I opened the padlock and freed her neck of the chain. The attached padlock, with its key, I snapped about a link of the chain, between some four and five feet from the floor. This is the inactive position of the chain, lock at collar level, chain terminating with a closed loop, the loop about a foot off the floor, an arrangement permitting a girl to be quickly and conveniently put on the chain and permitting the chain, if no girl is upon it, to be slid in its track without dragging on the steel plates.
She turned about, holding her bound wrists to me, that I might unbind them. Instead I took her by the hair and walked her, bent over, beside me, sliding the chain along with us, backward, until I came to a branching in a hail. I slid The chain a distance down that hall, and then, still holding her, returned to that point at which the track system terminated.
'Free me,' she begged. 'Oh!' she cried, as my hand twisted in her hair.
'You are too pretty to free,' I told her.
I then thrust her ahead of me, down the corridor, beyond the termination point of the chain-and-track system.
She turned about, terrified. 'Humans may not go beyond this point,' she said.
'Precede me,' I told her.
Moaning, the bound, silked girl turned about and preceded me.
I saw that no more of the lensed monitors covered this portion of the corridor. I grew uneasy, for it seemed matters proceeded too simply. A steel door lay at the end of the corridor. I had speculated that the destructive device would lie beyond the reach of slaves, and in an area secret to the monitoring system, which might be available at times to humans. Yet, now, I was apprehensive.
I tried the door at the end of the corridor. It was open. I thrust it back with the butt of the riflelike contrivance I carried.
I looked at the girl. I nodded to her to approach me. She did so. I held my left hand open, at my waist. She stiffened, and looked at me, angrily. I opened and closed my left hand once. I saw her training in Gorean customs had been thorough. But she never thought that such a gesture would be used to her. She came beside me, and a bit behind me, and, crouching, put her head down, deeply. I fastened my hand in her hair. She winced. Women are helpless in this position. I carried the dart-firing weapon, loaded, in my right hand. I looked cautiously about the frame of the door. I entered, conducting the girl. The room, large, seemed deserted.
It seemed a normal storage room, though quite large. It was filled with boxes, the markings on which I could not read. Some of the boxes were in the nature of open crates. They seemed to contain machinery and parts for machinery. There were corridors among the boxes.
I heard a sound and, releasing the girl, lifted the weapon, with both hands.
A figure, in black, stood up, high, atop several boxes. 'It is not here,' he said.
'Drusus,' I said. I recalled him, he of the Assassins, whom I had bested on the sand of the small arena.
He carried a dart-firing weapon.
'Put aside your weapon, slowly,' I commanded him.
'It is not here,' he said. 'I have searched.'
'Put aside your weapon,' I said.
He put it at his feet.
'What are you doing here?' I asked.
'I suspect the same as you,' he said. 'I have searched for the lever or key, or wheel, or whatever it may be, which, manipulated or turned, will destroy this place.'
'You serve Kurii,' I said.
'No longer,' said he. 'I fought, and was spared by one who was a man. I have thought long on this. Though I may be too weak to be an Assassin, yet perhaps I have strength sufficient unto manhood.'
'How do I know you speak the truth?' I said.
'Four Kur were here,' he said, 'to guard this place, to intercept him who might attempt to attain it. Those I slew.'
He gestured to an aisle in the boxes. I could smell Kur blood. I did not take my eyes from him. The girl, turning about, shrank suddenly back, desperately, futilely, trying to free her small bands, tied behind her back, and stilled a scream.
'Four times I fired, four I slew,' he said.
'Report what you see,' I told the girl.
'There are four beasts, or parts of beasts,' she said, 'three here, and one beyond.'
'Take up your weapon,' I said to Drusus.
He picked it up. He looked at the woman. 'A pretty slave girl,' he said.
'I am not a slave girl!' she said. 'I am a free woman! I am the Lady Graciela Consuelo Rosa Rivera- Sanchez!'
'Amusing,' he said. He descended from the boxes.
'I had thought the destructive device, if it exists, would be here,' I said.
'I thought so, too,' he said.
'If you trip or trigger the device,' said the girl, 'we will all be killed!'
'The invasion must be stopped,' I said.
'The device must not be detonated,' she cried. 'We would all be killed, you fools!'
I struck her back against the boxes, blood at her mouth, and she sank to the floor.
'You think and act as a slave,' I said.
She put her head down, trembling, frightened, an instinctive gesture for a slave.
'You are a slave,' I said. 'I can tell.'
She looked up at me, frightened.
'Perhaps it would be well for you to ask permission before you speak in the presence of free men,' I said.
She put her head down.
'She would look well naked, on an auction block,' said Drusus.
'Yes,' I said.
'What shall we do now?' he asked.
At that moment the large steel door, through which I had entered the room shut. It must have been done automatically. We saw no one. The wheel on our side of the door, bummed and spun, locking the door. At the same time, from the ceiling, a filtering of white, smoky gas began to descend.
'Hold your breath!' I cried. I leveled the, dart-firing weapon I carried at the door, and pressed the firing switch. The dart, like an insidious bird, sped to the steel, smoking, and pierced its outer layer. An instant later, as I flung myself downward, near the girl, Drusus with me, there was a ripping of steel which tore at my eardrums. I gestured the others to their feet, and, together, we ran through the smoke and gas to the door. It lay twisted, half wrenched from its hinges, half melted. We lowered our heads and slipped through the opening. The girl screamed as the hot metal brushed her calf. We were then free in the hall. Some eight Kurii were hurrying toward us.
Drusus lifted his weapon, calmly. A dart hissed forth. The first Kur stopped and then, suddenly, burst apart. Another reeled away from him. Another tore the blood and flesh from his face, half blinded, roaring with fury. A dart hissed above our heads and rent in its explosion the metal behind us. I fired a dart and another Kur spun about hideously, scratching at the metal, and then, before our eyes, erupted as though it had engorged a bomb. The six Kurii remaining, one with an arm dragging on the floor, hung to its body by torn shreds of muscle, scrambled backwards, snarling. Then they disappeared about a corner.
'Hurry!' I cried.
We sped forward, and, at the first branching in the corridor, turned left.
We had no desire to again encounter the Kurii.
Scarcely had we left our original corridor than we heard a great slam of steel. Looking backward we saw that it had been sealed.
'Let us move quickly,' I suggested.
We hurried up a flight of stairs.
We saw no one.
We began to ascend another flight of stairs. Near its top the girl stumbled and fell, bound, rolling, down
