unrecognizable in their original forms. And through all the congealed mass of this earthly and yet unfamiliar material ran those irregular wormhole energy channels, very like the indiscriminate burrows of rock-boring crustaceans in the sea, but on a gigantic scale.
''Eaten,'' Jazz pondered over the word. 'You said these holes were 'eaten' into this stuff — but by what?'
'Rather, shall we say, 'converted'?' Khuv glanced at him. 'Perhaps that paints a truer picture, to say that the material was converted into energy. But if you'll be patient I can show you a far better example. We are going to the place where the pile used to be. That, too, was eaten — or converted, if you prefer.'
'Pile?' For the moment Khuv's meaning didn't register in Jazz's confused thoughts.
'The atomic pile which was the Projekt's main source of power,' the Russian explained. 'The backlash ate it — utterly. Yes, and then it seems it ate itself!'
Jazz might have questioned that statement, too, but now looming on the left of the walkway a huge, perfectly circular hole appeared in the face of the black wall of rock. Light issued from this tunnel where it angled steeply downward, and Jazz didn't need telling that this was a continuation of the shaft seen in the upper level, which once — and only once — had carried a fearsome beam of energy to the outside world.
The walkway turned left into the mouth of the shaft, became a stairway once again. Blinding white light was painful after the comparative gloom of the two levels through which the party had descended. Ahead and below, the far end of the shaft was a white disk of glaring brilliance, with its lower rim blacked out by the walkway's platform. Jazz shielded his eyes, saw a young Russian soldier in uniform leaning against the curved wall. The man at once came upright, snapped to attention, slapped the stock of his Kalashnikov rifle in salute. 'At ease,' said Khuv. 'We need some glasses.'
The soldier leaned his rifle against the wall, groped in a satchel slung over his shoulder. He produced three pairs of tinted cellophane spectacles with cardboard rims, like the glasses Jazz had once been issued to view a 3-D film.
'For the light,' Khuv explained, though there was hardly any need. 'It can be blinding until you're used to it.' He put on his glasses.
Jazz did the same, followed Khuv down the stairway built through the glass-smooth cylindrical shaft. From behind them came a clatter as the soldier's rifle toppled over when he went to pick it up, then Karl Vyotsky's husky, threatening voice hissing: 'Idiot! Dolt! Would you like to do a month of nights?'
'No, Sir!' the young soldier gasped. 'I'm sorry, sir. It slipped.'
'You damn well should be sorry!' Vyotsky rasped. 'And not only for the rifle. What the hell are you here for anyway? To check passes for security, that's what! Do you know that man in front, and me, and the man with us?'
'Oh, yes, sir!' the young soldier quavered. The man in front is Comrade Major Khuv, sir, and you too are an officer of the KGB. The other man is… is… a friend of yours, sir!'
'Clown!' Vyotsky hissed. 'He is not my friend. Nor yours. Nor anyone's in the whole damned place!'
'Sir, I-'
'Now hold that rifle out in front of you,' Vyotsky snapped. 'Arm's length, finger through the trigger-guard, finger under the backsight. What the hell…? Arm's length, I said! Now hold it, and count to two hundred, slowly! Then get back to attention. And if I ever catch you slacking off again, I'll feed you into that white hell down there dick-first, got it?'
'Yes, Sir!'
Following Khuv toward the white glare at the end of the shaft, Jazz murmured sourly: 'A disciplinarian, our Karl.'
Khuv glanced back, shook his head. 'Not really. Discipline isn't his strong point. But sadism is. I hate to admit it, but it does have its uses…'
At the end of the shaft there was a railed landing where the stairs levelled out and turned to the left. Khuv paused on the landing with Jazz alongside. Waiting for Vyotsky, they gazed down on a fantastic scene.
It was like being in a cavern, but there was no way it could be mistaken for any ordinary sort of cave. Instead, Jazz saw that the rock had been hollowed out in the shape of a perfect sphere, a giant bubble in the base of the mountain — but a bubble at least one hundred and twenty feet in diameter! The curving, shiny-black wall all around was glass-smooth except for the wormholes which riddled it everywhere, even in the domed ceiling. The mouth of the shaft where Jazz and Khuv stood pointed downward at ninety degrees directly at the centre of the space, which also happened to be the source of the light. And that was the most fantastic thing of all.
For that central area was a ball of light some thirty feet across, and it was apparently suspended there, mid-way between the domed ceiling and the upward curving floor. A sphere of brilliance hanging motionless within a sphere of air, and the whole trick neatly buried under the foot of a mountain!
Narrowing his eyes against the glare, which was powerful even through the tinted lenses of his spectacles. Jazz slowly became aware that the spherical cavern contained other things. A spidery web of scaffolding had been built half-way up the wall and all around the central blaze. The scaffolding supported a platform of timbers which circled the weird light source, reminding Jazz vaguely of the ring system round Saturn. Leading inwards from the ring, a walkway proceeded right to the edge of the sphere of light.
Externally, backed up against the black, wormhole-riddled walls — evenly spaced around the perimeter and massively supported on a framework of stanchions — three twin-mounted Katushev cannons pointed their muzzles point-blank at the blinding centre. Crews were in position, their sights aligned on the sphere, their faces white and alien-looking with headset antennae and insect goggle-eyes trained on the dazzling target.
Between the guns and the sphere stood a ten-foot-high electrified fence, with a gate where the timber walkway spanned the gap between the Saturn's rings and the centre. There was some motion down there, nervous and jumpy, but not much; the stench of fear was so thick in the supposedly conditioned air that Jazz could almost feel it like slime on his skin.
He gripped the wooden rail, let the entire scene print itself indelibly on his brain, said: 'What in the name of all that's…?' He turned his head to stare at Khuv. 'I saw the arrival of those guns that night you caught me. The electrified fence, too. I thought they were meant to defend Perchorsk against attack from the outside, which struck me as making no sense. But from the inside? Christ, that doesn't make much sense either! I mean, what is that thing? And why are those men down there so desperately afraid of it?'
And suddenly, without any prompting, he knew the answer before it came. Not all of the answer but enough. Suddenly everything fitted: all he'd seen, and all Khuv had told him. And especially the flying monstrosity that the American fighters had burned to hell and sent crashing to earth in a ball of flame from high over the west coast of the Hudson Bay. And speaking of flames, wasn't that a four-man flame-thrower squad down there on the Saturn's- rings platform? Yes, it was.
Vyotsky had come up quietly behind Jazz and Khuv where they stood at the rail. He put a huge hand on Jazz's shoulder, causing him to start. 'As to what it is, British,' he said, 'it's some sort of gate or door. And as such we're not frightened of it.' But Jazz noted how for once Vyotksy's tone was muted, perhaps even a little awed.
'Karl is right,' said Khuv. 'No, we're not frightened of the Gate itself — but I defy any sane person not to fear the things that sometimes come through it!'
4. The Gate To….?
They started down the final flight of wooden stairs to the Saturn's rings or spider web platform, then moved round the central sphere until they approached the walkway leading to its coldly incandescent heart. Ten feet away from the gate in the electric fence Khuv halted, turned to Jazz and said: 'Well, what do you make of it?' He could only be talking about the glaring yet enigmatic globe which stood on the other side of the gate, maybe seven paces away. It was quite motionless, it made no sound, and yet it was menacing.
'You said that this was where the atomic pile stood,' Jazz answered. 'What, in mid-air? No, OK, I'm being
