regained a large measure of his confidence.
“Find out for yourself,” he retorted.
Kosti sighed. “I hate to waste time, fella. But if you must be softened up, you’re going to be—get me?”
Something else got them all first. A stone missed Kosti’s head by a scant inch as he bent over Snall. And a larger one struck the captive’s body, bringing a sharp cry of pain out of him.
“Bogies!” Dane fanned his sleep ray up a wall where he could see nothing move, but from which he was sure the stones had been thrown.
Another rock cracked viciously against the crawler as Wilcox hit the dirt on the other side, pulling Rip with him to shelter half under the machine. Mura was using his ray, too, standing unconcerned knee deep in the pool and beaming the cliff foot by foot as if he had all the time in the world and intended to make this a thorough job.
It was Snall who ended that strange blind battle. Kosti had dragged him to safety and must have cut his bonds so that he could move with greater speed. But now the outlaw flung himself out of shelter, straight for the controls of the carrier. He brought his fist down upon a button set in the panel and was rewarded by a high pitched tinkle—a tinkle which resounded in the Terran’s heads until Dane had to fight to keep his hands from his ears.
The answer to this assault upon their eardrums was as preposterous as anything Dane had ever witnessed in a Video performance. The supposedly solid rock wall fronting the end of the valley opened, one piece of the stone falling back to provide a dark gap. And, since their captive was prepared for that he was the first through the door, darting from under Kosti’s clutching hands.
With an inarticulate roar the jetman followed Snall. And Dane pounded after both of them into the maw of the cliff. From the sunlight of Limbo they were translated to a twilight grey, strung out like beads on a string, with Snall, proving himself a good distance runner, well at the head.
Dane was inside the straight corridor before his common sense took command once more. He shouted to Kosti and his voice echoed in a hollow boom. Though he slowed, the other two kept on into the dusky reaches ahead.
Dane turned back to the entrance, still undecided. To be cut off here—their party divided. What should he do, run after Kosti, or try to bring in the others? He was in time to see Mura come in at a walking pace. And then, to Dane’s horror, the outlet to the world closed! There was a clang of metal meeting metal and the sunlight was instantly cut to evening.
“The door!” Dane hurled himself at the masked opening with the same fervour with which he had followed Snall into the corridor. But before he reached that spot Mura’s steadying grip closed on his arm, restraining him with a strength he had forgotten the smaller man possessed.
“Do not be alarmed,” the steward said. “There is no danger. Wilcox and Shannon are in safety. They are armed with the sleep rays, in addition they know how to operate the horn to open the gate when necessary. But where is Karl? Has he disappeared?”
Mura’s tone had a soothing effect. The little man gave such an impression of unruffled efficiency that Dane lost that panic which had sent him running for the entrance.
“The last I saw he was still after Snall.”
“Let us hope that he has caught up with him. I would be better pleased if we walked these ways with Snall under our control—not with him somewhere ahead to warn his companions.”
They hurried on and discovered that the corridor made a sharp turn to the left. Dane listened, hoping to hear the sounds of running feet. But when the thump-thump did come it was made by a single pair of boots. And a minute later the jetman barged into view his face very sober in the wan light radiated from the smooth walls about them.
“Where’s Snall?” Dane asked.
Kosti grimaced. “He got through one of those condemned wall back there—”
“Just where?” Mura went in the direction from which the jetman had just come.
“The door snapped shut as I got to it,” Kosti protested. “We can’t follow him. Unless one of you brought that tootler off the crawler.”
The passage stretched only a short distance beyond, ending in a wall as blank of any opening as the cliffs without. Though this was not of stone but of the seamless substances which made the buildings in the Forerunner ruins.
“This wall?” Mura thumped the surface as Kosti nodded gloomily.
”Can’t see any opening there now—”
The humming vibration, to which they had become so accustomed that they no longer consciously noted it, sang through the walls, through the flooring under their feet. How much that sonic resonance added to their feeling of uneasiness it was hard to tell. But the narrow corridor, the pallid light, fed their sensation of being trapped.
“Looks as if we are stuck,” the jetman observed, “unless we go out into the valley again. How about that? Where’s Wilcox and Shannon?”
Dane explained. But he, too, hoped that the others would use the horn and open the outer door. With the intention of getting back to the entrance he walked along the hall. That passage had run straight, he remembered, and then there had been a right angled turn around which Kosti had disappeared in pursuit of Snall—
But when Dane came to that corner and made the turn he was fronted not by the hall he remembered, but a pocket of some three or four feet. He stopped, bewildered. There had been only one corridor—with no openings along its sides. Before him now should be a smooth stretch leading to the outer door. But instead here was another wall. He reached out and his nails scraped on its slick surface. It was there all right—no illusion.
A muffled cry brought him about and he was just in tune to see another barrier appear out of the side wall to seal off a segment of the passage, one to cut him away from the others.
Dane threw himself forward, barely getting through the narrowing space. And he might not have made it had Kosti not come to his aid and used his bull’s strength to wrestle against the sliding wall. But as Dane won to the other side, it clicked triumphantly into place and they were boxed in a six foot section of corridor.
“Neat,” Kosti commented. “Got us shut up until they have time to attend to us.”
Mura shrugged. “It cannot now be doubted that Snall got through with his alarm.”
But the steward did not appear bothered. Kosti thumped the wall, listening intently as if he hoped to discover the trick of its opening by the sound he so invoked.
“Remote control, of course,” Mura continued in his placid tone. “Yes, they will now believe that they have us safe—”
“Only they don’t, do they?” Observance of Mura led Dane to that question.
“That we shall see. The outer door is controlled by sonics. I heard Tang say that the installation interference lies partly in the non-audible range. So it may be we have an answer to this trap.”
He unsealed the front of his tunic and groped in the inner breast pocket all Traders used for their most prized possessions. He took out a three inch tube of polished white substance which might have been bone.
Kosti stopped his thumping. “Say—that’s your Feedle call—”
“Just so. Now we shall see if it can be used for another purpose than to summon the insects of Karmuli —”
He put the miniature pipe to his lips and blew, though no sound issued to be caught by Terran hearing. Kosti’s shade of elation vanished.
“No use—”
Mura smiled. “You have no patience, Karl. This has ten ultrasonic notes. I have only used one. Give me a chance to try the others before you are sure we do not possess a key to these doors.”
There followed long moments of silence with no visible result.
“Not going to work—” Kosti shook his head.
But Mura paid no attention. At intervals he took the pipe from his lips, rested, and then tried again. Dane was certain that he must have tried more than ten notes, but the steward showed no sign of discouragement.
“That’s more than ten notes,” accused Kosti.
“The signal that opened the first door employed three. The same number combination may apply here.” He raised the pipe once more.
Kosti sat down on the floor, obviously divorcing himself from proceedings he deemed useless. Dane squatted beside him. But Mura’s patience was infinite. One hour passed—by Dane’s watch, and they were well into the second. Dane wondered about their air supply. Unless it oozed through the walls as did the light, he could see no
