In the light-filled water, he saw a frog-like creature swim away swiftly, and he knew that it was this that had bitten him. He swam upward because he had to get air, knowing even as he did that the Beller would easily kill him, if the Beller had heard him.
He came up and, with a massive effort of will, kept himself from blowing out water and air and gasping and thrashing around. His head came up under the pad again, and he eased the water out. He saw that the Beller had disappeared.
But in the next second he doubled over again with agony. The frog had returned and bitten him on the leg again. His blood poured out from the wounds and darkened the water. He swam quickly to the edge of the pool and pulled himself out with a single smooth motion. His legs tingled.
On the walk, he pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips to bind around his wounds. The animal must have had teeth as sharp as a shark's; they had sheared through the cloth of his pants and taken out skin and flesh. But the wounds were not deep.
The Lord must have been greatly amused when he planted the savage little carnivore in this pool.
Kickaha was not amused. He did not know why the Beller was in the next room, but he suspected that he would soon be back. He had to get away, but he also needed his beamer. Not that he would be able to get it. Not while that frog-thing was in the pool.
At least he had the knife. He took it from his belt and put it between his teeth while he splashed water on the walk where his blood had dripped. Then he straightened up and limped past the pool and into the next room.
He passed through a short bare-walled hall. The room beyond was as large as the one with the pool. It was warm and humid and filled with plant life that looked neither Terrestrial nor Martian. It was true that he had not seen any Martian vegetation other than the cactusoids in the valley. But these plants were so tall, green, stinking, fleshy, and so active, they just did not look as if they could survive on the rare-aired Mars-scape.
One side of the wall was transparent, and this showed a gray fog. That was all. Strain his eyes as much as he could, he could see nothing but the grayness. And it did not seem to be a watery fog but one composed of thousands upon thousands of exceedingly tiny particles. More like dust of some kind, he thought.
He was surely no longer on Mars. When he had passed from the hall into this room, he had stepped through a gate which had shot him instantaneously into a building on some other planet or satellite. The gravity seemed no different than Earth's so he must be on a planet of similar size. That, plus the cloud, made him think that it must be
Venus.
With a start, he realized that the gravity in the Martian building should have been much less than Earth's. How much? A sixth? He did not remember, but he knew that when he had leaped, he should have soared far more than he did.
But that building was on Mars. He was sure of that. This meant that the building had been equipped with a device to ensure an Earth-gravity locally. Which meant that this building could be on, say, Jupiter, and yet the titanic drag of the planet would be nullified by the Lord's machines.
He shrugged. It really did not matter much where he was if he could not survive outside of the building. The problem he had to solve was staying alive and finding a way back to Earth. He went on to another short and bare hall and then into a twilit room the size of Grand Central Station. It was dome-shaped and filled with a silvery gray metal liquid except for a narrow walk around the wall and for a small round island in the middle. The metal looked like mercury, and the walk went all the way around the room. Nowhere along the wall was there any sign of any opening.
The island was about fifty yards from the wall. Its surface was only a foot above the still lake of quicksilver. The island seemed to be of stone, and in its exact center was a huge hoop of metal set vertically in the stone. He knew at once that it was a gate and that if he could get to it, he would be transported to a place where he would at least have a fighting chance. That was the rule of the game. If the prisoner was intelligent enough and strong enough and swift enough-and, above all, lucky enough-he just might get free.
He waited by the door because there was no other place to hide. While he waited, he tried to think of anything in the other rooms that could be converted to a boat. Nothing came to his mind except one of the sofas, and he doubted that it would float. Still, he might try it. But how did you propel a heavy object that was slowly sinking, or perhaps swiftly sinking, through mercury?
He would not know until he tried it. The thought did not cheer him up. And then he thought, could a man swim in mercury? In addition, there were poisonous vapors rising from mercury, if he remembered his chemistry correctly.
Now he remembered some phrases from his high school chemistry class. That was back in 1936 in a long ago and truly different world: Does not wet glass but forms a convex surface when in a glass container... is slightly volatile at ordinary temperatures and a health hazard due to its poisonous effect... slowly tarnishes in moist air...
The air in this dome was certainly moist, but the metal was not tarnished. And he could smell no fumes and did not feel any poisonous effects. Not as yet.
Suddenly, he stiffened. He heard, faintly, the slapping of leather on stone. The door had been left open by the Beller, so Kickaha had not moved it. He was on the other side, waiting, hoping that the bell would not enter first.
It did. The black object floated through about four feet off the floor. As soon as it had passed by, it stopped. Kickaha leaped against the door and slammed it shut. The bell continued to hover in the same spot. The door remained shut. It had no lock, and all the Beller had to do to open it was to kick it. But he was cautious, and he must have been very shaken by finding the door closed. He had no idea who was on the other side or what weapons his enemy had. Furthermore, he was now separated from his bell, his most precious possession. If it was true that the bell could not be destroyed, it was also true that it could be taken away and hidden from him.
Kickaha ran in front of the door, hoping that the Beller would not fire his heavy beamer at it at that moment. He seized the bell in his hands and plunged on. The bell resisted but went backward all the same. It did not, however, give an inch on the vertical.
At that moment, the metal of the edge of the door and the wall began to turn red, and Kickaha knew that the Beller was turning the full power of his beamer on the door and that the metal must be very resistant indeed.
But why didn't the Beller just kick the door open and then fire through it?
Perhaps he was afraid that his enemy might be hiding behind the door when it swung open, so he was making sure that there would be nothing to swing. Whatever his motives, he was giving Kickaha a little more tune, not enough though to swim across to the island. The Beller would be through the door about the tune he was halfway to the island.
Kickaha took hold of the bell with both hands and pushed it up against the wall. It did not go easily on the horizontal, but he did not have to strain to move it. He pulled it toward him and then away, estimating its resistance. Then he gave it a great shove with both hands in the direction along the wall. It moved at about two feet per second but then slowed as it scraped along the curved wall. Another shove, this time at an angle to take it away from the curve but to keep it from going out over the pool, resulted in its moving for a longer distance.