Lights were on, but they were no brighter than in this chamber.
“I don’t think anyone’s up there,” said April.
The opening in the ceiling was rectangular, maybe six by eight feet. There was no staircase. “The balloon,” Max said, “probably floated into the upper room.”
It was a few degrees cooler here than in the Roundhouse. Max zipped his jacket and turned back to remove his equipment from the grid. “I feel light,” he said.
“I think you’re right,” said April. “Gravity again.”
“Not on Earth?” asked Arky.
She shook her head.
The lawyer kept switching his gaze from one doorway to the other. He was not showing a weapon, but his right hand was inside the pocket of his jacket.
No window opened into the room. April unslung her camera and took some pictures. Max and Arky looked into the passageways. The light brightened before them as they moved, and darkened again behind. The carpet remained spongy.
One corridor dead-ended in a large chamber shaped like a rhombus. The other passed additional empty rooms before it turned a corner. There were still no windows. And no furniture.
They went into a huddle. “I don’t like a place where we can’t see very far,” said Arky. “I suggest we go back.”
“Without knowing where we are?” April sighed loudly and looked at Max. “What do you say, Max?”
Max agreed with Arky. But he wasn’t going to say so in April’s presence. “Why don’t we go a little farther?” he said.
April smiled. “Two out of three.”
“I wasn’t aware,” said the lawyer, “we were running a democracy here.” Ahead, the passageway made a ninety-degree right turn. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “Let’s try it.”
They turned the corner. More rooms. And another opening in the ceiling.
Still no windows. And no indication of recent occupancy.
“This place doesn’t look abandoned,” said April. “There’s no dust. It just looks empty.”
They made a left turn, and Max started a map.
“Where,” asked Arky, “are the windows?”
Max’s ankles were starting to hurt. Walking on a floor that sank with every step was not easy.
They passed into a long, narrow room. Max, who was busy with his map, put a foot down. The floor wasn’t there, and he fell forward; suddenly he was looking down two stories! April grabbed his jacket and held on for the instant required for Arky to get an arm around Max’s shoulder. They dragged him back, and Max knelt on the soft floor waiting for his stomach to settle.
The hole was several feet wide and extended the length of the room. On the other side, the floor continued and a doorway opened onto another passageway.
After satisfying herself that Max was not hurt, April knelt down by the edge. “This isn’t damage,” she said. “This is designed this way. It’s a shaft.”
“In the middle of the floor?” said Arky. “Who the hell is the architect?”
There was no way around it, so they reversed course and took another turn. They found other areas where their passage was blocked by missing floor, and to a degree their route was determined by these curious phenomena.
They looked in all the chambers along their passage. Gradually it struck them that these weren’t rooms at all in the standard sense. They were rather spaces in an endless variety of shapes. Some were too narrow to have been comfortable for human occupancy. Others, like the room they had arrived in, were neither square nor rectangular, but had walls that came in at odd angles or that destroyed the symmetry of the space.
There was no furniture. And no sign of a staircase or any other rational means of getting from one floor to another. The color and texture of carpets and walls changed from place to place. And, perhaps strangest of all, they never found a window, leading to the inevitable suggestion that they were underground.
Max was ready to clear out the moment his companions dragged him out of the shaft, and he only waited for someone else to make the suggestion. Meantime, he busied himself with his map, although he was very cautious where he walked.
Lights continued to brighten before them and to fade behind. This effect created the mildly unnerving impression that there was always something moving just outside their field of vision. Max began to pretend he was working on the map while he watched out of the corner of his eye for some untoward movement. Eventually he saw it.
“Where?” asked Arky. “I don’t see anything.”
“Right there.” Max pointed at a turn in the corridor, which they had just rounded only a minute earlier.
“I saw it, too,” said April.
“Saw what?” The.38 appeared in Arky’s hand.
“The light changed,” said Max. “Look—there’s a bright patch back there.”
Air currents stirred.
The pool of light matched their own. Then, as they watched, it shifted toward them. The effect was that of being stalked.
“There’s nothing there,” said Arky, trying for a steady voice. “It’s just the lights.”
But they backed away, and the light flowed forward. April’s eyes widened. “Max,” she said, “can you get us back to the grid?”
Max was already consulting his map. “I don’t think so. The only way I know of is back the way we came.” He looked toward the approaching light.
“That’s not going to work,” said Arky. They set off again in the direction they’d been traveling. The lawyer took a position in the rear. “Try to find a way around,” he said.
They went left at the first cross-passageway, hoping to find another place to turn again and get behind the thing in the corridor. (For Max had now begun to think of it as a thing. Every horror movie and vampire book he’d ever digested bubbled up in his psyche.)
“You know,” said April, “I keep thinking that everything connected with the ports seems to be laid out for visitors. Tourists. People riding a boat around a lake. The Horsehead. They’re vacation stops. Maybe this place is, too.”
“Is what?” asked Max. “A maze?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a funhouse.” They were moving at a quick walking gait. The change in illumination behind them was keeping pace. Finally April slowed and turned around, letting Arky draw abreast. “Hello,” she said with nervous cheerfulness. “Is anyone there?”
Max was behind April, watching the thing advance, backpedaling, fighting down an urge to run, when his vision blurred. Suddenly he was looking at her from the front. She blinked on and off, like an electronic image, and his head swam. His stomach turned over and he went down on one knee, fighting faintness. He closed his eyes, tried to shake it off, and saw her face, saw her lips moving, hands outstretched, eyes riveted. He was looking down from near the ceiling.
“Come on, Max,” said Arky. “Get in the game.” He pulled Max to his feet, then caught April by the shoulder and drew her back. Now they were in full retreat.
They ran through a wedge-shaped room into another passageway and turned left and then right. Max’s head cleared quickly, probably from the adrenaline he was pumping.
“I think we lost it,” said Arky.
They were retreating across a wide chamber and around a shaft. They paused at the exit on the far side. When the lights didn’t change, Max tried to put his thoughts in order.
The way he did that was to assign the distorted perspective he’d experienced to his momentary weakness and to concentrate instead on getting them back to the grid. He’d always been proud of his directional sense. Even in this labyrinth, he was confident he knew which way they had to go. He showed them on the map. “We’re here,” he said. “And we’ve got to get here.” Roughly a mile away.