King Krool awaited them in an enormous hall the shape of a skull, a vast and vaulted cave of beaten silver. There was a gaping pit in the floor, the skull’s foramen magnum, and beyond it stood the throne, over which two streams of light crossed like swords—they came from high windows fixed in the skull’s eye sockets and with panes specially tinted to give everything a harsh and infernal aspect. The constructors now saw Krool himself: too impatient to sit still on his throne, this monarch paced from wall to wall across the silver floor, his steps booming in that cadaverous cavern, and as he spoke he emphasized his words with such sudden stabs of the hand, that the air whistled.
“Welcome, constructors!” he said, skewering them both with his eyes. “As you’ve no doubt learned from Lord Protozor, Master of the Royal Hunt, I want you to build me new and better kinds of game. Now I’m not interested, you understand, in any mountain of steel on a hundred-odd treads—that’s a job for heavy artillery, not for me. My quarry must be strong and ferocious, but swift and nimble too, and above all cunning and full of wiles, so that I will have to call upon all my hunter’s art to drive it to the ground. It must be a highly intelligent beast, and know all there is to know of covering tracks, doubling back, hiding in shadows and lying in wait, for such is my will!”
“Forgive me, Your Highness,” said Klapaucius with a careful bow, “but if we do Your Highness’ bidding too well, might not this put the royal life and limb in some peril?”
The King roared with such laughter that a couple of crystal pendants fell off a chandelier and shattered at the feet of the trembling constructors.
“Have no fear of that, noble constructors!” he said with a grim smile. “You are not the first, and you will not be the last, I expect. Know that I am a just but most exacting ruler. Too often have assorted knaves, flatterers and fakes attempted to deceive me, too often, I say, have they posed as distinguished hunting engineers, solely to empty my coffers and fill their sacks with gems and precious stones, leaving me, in return, with a few paltry scarecrows that fall apart at the first touch. Too often has this happened for me not to take appropriate measures. For twelve years now any constructor who fails to meet my demands, who promises more than he is able to deliver, indeed receives his reward, but is hurled, reward and all, into yon deep well—-unless he be game enough (excuse the pun) to serve as the quarry himself. In which case, gentlemen, I use no weapon but these two bare hands…”
“And… and have there been, ah, many such impostors?” asked Trurl in a weak voice.
“Many? That’s difficult to say. I only know that no one yet has satisfied me, and the scream of terror they invariably give as they plummet to the bottom doesn’t last quite so long as it used to—the remains, no doubt, have begun to mount. But rest assured, gentlemen, there is room enough still for you!”
A deathly silence followed these dire words, and the two friends couldn’t help but look in the direction of that dark and ominous hole. The King resumed his relentless pacing, his boots striking the floor like sledge hammers in an echo chamber.
“But, with Your Highness’ permission… that is, we— we haven’t yet drawn up the contract,” stammered Trurl. “Couldn’t we have an hour or two to think it over, weigh carefully what Your Highness has been so gracious as to tell us, and then of course we can decide whether to accept your generous offer or, on the other hand—”
“Ha!!” laughed the King like a thunderclap. “Or, on the other hand, to go home? I’m afraid not, gentlemen! The moment you set foot on board the Infernanda, you accepted my offer! If every constructor who came here could leave whenever he pleased, why, I’d have to wait forever for my fondest hopes to be realized! No, you must stay and build me a beast to hunt. I give you twelve days, and now you may go. Whatever pleasure you desire, in the meantime, is yours. You have but to ask the servants I have given you; nothing will be denied you. In twelve days, then!”
“With Your Highness’ permission, you can keep the pleasures, but—well, would it be at all possible for us to have a look at the, uh, hunting trophies Your Highness must have collected as a result, so to speak, of the efforts of our predecessors?”
“But of course!” said the King indulgently and clapped his hands with such force that sparks flew and danced across the silver walls. The gust of air from those powerful palms cooled even more our constructors’ ardor for adventure. Six guards in white and gold appeared and conducted them down a corridor that twisted and wound like the gullet of a giant serpent. Finally, to their great relief, it led out into a large, open garden. There, on remarkably well-trimmed lawns, stood the hunting trophies of King Krool.
Nearest at hand was a saber-toothed colossus, practically cut in two in spite of the heavy mail and plate armor that was to have protected its trunk; the hind legs, disproportionately large (evidently designed for great leaps), lay upon the grass alongside the tail, which ended in a firearm with its magazine half-empty—a clear sign that the creature had not fallen to the King without a fight. A yellow strip of cloth hanging from its open jaws also testified to this, for Trurl recognized in it the breeches worn by the King’s huntsmen. Next was another prone monstrosity, a dragon with a multitude of tiny wings all singed and blackened by enemy fire; its circuits had spilled out molten and had then congealed in a copper-porcelain puddle. Farther on stood another creature, the pillarlike legs spread wide. A gentle breeze soughed softly through its fangs. And there were wrecks on wheels and wrecks on treads, some with claws and some with cannon, all sundered to the magnetic core, and tank-turtles with squashed turrets, and mutilated military millipedes, and other oddities, broken and battle-scarred, some equipped with auxiliary brains (burnt out), some perched on telescoping stilts (dislocated), and there were little vicious biting things strewn about. These had been made to attack in great swarms, then regroup in a sphere bristling with gun muzzles and bayonets—a clever idea, but it saved neither them nor their creators. Down this aisle of devastation walked Trurl and Klapaucius, pale, silent, looking as if they were on their way to a funeral instead of to another brilliant session of vigorous invention. They came at last to the end of that dreadful gallery of Krool’s triumphs and stepped into the carriage that was waiting for them at the gate. That dragon team which sped them back to their lodgings seemed less terrible now. Just as soon as they were alone in their sumptuously appointed green and crimson drawing room, before a table heaped high with effervescent drinks and rare delicacies, Trurl broke into a volley of imprecations; he reviled Klapaucius for heedlessly accepting the offer made by the Master of the Royal Hunt, thereby bringing down misfortune on their heads, when they easily could have stayed at home and rested on their laurels. Klapaucius said nothing, waiting patiently for Trurl’s desperate rage to expend itself, and when it finally did and Trurl had collapsed into a lavish mother-of-pearl chaise longue and buried his face in his hands, he said:
“Well, we’d better get to work.”
These words did much to revive Trurl, and the two constructors immediately began to consider the various possibilities, drawing on their knowledge of the deepest and darkest secrets of the arcane art of cybernetic generation. First of all, they agreed that victory lay neither in the armor nor in the strength of the monster to be built, but entirely in its program, in other words, in an algorithm of demoniacal derivation. “It must be a truly diabolical creature, a thing of absolute evil!” they said, and though they had as yet no clear idea of what or how, this observation lifted their spirits considerably. Such was their enthusiasm by the time they sat down to draft the beast, that they worked all night, all day, and through a second night and day before taking a break for dinner. And as the Leyden jars were passed about, so sure were they of success, that they winked and smirked —but only when the servants weren’t looking, since they suspected them (and rightly, too) of being the King’s spies. So the constructors said nothing of their work, but praised the mulled electrolyte which the waiters brought in, tail coats flapping, in beakers of the finest cut crystal. Only after the repast, when they had wandered out on the veranda overlooking the village with its white steeples and domes catching the last golden rays of the setting sun, only then did Trurl turn to Klapaucius and say:
“We’re not out of the woods yet, you know.”
“How do you mean?” asked Klapaucius in a cautious whisper.
“There’s one difficulty. You see, if the King defeats our mechanical beast, he’ll undoubtedly have us thrown into that pit, for we won’t have done his bidding. If, on the other hand, the beast… You see what I mean?”
“If the beast isn’t defeated?”
“No, if the beast defeats him, dear colleague. If that happens, the King’s successor may not let us off so easily.”
“You don’t think we’d have to answer for that, do you? As a rule, heirs to the throne are only too happy to see it vacated.”
“True, but this will be his son, and whether the son punishes us out of filial devotion or because he thinks the royal court expects it of him, it’ll make little difference as far as we’re concerned.”
