He found Kamil up and walking about now, restored by the steward’s first aid. And as Dane climbed down their crude ladder they closed in on him.
“—That’s it,” he ended his report. “The Patrol’s riding in on this bird’s jet stream. As long as they both stay out of the atmosphere they’re safe. But once the pull is working full power again—” he snapped his fingers.
“Our move!” Kamil got out the words between his swollen lips. “We’ve got to cut that power off—totally!”
“Yes,” Mura crossed to the holds on the wall. “But first we collect Kosti—”
“How can you get him here? He said he can’t walk the walls—”
“A man can do anything if he is forced to it,” Mura replied. “You will stay here—I shall bring Kosti. But first show me the route which takes one to this ‘heart’—”
Dane reclimbed the wall behind the steward, led the way across the three intervening spaces to that corridor he had seen Rich traversing. And there he repeated the pattern the outlaw had followed. Mura smiled his placid smile.
“It is very simple, is it not? Now, you wait with Kamil—and do nothing foolish until I return. This is most interesting—”
Dane obediently went back to the room where they had left the engineer-apprentice. Kamil sat on the floor, his back against one of the walls, his battered face turned to the torch light. As Dane’s boots hit the pavement he turned his head.
“Welcome aboard,” he mouthed. “Now tell me about that installation—” he went on into a series of questions about what Dane had seen, which sometimes left the cargo-apprentice floundering. Of the machines he had seen little because of their casings. And he could not describe the control panel very well, having been at the time more intent on the actions of the men by it. He admitted this with some of his old feeling of inadequacy. A Trader kept his eyes open, a Trader had to use both his eyes and his brain at one and the same time. Here he had had another opportunity which he had apparently muffed. And a little of the old antagonism sparked to life inside him.
“What is their source of power?” Ali demanded of the room about them. “We’ve nothing like it—nothing at all! There must be things here which will put us years ahead—generations—”
“Providing of course,” Dane broke in a little sourly, “that we get to use them. We aren’t the winners yet.”
“Neither are we licked,” Ali retorted.
It was as if their roles had been reversed. Now it was Kamil who was building castles, Dane who did the under-mining.
“If Stotz and I could have a couple of hours in that place! By the Black Hole, we did pick a winner when we bid on Limbo—”
Ali seemed able to ignore the fact that Rich was still very much in command of the situation, that the Queen was pegged down, and that the enemy had a force which could render their headquarters impenetrable. The more Kamil enlarged on the future to come, the more flaws Dane could see in their actions in the immediate present. But they were both lifted out of their thoughts by a soft hail from above.
“Mura!” Dane jumped to his feet. The steward had been successful in his mission, a second man stood on the wall above, one hand resting on the steward’s shoulder.
“Yes,” was hissed down at them. “Now it is for you to climb. Up quickly, both of you, time runs out !”
Ali went first, and once or twice he bit off an exclamation as his exertions wrung his sore body. Dane caught up the beacon torch, snapped it off, and went after.
“Now this is what we shall do,” Mura was clearly in command, as he had been all the time since they had entered the mountain. “Kosti and Ali shall go by the regular path to the room of the installation. While you and I, Thorson, will take the route along the wall top. They are expecting Rich to return there. Your entrance in his place should surprise them long enough for us to go into action. We must get at that switch and immobilize it. And do whatever else we can to make this devil thing incapable of action in the future. So—now we move—”
They made their way back to the path Rich had used, Kosti walking slowly with his hand on the steward’s shoulder, visible shudders shaking his big body. There once more they used the linked belts and lowered the jetman and Ali to the floor of the maze.
The brighter glow of the installation section was their guide now and they reached the oval wall easily. Mura gestured at Kosti and the jetman raised his voice in the same call the messenger had given earlier. The other three stood tense, ready to move if it worked.
“Salzar!”
Dane’s attention was fixed on the Rigellian. The Alien’s head went up, his round eyes sought the hidden doorway. It was going to work because that blue hand went to the proper button among the controls. And outside the barrier Kosti stood waiting, his blaster drawn and ready to fire, the unarmed Ali behind him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
THE HEART CEASES TO BEAT
As the door slid back into the wall and Kosti leaped through, Mura raised his voice:
“You are covered! Stand where you are!”
The man at the keyboard started, looking over his shoulder at Kosti, his face a mask of wild surprise. But the Rigellian moved with the superhuman speed of his race, his blue hand whipping towards another point on the control board.
It was Dane who fired and struck, not living flesh but that bank of controls. The man at the keyboard screamed, a thin, inhuman cry to echo though the maze. And the Rigellian dropped to the floor. But he was not yet beaten. He threw himself at Kosti, moving with a speed no Terran muscles could equal.
The big man swerved, but not far or fast enough, and went down into a clawing, gouging scramble on the floor. But the other outlaw remained where he was, sounds which bore small likeness to words still bubbling between his lips.
Ali slipped through the door and started around the room, edging with the wall as a support to his weaving legs. He turned his face up to Dane.
“Which is it?” he cried. “That switch—”
“Just ahead—the black one with the device set in the handle,” Dane called back. And now the eyes of the man by the keyboard found the two on the top of the wall. Why the sight of them restored his sense they could never know, but his hand went to the weapon at his belt. And at that same instant blaster fire cut so close to him that he must have felt the sear of the beam.
“Your hands—up with your hands—at once!” Mura gave the order with the same snap as Jellico might have used.
The man obeyed, leaning over to plant his outspread fingers on the screen he had watched for so long. But now he was intent upon Ali’s tottering advance and on his face there was a growing horror. When Kamil’s hand fell on the switch at last he gave another cry.
“Don’t!”
But Ali disregarded the warning and pulled the lever down with all his strength. The outlaw at the keyboard screamed for the second time. And there came another answer. The hum which had filled the walls, beat within their bodies for so long, was gone.
The Rigellian wrenched himself free from Kosti’s grip and gathered his feet under him to launch himself at the switch. But Ali had flung his whole weight upon the lever, dragging it down until the metal shaft broke off in his hand, determined that it would not be opened again. And at the sight of that the man at the keyboard went mad, flinging himself at Kamil in spite of the menace of Mura’s blaster.
Dane had been caught napping, his attention had been on the Rigellian who, he thought, was the more dangerous of the two. But the steward burned the lunatic down as his tearing hands reached for Ali’s throat. The man’s shriek was choked in mid cry and he writhed to the floor, on his face. Dane was glad he could not see those blackened features.