"Light the candle," breathed Nash.
"Can't; I haven't enough hands. You'll have to."
Nash fumbled and dropped his match, and had to comb the sand with his fingers for it. The shapeless figure was as still as a headstone, which it slightly resembled.
Nash struck a light and sought the candle wick.
The surroundings seemed suddenly much darker."Ouch!" said Alicia, quite audibly."What?" said Nash."Damned wax burned me—"
"Sh! He's coming to!"
In the microcosmic candle light, the gray thing was stirring. A head emerged from the top of the bundle: high forehead, fiercely aquiline nose, in a lean, old, but firm-skinned face; the whole utterly devoid of hair.
The black gimlet eyes threw back tiny reflections of the candle flame, and the whole bundle stirred. A bare arm thrust itself out of the voluminous gray mantle, and the being started to heave itself to its feet. A voice, deep and clear, boomed out: "Damned impertinence—"
Alicia flapped her paper sharply to flatten it out, and cried: "Tukiphat, I command and abjure thee, be thou still in the name of Metraton! Genius of the Shamir, be thou fixed by Mizkun and Nikita! By the fiery serpents of the caduceus, be thou rendered immobile, in the holy names Trinitas, Sother, Messias, Emmanuel, Sabahot, Adonai, Athenatos, and Pentagna! I order thee to remain rigid by Tetragram and Tetragrammaton—"
The cloaked figure creaked to a stop. Its toga slipped from its shoulders and fell in a heap around its feet, leaving it fixed in an awkward semi-erect position, like a bald discobolus without his discus. Nash saw that Tukiphat wore on a chain around his neck a many-faceted stone the size of a hard baseball.
Nash and d'Amelio went into action like a pair of surgeons racing against peritonitis. The former yanked the gem off over Tukiphat's head; the latter whipped the rope around and around, binding wrist and ankle and crossing the ends against the chest of the genius.
Tukiphat blinked and shuddered as a big gob of sealing wax scorched his hide. As he started to come out of the fixation spell, Nash pressed the seal against the wax. The genius twiddled his fingers and squirmed a little, but seemed unable to do anything practical toward ridding himself of the rope.
"Fools!" he roared."Release me! That loot will do you no good. You cannot escape me —"
But the three criminals were hurrying back to their boat. Alicia put the candle out, as it was now light enough to see their way without it. They passed another, smaller rowboat—the same one that had been there when Nash had made his abortive attempt to raid the island—no doubt Tukiphat's own boat.
D'Amelio broke into a brief run. Before he reached the large rowboat, he turned and drew his weapons: a sword and a broad, foot-long dagger with a massive guard.
"I amma so sorry!" he remarked amiably, "but I mus' aska you to giva me da jewel—"
"Oh, yeah?" snarled Nash. He had been subconsciously expecting something of the sort. Almost before he knew it he was boring in.
D'Amelio's sword was a pre-rapier, with a cut-and-thrust blade much heavier than his opponent's. Nash had little trouble getting past this slow crowbar, but the condottiere did not seem to mind. He did most of his parrying with the big dagger anyway. As Nash finished one lunge, D'Amelio snaked his left hand out and hooked a projection of the guard of his dagger into the guard of Nash's sword. Nash could not recover, and d'Amelio sent a lethal thrust straight at his chest.
Nash felt a blow like that of a fist against his breastbone; it almost tore his grip on his hilt loose, but did not penetrate. D'Amelio tried again, and again his point stopped and his blade bowed in compression.
D'Amelio's eyes widened."You are invulnerab'! No fair!"
Nash snorted with truculent relief. He put his foot against d'Amelio's body, took his hilt in both hands, and tore the dagger out of the condottiere's grasp. Then he lunged—but into thin air; d'Amelio danced back out of range. A sound made him turn. Alicia Woodson was ankle-deep in the water, wading purposefully ashore with one of the oars in her hands.
D'Amelio ran back some more to avoid being flanked. As Nash followed, he cried: "Waita, my friend! Looka!" His left hand went into his trunk hose and came out with a small shiny object : Nash's magical watch.
"Where'd you get that?" said Nash.
"I picka your pock'!" The swarthy face grinned with high good humor."Now, you gotta da jewel, I gotta da watcha. Let'sa be friends, splitta da dough fifty-fifty. Otherwise I throw da watch in da drink!"
"Won't work. Not going to sell it. Gimme!" Nash advanced; d'Amelio would hardly throw away their only means of escaping Tukiphat's vengeance—
But Muzio Sforza d'Amelio did just that. A small black blob arched high against the breaking clouds and disappeared with a plunk.
"You damned idiot!" yelled Nash, starting for the mercenary. The big man whirled and fled again, light as a ballet dancer."You thinka you catcha me? Ha ha!"
"Prosper!" called Alicia."Quick!"
She had the oars in the locks and the boat ready to shove off.
"The watch—" objected Nash.
"I know! Hurry, before water gets into the works!"
There seemed to be no percentage in chasing the elusive Italian, so Nash took to the rowboat."Hope you know what you're doing, Alicia."
"Of course I do! Look behind you. The watch fell into the refractory zone, so now there isn't any refractory zone!"
Nash took a quick glance."Gosh, that's so!"
"But," she continued, "when water works into the gear wheels the watch will stop, and the refractory zone will be right back where it was!"
Nash only half paid attention, for he was pulling with all his might. Behind Alicia in the stern appeared Muzio Sforza, rowing Tukiphat's small rowboat.
"That man," panted Nash, "is hard to discourage."
They entered the area of optical distortion that marked the partly neutralized refractory sphere. The pursuing boat at once looked much farther off, but it gained rapidly.
"Chevalier!" called d'Amelio over his shoulder."You are a man of honor, yes? Then you will notta risk your beautiful lady by a naval battla, yes?"
Alicia said: "Give me your sword, Prosper, and when he gets close enough—"
"Not—necessary," grunted Nash. They were almost out of the zone. They crossed the line—and three seconds later the zone reappeared in full force.
Nash rested on his oars for a few seconds."Guess the watch stopped, all right, all right. Look at the poor guy, Alicia!"
A few feet away, Muzio Sforza d'Amelio bobbed up and down on the smooth dull surface of the refractory strip. He and his boat were there and as large as life, but they seemed to have lost all depth—except for their motion, they looked just like a big cardboard cutout facing Nash and his lady.
D'Amelio's head turned, like the head of a character in a colored movie, and his mouth moved. After a few seconds his voice reached them: "Signor! Signora! Where are you? I am los'! Oh, helpa me, dear friendsa!"
Nash grinned."He's such an impudent duck you can't help liking him. I'm almost tempted to —but I guess—"
"Prosper! Don't you dare!"
"I was saying I guess I'd better not. We've got enough troubles." He glanced at the lightening sky."The sun's due any time."
Alicia suggested: "Why don't you use the Shamir now to go back to your own plane?"
"And leave you in this hell hole? Don't be silly!" He glanced down at the gem on his chest, which in the waxing light was sending out gleams of all the spectral colors from red to violet.
No Aryans were in sight, though faint traffic sounds began to filter in from the unseen city surrounding the park. Nash rowed to the side of the lake as far as possible from Shapiro's landing. They hauled the boat out and into the bushes.
Nash suggested: "Maybe we'd better climb a tree until dark—"
"The leaves are all off, Prosper."
"Yeah, so they are. But if we can find some sort of hide-out during the day, we can sneak down to the water front tonight. Jones said he'd be there to pick us up—"
The shrubbery, which up till then had been so accursedly dense, suddenly looked so sparse as to be practically nonexistent.
"They'll be hunting for us around here anyway," said Nash."Let's hike up north a mile or so."
That procedure went well until they came to a big open weedy field."Too risky to cross," said Nash."Let's skirt it—"
Around they went, flitting from tree to tree. Halfway around—
"Halt!"
They jumped and whirled. Fifty feet away an Aryan sat on an outcropping of rock, covering them with his rifle. He was in the plainest of plain sight, but the fugitive pair had been watching the field so closely as to overlook him completely.
Nash, without a word, seized Alicia's hand and set off at a clumping run. Ka-pow! went the rifle; ka-pow!
Alicia, once started, quickly got ahead of Nash, but did not run away from him altogether. The rifle crashed twice more, and the sentry shouted. Other shouts came through the bare trees from different directions.
"Rotten bad shooting," panted Nash."This way—"
"No, this way! There's an Arry over that way—"
It made little difference, for another Aryan hove in sight, running, and then another. A bullet went whick close to their heads.
"Hi, partner!"
The voice came from nowhere visible, until Nash noticed that the curtain of ivy that cascaded down over a granite outcrop was parted at the base, and a lantern-jawed face looked out: that of Arizona Bill Averoff.
They did not need instructions, but ducked down out of sight of their pursuers and went through the ivy on hands and knees. After a few knee-bruising irregularities, the tunnel expanded to walkable size. It was no longer a natural cave entrance but a man-made passageway.
"What's this, Arizona?" asked Nash, after a quick handshake.
"This yere," said Averoff, "is an old tunnel that leads out from the cellar of the old Arsenal. I shore hope them Arries don't find the exit, because they's several of us hidin' out in that there cellar."
"Say, Arizona, what's this I heard about your going astray with the message I gave you?"
"It's so," said Averoff gloomily."You shoulda wrote the boid's name down, mister. Now I gotta watch out for both the Arries and my own government, which says it's gonna hang me and you if it catches us. Course in time they'll see it was bad luck 'steada our fault, but that won't do us no good if we been already suspendered."
"Thanks for them kind words, partner," said Nash."Is that your cellar ahead?"
"Yeah." There were a couple of empty hinges on the side of the tunnel where a door had once been, and a ten-by-sixteen concrete-floored chamber lit by one candle. Five men and a woman sat around the wall. Rickety steps led up to a closed trapdoor.
"Folks," said Averoff, "I got a coupla recruits: Miss Woodson and Mr. de Nêche. The lady is Mrs. Russell, the soldier is General Leeds, and the Turkish gent is Sultan Arslan—oh, do you boys know each other already?"
Arslan Bey got to his feet and said heavily: "In view of the fact that M. de Nêche just robbed us of everything we had, even our women, we—think —we do!"