“What did you say?” Podarge asked. “And I repeat, who is Vannax?”
Wolff was relieved that she did not know the name. He answered that Abiru had sometimes disguised himself under that name. Not wanting to reply to any more questions, and feeling that time was vital, he entered the laboratory. It was a room broad enough and high-ceilinged enough to house a dozen jet airliners. Cabinets and consoles and various apparatuses, however, gave it a crowded appearance. A hundred yards away, Vannax was bent over a huge console, working with the buttons and levers.
Silently, the three advanced on him. They were soon close enough to see that two crescents were locked down on the console. On the broad screen above Vannax was the ghostly image of a third semicircle. Wavy lines of light ran across it.
Vannax suddenly gave an ah! of delight as another crescent appeared by the first on the screen. He manipulated several dials to make the two images move toward each other and then merge into a single one again.
Wolff knew that the machine was sending out a frequency-tracer and had located that of the crescent set into the floor of the control room. Next, Vannax would subject the crescents clamped to the console to a treatment which would change their resonance to match that of the control room. Where Vannax had gotten the two semicircles was a mystery until Wolff thought of that crescent which must have accompanied him when he passed through the gate to the Amerindian tier. Somehow, during the time between his capture and the flight, he had gotten hold of this crescent. He must have hidden it in the ruins before the ape had captured him.
Vannax looked up from his work, saw the three, glanced at the screen, and snatched the two crescents from the spring-type clamps on the console. The three ran toward him as he placed one crescent on the floor and then the other. He laughed, made an obscene gesture, and stepped into the circle, a dagger in his hand.
Wolff gave a cry of despair, for they were too far away to stop him. Then he stopped and threw a hand over his eyes, but too late to shut out the blinding flash. He heard Kickaha and Podarge, also blinded, shouting. He heard Vannax’s scream and smelled the burned flesh and clothes.
Sightlessly, he advanced until his feet touched the hot corpse.
“What the hell happened?” Kickaha said. “God, I hope we’re not permanently blinded!”
“Vannax thought he was slipping in through Arwoor’s gate in the control room,” Wolff said. “But Arwoor had set a trap. He could have been satisfied with wrecking the matcher, but it must have amused him to kill the man who would try it.”
He stood and waited, knowing that time was getting short and that he was not serving his cause or anyone else’s by his patience with his blindness. But there was nothing else he could do. And, after what seemed like an unbearably long time, sight began to come back.
Vannax was lying on his back, charred and unrecognizable. The two crescents were still on the floor and undamaged. These were separated a moment later by Wolff with a scribe from a console.
“He was a traitor,” Wolff said in a low voice to Kickaha. “But he did us a service. I meant to try the same trick, only I was going to use the horn to activate the crescent you hid after I’d changed its resonance.”
Pretending to inspect other consoles for boobytraps, he managed to get Kickaha and himself out of ear-range of Podarge.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he whispered. “But I’m going to have to. The horn must be used if we’re to drive Arwoor out of the control room or get him before he can use his crescents to escape.”
“I don’t get you,” Kickaha said.
“When I had the palace built, I incorporated a thermitic substance in the plastic shell of the control room. It can be triggered only by a certain sequence of notes from the horn, combined with another little trick. I don’t want to set the stuff off because the control room will then also be lost. And this place will be indefensible later against any other Lords.”
“You better do it,” Kickaha said. “Only thing is, what’s to keep Arwoor from getting away through the crescents?”
Wolff smiled and pointed at the console. “Arwoor should have destroyed that instead of indulging his sadistic imagination. Like all weapons, it’s twoedged.”
He activated the control, and, again, an image of the crescent shone on the screen. Curving lines of light ran across the plate. Wolff went to another console and opened a little door on the top to reveal a panel with unmarked controls. After flipping two, he pressed a button. The screen went blank.
“The resonance of his crescent has been changed,” Wolff said. “When he goes to use it with any of the others he has, he’ll get a hell of a shock. Not the kind Vannax got. He just won’t have a gate through which to escape.”
“You Lords are a mean, crafty, sneaky bunch,” Kickaha said. “But I like your style, anyway.”
He left the room. A moment later, his shouts came down the corridor. Podarge started to leave the room, then stopped to glare suspiciously at Wolff. He broke into a run. Podarge, satisfied he was coming, raced ahead. Wolff stopped and removed the horn from the case. He reached a finger into its mouth, hooked it through the only opening in the weblike structure therein large enough to accept his finger. A pull drew the web out. He turned it around and inserted it with its front now toward the inside of the horn. Then he put the horn back into the case and ran after the harpy.
She was with Kickaha, who was explaining that he thought he had seen a gworl but it was just a prowling eagle. Wolff said they must go back to the others. He did not explain that it was necessary that the horn be within a certain distance of the control room walls. When they had returned to the hall outside the control room, Wolff opened the case. Kickaha stood behind Podarge, ready to knock her unconscious if she started any trouble. What they could do with the eagles, besides sicking the apes on them, was another matter.
Podarge exclaimed when she saw the horn but made no hostile move. Wolff lifted the horn to his lips and hoped he could remember the correct sequence of notes. Much had come back to him since he had talked with Vannax; much was yet lost.
He had just placed the mouthpiece to his lips when a voice roared out. It seemed to come from ceiling and walls and floor, from everywhere. It spoke in the language of the Lords, for which Wolff was glad. Podarge would not know the tongue.
“Jadawin! I did not recognize you until I saw you with the horn! I thought you looked familiar—I should have known. But it’s been such a long time! How long?”
“It’s been many centuries, or millenia, depending upon the time scale. So, we two old enemies face each other again. But this time you have no way out. You will die as Vannax died.”
“How so?” roared Arwoor’s voice.
“I will cause the walls of your seemingly impregnable fortress to melt. You will either stay inside and roast or come out and die another way. I don’t think you’ll stay in.”
Suddenly he was seized with a concern and a sense of injustice. If Podarge should kill Arwoor, she would not be killing the man who was responsible for her present state. It did not matter that Arwoor would have done the same thing if he had been the Lord of this world at that time.
On the other hand, he, Wolff, was not to blame, either. He was not the lord Jadawin who had constructed this universe and then manipulated it so foully for so many of its creatures and abducted Terrestrials. The attack of amnesia had been complete; it had wiped all of Jadawin from him and made him a blank page. Out of the blankness had emerged a new man, Wolff, one incapable of acting like Jadawin or any of the other lords.
And he was still Wolff, except that he remembered what he had been. The thought made him sick and contrite and eager to make amends as best he could. Was this the way to start, by allowing Arwoor to die horribly for a crime he had not committed?”