“What is it?” Carol asked.
“I don’t…” Then, suddenly, he did know. Then he saw. Imprisoned in one corner of the block was a talon, with iridescent flesh or hide or scale and gleaming claws that looked as if they had been carved from diamonds. A talon that moved and struggled to be free so it could reach out for him.
He flinched away, moving back to get out of reach, and he lost his balance. He felt himself falling and tried to twist to one side so he wouldn’t land flat upon his back. One shoulder struck the velvet rope and the standards that held the rope in place went over with a clatter. The floor came up and smacked him hard. Striking the rope had served to twist him to one side and he came down heavily on one shoulder, but his head was protected from the floor. He struck at his forehead with an open hand, knocking the interpreter off to one side to free his eyes.
And there, above him, the Artifact was changing. Out of it something was rising-rearing up out of the oblong of blackness, jerking itself free. Something that was alive, a-throb with vitality and glittering in its beauty.
A slender, dainty head, with an elongated snout, and a sharp serrated crest that ran from the forepart of the head along the length of neck. A barrel-like chest and body, with a pair of wings half-folded, and shapely forelegs, armed with the diamond claws. It glittered blindingly in the spotlights that pointed at the Artifact, or, rather, where the Artifact had been, each gleaming scale a point of hard white light striking off the bronze and gold, the yellow and the blue.
A dragon! Maxwell thought. A dragon rising from the blackness of the Artifact! A dragon, finally risen, after long aeons of being imprisoned in that block of blackness.
A dragon! After all the years he’d hunted one, after all the years of wonder, here finally was a dragon. But not as he’d pictured it in his mind-no prosaic thing of flesh and scale, but a thing of glorious symbolism. A symbol of the heyday of the crystal planet, perhaps of the universe that had died so that this present universe could be born anew-ancient and fabulous, a fellow of those strange tribes of beings of which the trolls and goblins, the fairies and the banshees were the stunted and pitiful survivors. A thing the name of which had been handed down through generations that numbered into thousands, but never seen by any member of humanity until this very moment.
Oop stood out on the floor, beyond one of the tumbled standards that had held the velvet cord, his legs more bowed than ever, as if he’d started to sink into a crouch and had frozen there, with his hamlike hands hanging at his side, his fingers hooked like claws, while he stared upward at the terror and the wonder on the pedestal. In front of him, Sylvester crouched close against the floor, knotted muscles standing out along his furry legs, his great mouth agape, with the fangs exposed and ready for attack.
Maxwell felt a hand upon his shoulder and twisted around.
“A dragon?” Carol asked.
Her words were strange, as if she had been afraid to ask them, as if she’d forced them from her throat. She was not looking at him, but upward at the dragon, which now seemed to be complete.
The dragon switched its tail, which was long and sinuous, and out on the floor Oop tumbled down ungracefully to duck the sweep of it. Sylvester squawled in anger and crept forward a foot or so.
“Cut it out, Sylvester,” Maxwell said sharply to the cat.
Oop scrambled forward hastily on his hands and knees and grabbed Sylvester by one of his hind legs.
“Talk to him,” Maxwell said to Carol. “If that fool cat tackles him, there’ll be the devil to pay.”
“Oop, you mean. He wouldn’t tackle Oop.”
“Not Oop,” said Maxwell. “The dragon. If he takes off on the dragon-”
A bellow of rage came thundering out of the darkness, and the thump of running feet.
“What is going on in here?” howled the watchman, charging from the shadows.
The dragon spun upon the pedestal and came swiftly off it, switching around to face the running watchman.
“Look out,” Oop yelled, still with a tight grip upon Sylvester’s leg.
The dragon moved forward carefully, almost mincingly, its head canted at a questioning angle. It flourished its tail and the tail swept across the top of a display table, brushing off a half dozen bowls and jugs. The pottery thudded and gleaming shards went skating across the floor.
“Hey, you cut that out!” the watchman yelped and then, apparently for the first time, saw the dragon. The yelp turned into a howl of fear. The watchman turned and fled. The dragon trotted after him, not in any hurry, but very interested. His progress was marked by a series of thudding and splintering crashes.
“If we don’t get him out of here,” said Maxwell, “there’ll be nothing left. At the rate he’s going, there won’t be a thing intact in less than fifteen minutes. He’ll have the place wiped out. And, Oop, for the love of God, hang onto that cat. We don’t want a full-fledged brawl breaking out in here.”
Maxwell got to his feet, grabbed the interpreter off his head and stuffed it in his pocket.
“I could open the doors,” Carol offered, “and we could shoo him out of here. The big doors, I mean. I think that I know how.”
“How are you, Oop,” Maxwell asked, “at dragon-herding?”
The dragon had blundered to the rear of the building and now had turned around and was coming back.
“Oop,” said Carol, “help me with these doors. I need a man with muscle.”
“What about this cat?”
“Leave him to me,” said Maxwell. “He may behave himself. Maybe he’ll mind me.”
A long chain of crashes marked the progress of the dragon. Listening to them, Maxwell moaned. Sharp would have his scalp for this. Friend or not, he would be plenty sore. The whole museum wrecked and the Artifact transformed into rampaging tons of flesh.
He took a few tentative steps across the floor toward the crashing sounds. Sylvester slunk close against his heels. In the dimness, Maxwell could make out the dim outlines of the floundering dragon.
“Nice dragon,” Maxwell said. “Take it easy, fellow.”
It sounded rather silly and somehow inadequate. How in the world, he wondered, should one talk to a dragon?
Sylvester let out a hacking growl.
“You stay out of it,” said Maxwell sharply. “Things are bad enough without you messing in.”
He wondered what had happened to the watchman. More than likely phoning the police and building up a storm.
Behind him he heard the creaking of the doors as they came open. If the dragon would only wait until those doors were open, then he could be shagged outdoors. And once the dragon had been gotten out, what would happen then? Maxwell shuddered, thinking of it-of the great beast blundering down the streets and across the malls. Maybe it would be better, after all, to keep him penned in here.
He stood indecisively for a moment, weighing the disadvantages of a dragon caged with a dragon on the loose. The museum was more or less wrecked now and perhaps the complete wrecking of it would be preferable to turning this creature loose upon the campus.
The doors still were creaking, slowly opening. The dragon had been ambling along, but now he burst into a gallop, heading for the opening portal.
Maxwell spun around. “Close those doors!” he shouted, then ducked quickly to one side as the galloping dragon came charging down upon him.
The doors were partly open and they stayed partly open. Oop and Carol were racing off in different directions, intent on leaving plenty of room for the lumbering tons of flesh that were heading for the open.
Sylvester’s thunderous roars boomed and echoed in the museum as he took off in pursuit of the running creature.
Off to one side, Carol was shrieking at him. “Cut it out, Sylvester! No, Sylvester, no!”
The dragon’s sinuous tail flicked nervously from side to side as it ran. Cabinets and tables crashed, statues were sent spinning-a path of destruction marked the dragon’s flight for freedom.