Asteroid Man (17 page)

He stood still, trying to think; somewhere or other he had to find a weapon. The passage ahead of him branched suddenly. He wondered again, as he had wondered before, whether to go right, left, or straight ahead.

He decided to try the passageway on the left.

He turned slowly and carefully into it; the light of his flash, which he had managed to retain throughout all his weird hazards and misadventures, revealed for him in its bright luminescence, another of those massive and enormous doors.

Again he was in a cleft stick, uncertain which way to turn. Should he open the door and risk stumbling straight into a nest of those hideous Frankensteinean servants of the master. Or should he retrace his steps and go quietly the other way? A door in the labyrinth almost invariably meant some kind of chamber beyond.

He would make no progress at all, stumbling along half-blind in these corridors. That room might, just might, contain something that would be advantageous to him.

The odds were against it; the odds were, in fact, in favor of it containing something dangerous and hostile. He might have come round back into the presence of the asteroid man. He shuddered as he remembered the terrible disfigurement of the creature.

He shuddered and closed his eyes to try and shut out the vision—but there was no shutting it out. It was still with him, and he focused his attention on the door handle. The handle proved to be as stiff as those of its predecessors, with which he had tried conclusions. He got his shoulder under it the first time, for he knew it was useless to rely on his hands alone.

This time, too, he pressed more cautiously, not wanting to be caught off balance in case there was some kind of danger or enemy lurking behind it. He imagined one of those horrible and thumbless hands grasping at him, clutching at him…

He exerted every ounce of his strength, and the handle rose sharply, as it had done before, but this time he was ready for it. The door began to move inward. He swung the door wide open and took a quick, instinctive pace back.

Nothing happened.

The room was filled with a pale green luminescence, very similar to the luminescence which had accompanied the girl, and just for a second he was hopeful that he might find her again within. But it was empty. He took a deep breath and began looking all round this chamber. It was an unbelievably fantastic room. It was domed, and something about the ornate elaboration of its interior reminded him of some prehistoric basilica. He went slowly forward, on the watch for a trap. Even when this peculiar labyrinthine world looked straightforward, there were traps.

When it looked ornate, there must be an even greater possibility that something unpleasant awaited him; something either mechanical or animal. Would one of the master's servants, with its hideous misshapen face, suddenly come lurching and lumbering at him? Would another net descend, or would the floor open beneath his feet? There were a thousand unpleasant possibilities. He continued moving slowly across the room. He didn't like the interior of this room at all. There was something indefinably evil, for all its church-like appearance. It seemed almost like a mockery of religion, with a cheap crude impersonation. It was a burlesque, a caricature. Then he realized what it was. It was a museum. The room was obviously the central collection point of the odd bric-a-brac which the odd man had designed, collected, or created over the centuries. It was beautifully arranged, as though it had been put into position by some being who had all the time in the world at its disposal. It had the appearance of being checked and resorted. The layout of the exhibits reminded Greg of the layout of Tennyson's poetry, where the living language had been polished until nothing was left of it but dry, dead phrases.

Greg looked for some other means of egress from the chamber.

He had no particular desire to go out the way he had come. They might have picked up his track by now. The asteroid man said he could, but that may have been boasting; he was not sure.

Anyway, he decided the best plan would be to double back on his tracks. He might be in a cul-de-sac, but he thought not. It was difficult to find a door. It was difficult to find anything in that vast underground auditorium, so packed with exhibits, machinery, dials, switches, vast banks of electronic relays, looking as if they were ready to start the complicated job they had been designed to do.

Greg kept on looking for a door. This was a labyrinth within a labyrinth. And the faint greenish light was not exactly an aid to easy direction finding. He moved on in puzzled bewilderment. He realized that he had already passed this strange machine for the fourth time. It occurred to him that this might be the purpose of some of the machines—to produce a kind of mental bewilderment. Had that been the asteroid man's plan all along, to allow him to escape, only to find this museum, where his brain would be caught in the web of some mental paralyzer that would confuse him and set him walking round in circles till he dropped of sheer exhaustion.

He wondered again whether the machines were real, or whether they were images of machines being projected from some concealed point, much as the camera projected universal movement on the dome of a planetarium.

Greg kept on moving slowly but determinedly around the exhibits, trying desperately to keep in a straight line, but the museum had been so designed that it was impossible to keep in a straight line. You could do that for a certain length of time only, perhaps long enough to take two score paces. Then the exhibits that you had been using to line up your vision were out of perspective, and you found that you were coming back to your point of departure.

Greg had gotten lost among the more advanced exhibits. He was a long way now from the original door. He doubted now whether he could have found that.

It occurred to him that he must be using the wrong technique. He was deliberately trying to move in a straight line.

Suppose, instead of that, he just allowed himself to wander aimlessly, to allow his subconscious to direct him, to rely on his instinctive knowledge, rather than to work anything out as a conscious problem. He moved on again, as though he were trying to lose the exhibits.

He thought of some words of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat." Strange how a man's writings can survive five centuries, and still be as brilliant and as funny as when first written. He recalled the incident where the three friends tried to make the kettle boil.

The technique had been to say to each other loudly, so that the kettle could overhear, "I don't want any tea, do you, old man?" And the kettle would then suddenly boil ebulliently over!

Greg tried the same technique now. He tried to feign some kind of interest in the exhibits, forced his mind to empty itself of all thoughts of doors and escape from the museum. He cleared his mind, as far as possible, of all thoughts relevant to an exit. He concentrated hard upon the machine he was looking at now: a gleaming barrel-like structure, standing on eight beryllium legs. A series of lenses flashed and crackled along the side, looking like the eye of Kitchener on the 1914-18 war poster… It followed him wherever he went. He wondered if it was some kind of warning or spying device. Yet it didn't look as though it was connected to anything.

He debated for a moment whether he ought to smash the lenses. He decided against it.

A few more steps and he was looking at a new machine. He was quite certain he had not seen this before. So he was making progress now he had stopped concentrating on it. That was good. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced around the new exhibit… and saw a door.

He stopped and turned his head slowly. The door was still there!

"Amazing!" he whispered.

He edged toward it, almost afraid that it would disappear in some miraculous and dangerous way. He reached it without incident. Why, he wondered, had the museum been designed in that peculiar way?

He was quite sure that if he had gone on walking round it, he could not have found the door. Yet as soon as he had stopped looking it had come to him, almost.

There must be some mental force at work in the place.

Throwing caution to the wind, he put his arms and shoulder under the door and gave an almighty heave. It began somewhere near his toes, rippled up through the strong muscles of his calves, his legs and back, till it exploded rather like dynamite in the rippling strength of his shoulders.

The handle came up and the door swung.

He let it swing and leapt back out of harm's way.

There might be something hiding on the other side. There was no means of knowing for certain. He was glad that he had jumped back, for something exploded with a devastating roar. He felt the blast of it above his head as it passed. There, framed in the doorway, was a metal colossus. A humanoid effigy in steel, his hands, if one could call such talon-like monstrosities hands, held a large and very lethal-looking blaster. The eyes in the metal skull were flashing green and red sparks. It swivelled on metal heels till the hand blaster pointed toward him again. He threw himself flat as another charge whistled over his head. Greg drew his own blaster with the speed of lightning and loosed off a shot in the direction of the robot. The atomic power charge blasted grooves in the side of the doorway and blackened the monster's legs, but the robot stood its ground unflinchingly and steered its own weapon at Greg.

Masterson was really in his element now. No longer was it a peculiar game of mental catch-as-catch-can, with the incomprehensible asteroid man. Here was something that he could fight.

. This was a straightforward battle with the gun as the weapon. Something here was so important that in this area the force field was switched off.

Greg watched for the metallic finger to tighten on the trigger. He saw it begin to move jerkily, and rolled clear. He wondered how many power charges the blaster held, or whether, like his own, it recharged itself. He thought that was more than likely the case. The asteroid man's technology was superior to his, not vice versa. If his gun would last almost indefinitely, it was pretty certain that the robot's would. The thing fired again, and Greg rolled clear.

It was firing at him again, advancing as it fired. He saw its finger tighten on the trigger, and its gun failed to go off. Taking a great chance, he raced up to it, and before the sluggish arm could move up, he crashed the butt of his gun into the lenses. The robot jerked spasmodically and turned, walking blindly into the nearest exhibit.

Done it, thought Greg. Now if only he's within range. Slowly and calmly he raised his own weapon and dissolved the head of the robot in a blast of atomic heat and power. The creature sank to its knees, kicked one leg in an ungainly fashion and crashed to a prone position.

Greg raced through the doorway which the monster had guarded. On the other side lay a room of immense size, filled with apparatus which, though advanced, could only serve one possible purpose. It was the central power room of the entire asteroid.

Greg drew a deep breath. Now he had the thing.

If he could only shut off that power, the asteroid man would be unable to guide the asteroid. Of course he would be able to repair it, but his repair technicians would not be able to get in as long as Greg guarded the door. Once the power was off, Greg's gun would work, and with Greg's gun working, it would need a very powerful number of aliens to rush that door. The asteroid man had obviously believed the robot was sufficient guard. Greg had stumbled, by chance, upon the one part of this miniature world that would put it into his command. He suddenly felt big.

From now on it looked as if he could dictate terms to the asteroid man.

Then, quite suddenly, a loudspeaker behind him roared and crackled, and he turned round to face a gigantic televiewer screen. On it was a picture of his enemy sitting amid the shadows of its lights.

"You have done surprisingly well, Masterson, for a mere mortal, for a mere savage, for a primitive," came the voice of the asteroid man. "But you have not done well enough, for I am undefeatable and indestructible. You have forgotten that there remains in my hands one exceptionally important factor in this game."

"And what's that?" said Masterson.

"The woman! The Princess Astra! I understand your puny mind! I know how you feel about that."

"What do you mean? What about the Princess Astra?"

"She is at the moment in the hands of my servants," said the man. "Unless you throw down your gun and surrender to my servants who are even now approaching you, she will be killed very slowly and very painfully in front of your eyes on this screen."

"You wouldn't dare!" said Greg. "Not even you!"

"Wouldn't I? You have pressed me too far! You assaulted me! You dared to do that to Ultimus, the god of the Universe! Then, in your puny mind, you thought, having reached my power room, you would hold me to ransom…"

Greg realized that in his moment of triumph, victory had been snatched from him.

"What guarantee do I have that you won't exact any kind of vengeance on the girl?" he said quietly.

"You have no guarantee other than my word," said Ultimus.

"And can that be relied on?"

"In this instance you will have to rely on it," said Ultimus. "I believe my servants are almost at the door of the power chamber. I was very foolish to leave it in the charge of a robot, which I see has proved dangerously inefficient. I shall take more stringent precautions in the future."

Greg lapsed into bitter, silent thought. There was nothing to do but fall in with the wishes of the asteroid man. The bitter irony of the situation was like a physical blow.

The door opened, and two of the hideous caricature men slouched in, laughing foully.

Just for a moment, Greg wondered whether to shoot them down, shoot the screen, blast the asteroid man's power chamber and go on a rampage of carnage through the ship, killing anyone and everything in his path. But it was only for an instant. He knew that the first false move would be the end of Astra, and that to him would be a thousand times worse than his own end.