The War of the Lance

'It never lapsed, even before I took it over. A project,' Standback said stiffly, 'is a commitment. It's as important as a vow.'

'They paid in advance, didn't they?' Mara asked dryly.

'Well, yes. Quite a lot, in fact. Here we are.'

He pulled an elaborate key (four notches and a combination lock) from a ring at his waist. He inserted the key with some difficulty in a lock attached to a thick beam door in the tunnel wall. After three tries, it opened easily. 'After you,' he said. 'This room has my first anti-spy device.'

Mara stepped in cautiously. 'Shouldn't your alarms have sensed me?'

'It's a proximity alarm,' the gnome said. 'Once testing is complete, I'll put hundreds of them in any place that needs monitoring. You can't have too much redundancy, you know.' He was scribbling another note on his shirt. 'Would you mind standing on that large black X on the floor?' The X had a small bump at the crosspoint.

A gnome-size test dummy on wheels stood next to the X. Mara rolled it almost onto the X and stood well off to one side. 'Let's try it this way first.'

'I've done this many times,' Standback objected, 'with that very dummy.'

Mara said firmly, 'Well, I haven't seen it work yet.' She noted that the dummy hadn't a mark on it, though the walls and floor of the room were dented and scraped.

Standback complained, with some justification, 'You promised. Is there no honor among thieves?'

'There was once,' Mara said. 'Someone stole it.' Then she sighed and moved the dummy off the X. 'I warn you, I'm leaving at the first sign of danger. What is it we're testing?'

'It's called the Room Security Spybanger,' Standback said impatiently. 'Now will you step on the X?'

Mara tapped the X with her toe, leapt, tucked, and rolled easily away, preparing to watch from a safe distance.

She heard a twang. A stone mallet — its head the size of her own — whistled above her close enough to ruffle her hair. Mara ducked, heard a second twang and felt a sudden sharp sting on her cheek as an elastic cord attached to the mallet handle snapped taut against her skin.

The mallet struck the far wall. A trap door popped open beside it. The mallet whizzed back. Mara's back flip carried her just out of range. She dropped flat as a second mallet spun out of the trap door and careened past her, setting off a third mallet.

Soon six stone hammers were ricocheting and thudding around the room. Mara rolled, leapt, ducked, twisted, and at one point slid down a thrumming elastic cord to keep out of the way.

Eventually, in desperation, she crawled back to a section of floor that every last mallet had failed to pass over. She glanced in all directions, poised to spring, until the mallets gradually lost momentum and dangled limply from the tangled elastics.

In the far comer, Standback applauded. 'A perfect test.' He wrote furiously on his stomach. 'Absolutely perfect, with the exception of a few trajectory defects.'

Mara looked down. She was crouched over the X. 'You tried to kill me.'

Standback shook his head violently. 'Never. The Spybanger is designed only for self-protection; killing is purely accidental. Can you help me rig these back up?'

From a comer cabinet, Standback produced a large wooden crank. He inserted the crank into a spring and ratchet arrangement in the first trap and turned it until the mechanism was tight enough to leave room for the hammer in front of it. He lifted the mallet laboriously, then stood back, panting.

'And so amazingly easy to reload,' he said, struggling to shut the trap before the hammer flew out.

Mara helped crank and lift the other five. 'What else have you been working on?'

In answer, he led her through a second door — which led through a short tunnel to another room.

'This isn't for spies, and it's not an offensive weapon. It's a shock-lessening device, a preventive measure for high-impact disasters. A pneumatically seismosensitive counter-measure for offsetting combat-related upheavals.'

'What does it do?'

'I just told you,' Standback snapped. 'When we get there, would you stand in the center of the room, right on the X?'

Mara started to agree readily, then stopped. 'Is it supposed to be the safest place?'

Standback nodded.

'In that case,' Mara said politely, 'why don't YOU stand on it, and I'll observe?'

The gnome's shaggy eyebrows shot up. 'That's kind of you.' He stepped onto the X. 'You don't mind taking the extra risk?'

'Never.' Mara folded her arms. 'Danger and I are well acquainted.'

'All right. Watch, then. The Thudbagger is designed to protect against impact.' He paused. 'You've seen the gnomeflingers in use, above?'

Mara shuddered. She. had flitted down from level to level in the shadows, watching as gnomes sailed from level to level (and, usually, down again) from the bulky catapults that were equipped with everything except accuracy and control.

'Well,' Standback continued, 'this may surprise you, but several visiting knights thought that the gnomeflingers might also be dangerous.'

'No!'

'Truly. They thought — now, to my mind, it takes a twisted mind to think this in the first place — that someone could use the gnomeflingers to throw dead weight projectiles instead of passengers. Well, we performed some experiments, but we never got reliable enough results to suggest that this would work.'

'Why not?' Mara asked.

Standback sighed. 'Mostly because the note-takers kept getting crushed by thrown rocks. At any rate, the knights asked us to come up with a defense to protect getting hurt by flying rocks. They talked about shields, and barriers, but our Hazard Analysis Committee interviewed the gnomeflinger Impact Test Survivors and concluded that the problem went beyond shields and walls. I brought their results down here with me.' He led her into the next room.

The furniture, Mara noted with relief, did not look banged up at all. How dangerous could this room be?

A closer look revealed the furniture to be brand new. The comers of the room contained large piles of splinters.

'Are you sure you want ME to stand on the X?' Stand-back asked. 'After all, I guarantee it to be the safest place in the room.'

Mara bowed to him. 'All the more reason to give it to you.'

He was flattered. 'How kind you are, and how brave.'

'I am also called Mara the Courageous,' she said.

Standback was not surprised.

He stepped onto the X and folded his arms confidently. 'This room has a broad-band sensor.' He pointed to a small round bump in the floor. 'Stamp anywhere. You don't need to do it very hard.'

The floor looked to be some kind of parquet, broken at regular intervals with circular lids each the size of a melon.

Mara eyed Standback narrowly and slammed her foot against the bare floor. Nothing happened. She stamped again, harder. Still nothing. She took a running start and stamped with both feet, hard enough to hurt her ankles. Nothing. She gave up and leaned on the wall.

Huge leather balloons popped out of the floor. Filling instantly with compressed air, the balloons smashed the new furniture to kindling.

Mara sidled around the edge of the room, squeezing between the wall and the balloons. 'That's pretty impressive, Standback — hello?' She squeaked a balloon with her thumb. 'Standback?'

Mara heard an answering squeak. She leapt onto one of the balloons, poised there like a cat, and saw a hand struggling upward in the crack where all the balloons met.

Mara rolled down to the hand and planted her feet against balloon, her right shoulder against another. Gradually, the two moved apart. She heard a gasping inhale below her, then a thump as something hit the floor.