"I've finally got it. I can get out of here now."
He pressed the trigger, and Anana fell back against the railing. Kickaha's senses were by then almost full recovered, though he felt weak. But if Ore got within reach of his hands ...
The Lord wasn't going to do that. He stepped back, said something, and two robots came through the doorway. At first glance they looked like living human beings. But the dead eyes and the movements, not as graceful as beings of animal origin, showed that metal or plastic lay beneath the seeming skin. One removed Kickaha's knife and threw it over the balcony railing. The other unstrapped the multiuse device from Anana's wrist. Both got hold of the ankles of the two and dragged them inside. To one side stood a large hemisphere of thick criss-crossed wires on a platform with six wheels. The robot picked up Anana and shoved her through a small doorway in the cage. The second did the same to Kickaha. The door was shut, and the two were captives inside what looked like a huge mousetrap.
Ore bent down and reached under the cage. When he straightened up, he said, "I've just turned on the voltage. Don't touch the wires. You won't be killed, but you'll be knocked out."
He told the humanoid robots and the cage to follow him. Carrying the Horn which he had removed from Anana's shoulder, he strode through the room toward a high-ceilinged wide corridor.
Kickaha crawled to Anana. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be in a minute," she said. "I don't have much strength just now. And I got a headache."
"Me, too," he said. "Well, at least we're inside."
"Never say die, eh? Sometimes your optimism ... well, never mind. What do you suppose happened to the man who let Ore in?"
"If he's still alive, he's regretting his kind deed. He can't be a Lord. If he was, he'd not have let himself be taken."
Kickaha called out to Ore, asking him who the stranger was. Ore didn't reply. He stopped at the end of the corridor, which branched off into two others. He said something in a low voice to the wall, a codeword, and a section of wall moved back a little and then slid inside a hollow. Revealed was a room about twenty feet by twenty feet, an elevator.
Ore pressed a button on a panel. The elevator shot swiftly upward. When it stopped, the lighted symbol showed that it was on the fortieth floor. Ore pressed two more buttons and took hold of a small lever. The elevator moved out into a very wide corridor and glided down it. Ore turned the lever, the elevator swiveled around a corner and went down another corridor for about two hundred feet. It stopped, its open front against a door.
Ore removed a little black book from a pocket, opened it, consulted a page, said something that sounded like gibberish, and the door opened. He replaced the book and stood to one side as the cage rolled into a large room. It stopped in the exact center.
Ore spoke some more gibberish. Mechanisms mounted on the walls at a height of ten feet from the floor extended metal arms. At the end of each was a beamer. There were two on each wall, and all pointed at the cage. Above the weapons were small round screens. Undoubtedly, video eyes.
Ore said, "I've heard you boast that there isn't a prison or a trap that can hold you, Kickaha. I don't think you'll ever make that boast again."
"Do you mind telling us what you intend to do with us?" Anana said in a bored voice.
"You're going to starve," he said. "You won't die of thirst since you'll be given enough water to keep you going. At the end of a certain time-which I won't tell you-whether you're still alive or not, the beamers will blow you apart.
"Even if, inconceivably, you could get out of the cage and dodge the beamers, you can't get out of here. There's only one exit, the door you came through. You can't open that unless you know the codeword."
Anana opened her mouth, her expression making it obvious that she was going to appeal. It closed; her expression faded. No matter how desperate the situation, she was not going to humiliate herself if it would be for nothing. But she'd had a moment of weakness.
Kickaha said, "At least you could satisfy our curiosity. Who was the man who let you in? What happened to him?"
Ore grimaced. "He got away from me. I got hold of a beamer and was going to make him my prisoner. But he dived through a trapdoor I hadn't known existed. I suppose by now he's gated to another world. At least, the sensors don't indicate his presence."
Kickaha grinned, and said, "Thank you. But who was he?"
"He claimed to be an Earthman. He spoke English, but it was a quaint sort. It sounded to me like eighteenth-century English. He never told me his name. He began to ramble on and on, told me he'd been trapped here for some time when he gated from Vala's world to get away from her. It had taken him some time to find out how to activate a gate to another universe without being killed. He was just about to do so when he saw me galloping up. He decided to let me in because I didn't look like a native of this world.
"I think he was half-crazy."
"He must have been completely insane to trust you, a Lord," Anana said. "Did he say anything about having seen Kickaha, McKay, and myself. He passed over us when we were on the moon."
Ore's eyebrows rose. "You were on the moon? And you survived its fall? No, he said nothing about you. That doesn't mean he wasn't interested or wouldn't have gotten around eventually to telling me about you."
He paused, smiled, and said, "Oh, I almost forgot! If you get hungry enough, one of you can eat the other."
Kickaha and Anana could not hide their shock. Ore broke into laughter then. When he stopped bellowing, he removed a knife from the sheath at his belt. It was about six inches long and looked as if it were made of gold. He shoved it through the wires, where it lay at Anana's feet.
"You'll need a cutting utensil, of course, to carve steaks and chops and so forth. That'll do the job, but don't think for one moment you can use it to short out the wires. It's nonconductive."
Kickaha said, fiercely, "If it wasn't for Anana I'd think all you Lords were totally unreformable, fit only to be killed on sight. But there's one thing I'm sure about. You haven't a spark of decency in you. You're absolutely unhuman."
"If you mean I in no way have the nature of a leblabbiy you're right."
Anana picked up the knife and fingered the side, which felt grainy, though its surface was steel-smooth.
"We don't have to starve to death," she said. "We can always kill ourselves first."
Ore shrugged. "That's up to you."
He said something to the humanoid robots, and they followed him through the doorway into the elevator. He turned and waved farewell as the door slid out from the wall recesses.
"Maybe that Englishman is still here," Kickaha said. "He might get us free. Meanwhile, give me the knife."
Anana had anticipated him, however. She was sawing away at a wire where it disappeared into the floor. After working away for ten minutes, she put the blade down.
"Not a scratch. The wire metal is much harder than the knife's."
"Naturally. But we had to try. Well, there's no use putting it off until we're too weak even to slice flesh. Which one of us shall it be?"
Shocked, she turned to look at him. He was grinning.
"Oh, you! Must you joke about even this?"
She saw a section of the cage floor beyond him move upward. He turned at her exclamation. A cube was protruding several inches. The top was rising on one side, though no hinges or bolts were in evidence. Within it was a pool of water.
They drank quickly, since they didn't know how long the cube would remain. Two minutes later, the top closed, and the box sank back flush with the floor.