“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 way in which it was renewed. And yet that about them was fresh.
“That tootling,” Kosti sounded fretful, “isn’t going to do any good. You’ll wear the pipe out before you get through this—” he struck his hand against the side wall.
And under his touch the section of wall moved, showing a dark crack a couple of inches wide extending from the floor to a point six feet up.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
PRISONER’S MAZE
“You’ve done it!” Dane cried to Mura as Kosti tore at the opening, forcing it larger—the door resisting as if it had not moved for a long time.
“This isn’t the right way,” the jetman protested even as he pushed.
“Not the corridor, no,” agreed Mura. “But this is a way out of our present trap and as such it is not to be despised. Also it is not one in general use, or so I would judge by its stubbornness. Therefore, an even better path for us. I must have hit upon a rarer sonic combination—” He wiped the tiny pipe carefully and put it away.
Though Kosti forced the door open as wide as it would go, the resulting entrance was a narrow one. Mura negotiated it without trouble, but Dane and the jetman had to squeeze. And for one dangerous moment it seemed that the latter might not be able to make it. Only by shedding his bulky equipment belt and his outdoor tunic could he scrape by.
They found themselves in a second corridor, one more narrow than that in which they had been imprisoned. The same grey light glowed from the walls. But as Dane stepped forward his feet were cushioned and he looked down to see that his boots stirred fine dust, dust thick enough to coat the floor an inch or more in depth.
Mura freed his belt torch and sent its beam ahead. Save where they had disturbed it, that dust was smooth, without track. No one had walked this way for a long, long time—perhaps not since the Forerunners had left this mountain citadel.