If they had not panicked, they could have made flying chairs in the e-m converters and flown to the exit. Where they would have discovered that their efforts were in vain.
Though the liquor poured out swiftly, it had an enormous volume to fill, and the surface of the fluid body was only one-fourth of the way up the walls. The people in the chairs had taken them to the ceiling, but they had been overcome by the fumes or died from lack of oxygen. Some of them might still be alive; they would not last long. Though the flood had ceased to rise, it did not have to do so to complete its work.
"What a way to die!" Burton said.
He looked at the pale set faces. "I suppose we might as well try Netley's world."
The same thing had happened there, except that the liquor was gin. The best, of course.
Burton anticipated that those who had died in both worlds would be denied resurrection by the Computer, and he was right.
The gypsies had been traveling in a corridor leading to the well of the wathans— perhaps they meant to sightsee it—when a big wheeled robot had come upon them and pierced them with beamer rays. Ten minutes later, robots had cleaned up the blood and carried the bodies off to be turned to ashes in converters.
"That leaves six of us alive," Burton said. "Seven if the Snark is counted. But ..."
"But what?" Alice said after a long silence.
He did not reply. He was thinking that the killer could have done away with them much more easily if he—or she—had flooded Alice's world.' Why the different means? Was it for grisly amusement, using the exotic androids against them, the charming creatures of two fantasy books for children suddenly turned into bloodthirsty monsters?
It seemed more probable that the killer had made an exception in Alice's world because he or she had been one of the guests. And that guest had perhaps wished to see that his or her enemies, people he or she must have hated .deeply, would be slain most bloodily.
And that guest had made arrangements by programming the androids to spare him or her.
He knew Alice, Peter Frigate, and Li Po too well to suspect them. That left only two. William Gull, who claimed to be a changed and deeply religious man, but had once murdered five -women. And Star Spoon, who, however, had no motive—as far as he knew.
Yet Gull had not been in the tower long enough to learn how to operate the Computer with the skill, no, the ingenuity, that the killer needed.
Star Spoon had been studying the Computer long and hard, but would she have been able in such a relatively short time to gain knowledge that those who had been using the Computer much longer than she did not have?
It could be that there was a second Snark.
If so, then the six were at his mercy.
Still, it was possible that one of the six had probed deeply into the Computer's potentialities and learned how to carry out the slaughters.
Why would any of them wish to do so?
He got up from the console chair and said, "We have to run off the memories of everyone for the past six weeks."
"I'm too tired for that just now," Frigate said. Alice, Gull and Star Spoon also protested that they were exhausted.
"Let's do it tomorrow after we get rested," Alice said.
"Anyway, it's a waste of time," Star Spoon said. "You know that anyone who has done all that," she waved her hand, "will have set up false memories."
"Yes, I know. But we have to do it."
They sat around for an hour, their brief and dull sentences floating between long gloomy silences. Frigate finally said that he thought that he could get some food down. The others agreed to try it, and they ate more than they had expected to. They also drank much and became more animated, even if not carefree. Burton spoke then of something that had occupied his thoughts ever since he had entered the house.
"Our enemy closed the exit on the Turpinites and Netleyites.
He should be able to do the same for this place. Since he failed to kill all of us with the androids, he may use the very successful method of drowning us. It might be best if we left here and moved into a suite."
They talked about that at some length. Finally, Alice, at Burton's suggestion, ordered that the door to the central area be opened. The screen showed them that it was operating.
"But that does not mean that the Snark cannot close it on us when he wishes," Burton said.
"Then let's get out," Frigate said. "The trouble is ... what's to prevent the Snark from closing the suite door?"
"I don't know," Burton said. "At least, he can't drown us."
They had the e-m converter make chairs for them, and they flew out over the darkened world and under the simulated full moon. Nobody said a word about the bodies on the field. They would not have time to dispose of them; the crows, eagles, and hawks would strip them of their flesh. By the time they returned, if they ever did, they would deal with bones only.
After another nightcap, they went to separate bedrooms in the suite, except for Burton and Star Spoon. She crawled into bed at once, said, "Good night, Dick," and was asleep. He followed her a few minutes later, and, against his expectation, passed into sleep at once. He awoke four hours later, his lifelong insomnia clutching him like the Old Man of the Sea. The woman was on her side, facing away from him, and snoring softly. He got out of bed, put on a robe, went to the main room and got a big cup of coffee. After that had removed some of his weariness, he set to work at the computer console. Five hours later, he had put into the Computer every injunction and override he could think of to protect all in his suite. He was sure, however, that there were others. He would ask his companions to add to the list.
"I should have done that long long ago," he told himself.
He decided that he would not wait until his fellow tenants got up for breakfast. As tired as they were, they might sleep until noon. He began scanning the corridors because, at that moment, he could think of nothing else to do. He started from the top of the tower with the hangar, worked the first level and then the second. That was quick because a glance showed that the circular area was empty, and there was no life except animal in the little worlds.
The scan moved into Level 60 and raced up and down the corridors and into the rooms along them. It came to a corridor the inner wall of which formed a side of the wathan well. Here, he knew, was where an observer could see the surface of the mass of wathans.
He cried out, "Stop!"
He stared at the curving transparent wall of the shaft.
The beautiful, bright, many-colored, swelling, shrinking and whirling entities called wathans were gone. The well was empty and dark.
34
Peter Frigate was the first to enter the room. He stopped, and he looked at Burton, at the beamer on the table, and at the half-opened door to the corridor. "What's going on?"
Li Po came in just as Burton opened his mouth to answer Frigate. Burton said, "Have some coffee first, Pete."
"How are you, Dick?" the Chinese said.
"I've been up most of the night. Working."
Li Po also glanced at the weapon and the door. He raised his eyebrows but did not comment. Frigate, after pouring out coffee from a pot on the table, said, "You look awful. The dark circles around your eyes ... you look like a debauched raccoon. What've you been doing?"