THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

They were as silent as the dead, too.

Paheri had estimated that it had taken Akhenaten’s boat about two hours to get to the tower. That was because he had been afraid to make the boat go at top speed. The sea, as reported by the Parseval radarman, was thirty miles in diameter. The tower was about ten miles in diameter. So there were only about twenty miles to go from the cave. The Pharaoh’s vessel must have crawled at ten miles per hour.

The tower rapidly grew larger on the screen.

Suddenly, the image burst into flame.

They were very close to their goal.

The direction sheet indicated that now was the time to punch another button. Burton did so, and two extremely bright bow-lamps shot their beams into the mists and lit upon a vast curving dull surface.

Burton released all pressure on the bulb. The boat quickly lost speed and started drifting away. Applying power again, he swung the boat around and headed it slowly for the dim bulk. He punched another button, and he could see a big port, thick as the door in a bank vault, open in the seamless side.

Light streamed out through the O.

Burton cut off the power and turned the wheel so that the side of the boat bumped against the lower side of the open port. Hands seized the threshold and steadied the boat.

“Hallelujah!” Blessed Croomes screamed. “Momma, I’ll soon be with you, sitting on the right hand of sweet Jesus!”

The others jumped. The stillness, except for the slight thudding of the boat against the metal, had been so impressive and their wonder that the way was finally open for them had been so overpowering, they felt that her cry was near sacrilege.

“Quiet!” Frigate shouted. But he laughed when he realized that no one could hear them.

“Momma, I’m coming!” Blessed shouted.

“Shut up, Croomes!” Burton said. “Or by God I’ll throw you into the water! This is no place for hysterics!”

“I’m not hysterical! I’m joyous! I’m filled with the glory of the Lord!”

“Then keep it to yourself,” Burton said.

Croomes told him he was bound for Hell, but she subsided.

“You may be right,” Burton said. “Let me tell you though, that we’re all going to the same place now. If it’s Heaven, we’ll be with you. If it’s Hell…”

“Don’t say that, man! That’s irreverent!”

Burton sighed. She was, on the whole, sane. But she was a religious fanatic who managed to ignore the facts of-life and also the contradictory elements in her faith. In this, she was much like his wife, Isabel, a devout Roman Catholic who had managed to believe in spiritualism at the same time. Croomes had been strong, enduring, uncomplaining, and always helpful during their struggles to reach this place except when she was trying to convert her crewmates to her religion.

Through the port he could see the gray-metaled corridor which Paheri had described. Of his companions who had collapsed near its end, there was no sight. Paheri had been too frightened to follow the others. He’d stayed in the boat. Then Akhenaten and his people fell to the floor, and the port had swung shut as silently as it had opened. Paheri had been unable to find the cave, and he had finally gone over the first of the cataracts in his boat and had awakened on some far bank of The River. But now there were no more resurrections.

Burton unbuttoned the strap on his holster.

He said, “I’ll go first.”

He stepped up over the threshold. Moving air warmed his face and hands. The light was shadowless, seeming to emanate from the walls, floor, and ceiling. A closed door was at the end of the corridor. The entrance port had been opened by thick gray-metal curving rods that disappeared inside a sixfoot-high cube of gray metal by the outer wall. The base of the cube seemed to be part of the floor. No welding or bolts held it.

Burton waited until Alice, Aphra, Nur, and de Marbot had entered. He told them not to go more than ten feet from the port. Then he called out, “You fellows bring in the small boat!”