Rodrone became frighteningly aware that this was a torture chamber, and that something was being prepared for him. Bound this time at both arms and legs, he was carried to a tangle of a machine and fitted into it. White-hot blades closed in on him, to cut and burn in a hundred cunning ways.
Mercifully the unbearable agony lasted only a few seconds, for the selector moved on to another part of the lens, a part with which Rodrone was already familiar. For once his limbs were free. He was a member of a motley rabble army gathered before the walls of the gleaming city. The siege, though frustrated, was still in full progress. Catapults and ballistae had been constructed, attempting to hurl spiteful masses of rock and filth over the towering walls, which were also being attacked by primitive flame-belching cannon plastering them with gobs of burning substance which clung momentarily and then slithered groundwards, leaving behind a blistered black trail.
Clearly the city was withstanding all this crude fury. Rodrone looked around him and spied the demented monk, railing his slaves for their failure to breach and destroy the walls. He tried to perceive his face, but beneath the cowl there was only shadow.
The monk’s features were obscured even when he suddenly looked Rodrone’s way. For some reason he became enraged and the lean frame that poked through his rough-spun habit exploded into action. His whip came whistling through the air to catch Rodrone with a stinging blow. He staggered back before the monk’s onslaught, unaware that he was being driven towards one of the ballista machines.
With a hard laugh, the monk sent him stumbling across the shaft of the ballista just as it was being released. Up sprang the solid beam, and bone and flesh were crushed horribly between it and the upright restraining bar…
And at that moment, the scene again switched. The selector seemed to have a trick of rescuing its victims just ahead of the moment where they would have lost consciousness and died. When he had recovered from the shock sufficiently to take in his new surroundings, Rodrone became aware that he was under water, breathing like a fish. There was only a little light, green and fluorescent. He got an impression of great pressure and constriction, as if he was miles down in the deeps.
He and a group of others were being herded towards the entrance of a cave. His companions, he saw, were vaguely fish-shaped and seemed reluctant to enter. But there was no real possibility of refusal. Those who drove them hither were armed with goads that delivered an unbearable sting.
Before he knew it he was inside the cave. Here, the real horror began. The cave was populated with strange growths that extended from the walls in a watery jungle: mouths, jaws, waving polyps and spiked traps, evil staring eyes and huge flaccid suckers.
Worse than the repulsive appearance of the deadly jungle was the sense of fear it exuded into the water, the paroxysms of terror with which it liked to imbue its victims before seizing them. Rodrone turned tail and tried to swim away, seeing that already some of the hapless herd had been caught and were being ingorged caressingly into the writhing mass. But it was too late. A slimy tentacle seized him arid drew him slowly inwards. A sensual frenzy seemed to have come over the population of the cave; it moved in an obscene rhythm, squeezing, crushing and tearing to pieces its prey until the water was cloudy and dark.
Stingers pierced Rodrone’s skin. And then, with a mind-numbing abruptness, the dark nightmarish experience stopped and he was plunged into bright uproar.
All around him was screaming and jostling. In an orgy of terror, the members of the society were scrambling for the door, frantic to escape from the effects of their imagined ordeals. Rodrone might have fled, too, but the spatt of weapon fire brought him to his senses and he struggled to control his shaking nerves.
An energy beam had smashed into the equipment surrounding the lens, thus bringing them suddenly back into the present world. The horns still purred, but with the plaintiveness of a broken machine. Pushing their way through the crowd at the door were Clave and Redace and two more of Rodrone’s crewmen.
Pulling apart from the mob, they stood gun in hand and surveyed the room. The pallor of Clave’s face was normal; but on Redace it showed that he was shaken.
Of sterner stuff than the others, the leader had not joined the general rush. On the other side of the room, he drew a gun of his own.
“Invaders of the blessed sanctuary!” he spat. A thin, fiery beam spurted apparently at random from his weapon. The intruders scattered, returning the fire. The leader toppled, but not before one crewman was dead and Clave had received a bad burn in his gun arm, sending his weapon clattering to the floor.
The second crewman died from an unexpected source. Both Sinnt and Foyle had stood their ground; probably the projections from the lens had not terrified them as much as they had the others due to the extra sensibilities they gained from their camera vision. Now a pencil-thin scarlet beam shot across the room from Sinnt’s camera, hitting Rodrone’s man right between the eyes. Soundlessly, he slumped to the floor.
“Don’t move,” Sinnt said calmly. “I hope you realize the effectiveness of my weapon. Whoever I or Foyle look at we can instantly kill.”
“Don’t be a fool, Sinnt,” Rodrone urged. “This is our chance to get away from this pack of bunglers and take the lens with us.”
Now the room was empty except for the five of them. In the distance could still be heard the sounds of the society fleeing in panic.
“You forget that I am a society man and that I have taken the oath.”
Rodrone snorted. “You’re as insane as the rest of them.”
At that, Sinnt’s camera wavered, then turned to train on Rodrone. Whether he meant to kill Rodrone or merely to look directly at him they would never know; for Redace, presuming the former, and being alone armed among his companions, brought up his own weapon. With reflexlike swiftness the camera swung back and the scarlet pencil-beam hit him, too, between the eyes.
In the same moment Clave acted. Springing across the few feet to where Foyle stood, he seized the cord connecting his camera to his skull and yanked with all his strength, tearing it loose. The boy screamed in pain and fell to his knees, clutching his head where the cord had been fixed.
“Father! Father!”
The expression on Sinnt’s face became agonized and his camera swung towards him, seeking out Clave. Nimbly Clave danced back, forcing Sinnt to turn, then skipped back again, always keeping himself to the scientist’s left, and gesturing urgently to Rodrone.
Taking his cue, Rodrone stepped to where the loosely-constructed contraption lay around the lens. Finding a heavy metal tube that was part of the machine, he wrenched it loose, lunged forward and brought it crashing down on Sinnt’s shoulder-camera.
The blow almost brought Sinnt to his knees. The camera buckled, fragments from the lenses tinkled to the floor. A faint whiff of smoke rose from inside the casing.
Sinnt recovered his balance and stretched out his hands before him. Truly blind, now, he stepped forward uncertainly, then turned, attracted by the sound of his sobbing son.
Stumbling, he made his way towards him. “My boy, my poor boy. Can you stand? Come, we will make our way home somehow. The damage is reparable. Ignore the pain. Come, come.”
No one moved to help them as, clinging to one another, they fumbled their way to the door, Foyle acting as his father’s eyes. Rodrone had to admit to himself that Sinnt’s exit did not lack dignity.