“You’re a big success as a negotiator,” Roger charged bitterly. “If this is a compromise, what were they holding out for?”
“At least we’re not going to be tortured,” Q’nell snapped back. “Be quiet and let’s start concentrating! Maybe the spur of dire necessity will help me use some of the ninety-two percent of your brain our instruments showed was lying fallow!”
“I don’t know how to operate your brain!”
“Well, try! It’s a finely tuned instrument, trained in all the subtleties of Culture One mental science! Put it to use!”
Across the eerie courtyard, the rank of armed men were lining up, eyeing their prospective targets with shining yellow eyes. Roger shivered.
“I can’t,” he said. “All I can think about it what it will feel like to be shot!”
“In that case, I guess it’s goodbye,” Q’nell said. “I’m afraid your body’s panic reactions are inhibiting my concentration, too.”
“About those passes you were making,” Roger said, feeling a sudden tenderness toward the girl. “I didn’t mean to be stuffy or anything.”
“Actually, I admire you for your stand,” Q’nell said. “Only a tramp would have given in.”
“What! Why, you practically fell all over yourself trying to make time with me! And if I’d taken pity on you, that makes me a tramp?”
“Calm down! I was complimenting you!”
“Of all the nerve! And I thought you liked me! And all the time you were just amusing yourself, testing my reactions!”
“Hey, that’s not true! You’re very appealing! I just meant that, uh . . . But what does it matter what I meant? This is the end. Goodbye, T’son. It’s been very interesting.”
Roger didn’t answer. He was watching with fascination as the blue men loaded their guns . . .
A vertical line of light quivered into existence between Roger and the aimed guns. It wavered, faded, firmed again, flickered . . .
“T’son!” Q’nell said sharply. “It’s a portal! It must be good old S’lunt!”
“He’d better hurry up and focus it,” Roger said, gritting his teeth hard. “In about another two seconds—”
“On the count of three, hit the deck!” Q’nell hissed. “One!” The firing squad took aim.
“Two!”
The portal snapped into sharpness. A shape appeared, sliding forth from it—a bulbous shape, glowing a dull red, ringed about with jointed tentacles.
“Three!” Q’nell called. Roger dived flat, heard the close-spaced blips of silence that punctuated the background roar, saw the monster explode into a shower of fragments as it intercepted the fusillade intended for the humans. The shooters, astonished at the sudden obstacle that had interposed itself between them and their target, stood gaping dumbly as Roger and Q’nell came to their feet.
“Come on!” Q’nell yelled, and grabbed Roger’s hand.
“But—but it’s one of theirs!” he protested, pulling back.
“Any port in a storm!” Q’nell shouted.
“I guess you’re right,” Roger gulped, and together they dashed forward and plunged through the portal.
CHAPTER NINE
1
They spun outward in a swirl of silence and light. Light foamed about them, glaring, sputtering, pulsing red and green and blue and gold, like a breaking comber of jewels.
“It’s beautiful!” Q’nell’s voice sounded in his head. “But what is it? We’re not in the Channel. Our extrapolated universe model never predicted anything like this!”
“Nevertheless, it’s here,” Roger said. “And we’re still alive to enjoy it.”
“We’ve got to find out where we are and where we’re going, in a hurry! We may be sliding right into their home base!”
“Yes. We seem to be traveling pretty fast,” Roger agreed. As in the Channel, the sensation was of motion not through space, but through some subtler medium.
“I’m going to give the parameters another try,” Q’nell said. “Somehow they seem to be much more accessible when we’re in a non-space environment.”
“Just don’t go twisting them,” Roger cautioned.
“That’s precisely what I intend to do!” Q’nell countered. “But I’m afraid it will take more than a twist to get us back where we belong.”
The clouds of light were changing, receding, forming up into towering thunderheads that glowed with pale colors. Now it was as though they swam in a stormy sky amid heaped, multicolored cumuli, with no up, no down, no land in sight. They swooped like effortless gulls between towers and through canyons, hurtling past vast, bellowing domes, diving through airy tunnels, skimming the surface of cloudy plains.
“It’s no good; I’m getting dizzy,” Q’nell called at last. She was swooping in the middle distance, upside down. “There’s no frame of reference whatever!”
“If we just had something underfoot,” Roger said. “I’m afraid I’m going to be airsick!” As he spoke, he felt something nudge the soles of his shoes. He looked down, saw a patch of pale blue tiled floor.
“Q’nell! Look!” He waved to her, floating overhead now.
“Where did that come from?” she called.
“I just thought of it—and here it was!”
Q’nell swung closer, arced downward to thump lightly against the floor. “Say, T’son, you may be on to something here!” She poked at the floor with a finger, pounded with her fist. “It feels solid enough. This is amazing! We seem to be in a malleable continuum, which can be concretized by thought impulses!”
Roger went to hands and knees, crawled to the edge, reached under and felt around.
“It’s about an inch thick,” he said. “Rough on the underside.”
“Careful now, T’son,” Q’nell cautioned. “Don’t do anything that might shift our parameters, but . . . do you think you could extend it any?”
“I’ll try . . . ” Roger closed his eyes, imagined the floor extending outward twenty feet on every side, ending in a smooth edge.
“You did it!” Q’nell said excitedly. “Good boy!” Opening his eyes, Roger was delighted to find the floor exactly as he had imagined it. They walked to the edge.
“You know, this is a little vertiginous, looking down at all that open air,” Q’nell said, edging back. “How about filling it in a little?”
Roger pictured green grass under spreading shade trees.
“Remarkable!” Q’nell exclaimed, surveying the parklike result. “Suppose I have a try?”
“Careful,” Roger said. “Just anyone may not have the brainpower to do it.”
“Stand back,” Q’nell said. As Roger watched, a wall winked into existence before his face. For a second or two it was plain white plaster; then a slightly crooked window with a purple-and-pink curtain was suddenly there, with sunlight streaming through it. Roger turned. He was in a room, walled, roofed—and carpeted a moment later in a pattern of pink and yellow flowers.
“Nothing to it,” Q’nell said. “Now, a couple of chairs . . . ” Two massive mismatched rockers appeared, complete with glossy black satin cushions lettered saigon and mother in glowing blue.
“Horrible,” Roger said. “Have you no taste?” He pictured a pair of delicate Chippendales, added a side table with a silver tray bearing a steaming teapot and a pair of dainty cups. He seated himself.
“I’ll pour,” he offered.
“I’ll take a drink of something with some vitamins in it!” Q’nell snorted, and a bottle with a garish label thumped to the table. She produced a corkscrew next, poured out a stiff cupful.
“Hey, that’s good stuff!” she exclaimed, smacking loudly. “Want a snort?”
Roger caught a whiff of the powerful brew and shuddered. “Certainly not.”
Q’nell poured herself a second, strolled around the room, adding garish pictures in gold frames to the wall, placing lamps with grotesque shades here and there while Roger winced.
“Not bad,” she said. “But it still lacks something . . . ” She stared at a wall; a door appeared. She opened it on a bedroom containing nothing but an enormous bed.
“How about it, T’son?” she leered. “Feeling tired?”
“Now don’t start all that again,” Roger said. “The only purpose of this house-building spree was to help us with our orientation, remember?”
“All work and no play make Jackie a dull girl,” Q’nell said.
“You’ve already given me your opinion of playgirls!” Roger yelled. “And anyway, I’m a man! Now stop horsing around and give your attention to the problem!”
“I am, T’son—I am!” Q’nell poured a third hearty libation, drank it, put the cup down, and reached for Roger. He leaped up and dodged behind a rocker.
“Stop it or I’ll imagine the biggest policeman you ever heard of!” he yelled.
“Oh yeah?” Q’nell made a grab, missed, almost fell. “Say, that booze is getting to me,” she murmured. “Oh well, it helps the party atmosphere.” She tossed the cup aside and lunged, hooked a foot on the rocker, and landed headfirst.
“I warned you!” Roger closed his eyes and picture a seven-foot storm trooper, complete with spurred boots, brass knuckles, and a knotted leather whip. There was a soft thud! and a metallic tinkle. He opened his eyes to see an empty uniform collapse to the floor.
Q’nell leaped to her feet. “I didn’t think you’d have the heart!” she cried blurrily, starting around the chair. Roger pictured a stairway, dashed for it, went up the steps two at a time, found himself on a landing open to the sky. Feet pounded below.