was so eager to get back I rushed things.”
He shouted, “Urthona! Turn around and walk back here!”
Kickaha didn’t hear Urthona say anything. His voice must have been very soft. But the words were loud enough for whatever sensor was in the wall to detect them.
A loud hissing sounded from the floor and the ceilings and the walls. From thousands of tiny perforations in the inner wall, clouds of greenish gas shot through the room.
Kickaha breathed in just enough of the metallic odor to make him want to choke. He held his breath then, but his eyes watered so that he could not see Urthona making his break. Red Ore was suddenly out of sight, too. Anana, a dim figure in the green mists, stood looking at him. One hand was pinching her nose and the other was over her mouth. She was signalling to him not to breathe.
She would have been too late, however. If he had not acted immediately to shut off his breath, he would, he was sure, be dead by now. Unconscious, anyway.
The gas was not going to harm his skin. He was sure of that. Otherwise, Urthona would have been caught in the deadly trap.
Anana turned and disappeared in the green. She was heading toward the gate to the world of tiers. He began running too, his eyes burning and streaming water. He caught a glimpse of Red Ore plunging through the gate to Earth.
And then he saw, dimly, Urthona’s back as he sped through the gate to the world which Kickaha loved so much.
Kickaha felt as if he would have to cough. Nevertheless, he fought against the reflex, knowing that if he drew in one full breath, he would be done for.
Then he was through the entrance. He didn’t know how high the gate was above the mountain slope, but he had no time for caution. He fell at once, landed on his buttocks, and slid painfully on a jumble of loose rocks. It went at a forty-five degree angle to the horizontal for about two hundred feet, then suddenly dropped off. He rolled over and clawed at the rocks. They cut and tore into the chest and his hands, but he dug in no matter how it hurt.
By then he was coughing. No matter. He was out of the green clouds which now poured out of the hole in the mountain face.
He stopped. Slowly, afraid that if he made a too vigorous movement he’d start the loose stones to sliding, he began crawling upward. A few rocks were dislodged. Then he saw Anana. She had gotten to the side of the gate and was clinging with one hand to a rocky ledge. The other held the Horn. Her eyes were huge, and her face was pale.
She shouted, “Get up here and away! As fast as you can! The converter is going to blow soon!” He knew that. He yelled at her to get out of the area. He’d be up there in a minute. She looked as if she were thinking of coming down to help him, then she began working her way along the steep slope. He crawled at an angle toward the ledge she had grabbed. Several times he started sliding back, but he managed to stop his descent.