The Magic Labyrinth (44 page)

“The door mechanisms wouldn’t have used much power. Why didn’t you use separate power generators for them?”

“I should have. But it was simpler and more economical to use the main power supply.”

He smiled slightly. “I wonder what the engineers made of the codeword. Ah Qaaq is Mayan. The
Ah
is the article defining the name as masculine.
Qaaq
means
fire. Loga
is Ghuurrkh for
fire.
Perhaps that was what identified me. They might’ve put the Mayan name into the computer for a search. If they did, they got an answer within a second after insertion of the question.

“I outclevered myself.”

He poised a finger over a button. “Gather around. I’ll explain the simple operation twice so that there won’t be any confusion. You’re able to read the markings. When I press this button, that small silvery inset disc will turn on. That indicates that the power is on.

“That larger inset disc by the ON light is a readout frequency meter.”

He pressed a button. The smaller disc glowed orange.

“Now…”

The light went out.

“
Khatuuch!
What is…?”

Loga put his hand on the box for a second, then ran around to the front of the cabinet. He opened the door and looked in. Even at their distance from it, the others could feel the heat.

“Run!” Loga said, and he limped as fast as he could toward the exit.

When Burton had reached the exit he looked at the cabinet. The control box was melting, and a large cube inside the cabinet was glowing red.

Loga swore in Ghuurrkh and then said, “Those…those…! They fixed it so that when the power came on it’d melt the converter!”

Except for Loga and Burton, who’d died so many times that they no longer feared the prospect of death, the others were relieved. Burton could see it in their faces. They knew they’d be resurrected with their
wathans
attached, but they still loathed the idea of dying.

Burton said, “We have the other resurrector.”

“It’ll be set up, too,” Loga said. He was ashen.

“Can’t you fix it so it won’t melt?”

“I’ll try.”

But he failed.

Burton, looking at the molten mass, thought it was time to tell Loga something he’d put off revealing because the resurrectors were more urgent business.

He said, “Loga, when we left your secret room to go after you, I put a bullet by the door to mark its location. The bullet is gone.”

There was a short silence. Frigate said, “A housekeeping robot probably picked it up.”

“No,” Loga said. “If the robots were programmed to do such work, they’d have disposed of the skeletons.”

“Then someone else has gotten in!”

They went to a laboratory. Loga sat down before a computer and worked furiously. Within a short time, all the cameras in the tower were operating. Two seconds later, the screen before him glowed with a display.

Burton whistled.

“
Frato Fenikso!
Hermann Göring!”

He was at a table eating a meal made by a grail-box. From his extreme thinness and the great black marks under his hollow eyes, he needed more than one meal.

“I can’t see how he caught up with us so quickly,” Loga said.

“The computer reports seeing no one else, but they may be out of camera range just now. And if they’re agents, one might have the codeword. Monat could’ve passed it on to them in The Valley.”

“Why don’t we ask Göring?” Burton said.

“Of course. First, though, I’ll ask the computer where he is.”

Loga read the instructions, and they got into their chairs and flew out of the room. Ten minutes later, they were outside the laboratory down the corridor from Loga’s hideaway. They set their chairs down softly and entered on foot. Though Göring was not armed, they couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t find others with him by now.

Burton bellowed, “
Achtung!
”

He laughed loudly when Göring jumped up, food spewing from his mouth, arms flying, the chair falling backwards. Gray and trembling, he whirled around, his eyes wide. He seemed to be trying to say something, and then his face reddened, and he clutched his throat.

“My God! He’s choking!” Alice said.

Göring was blue and on his knees by the time Burton hit him on the back and made him expel the food caught in his throat.

Alice said, “That wasn’t at all funny, Richard. Quit laughing. You might’ve killed him.”

Burton wiped the tears away and said, “I’m sorry, Göring. I guess I just wanted to pay you back for some of the things you’d done to me.”

Göring gulped at the glass of water handed him by Aphra Behn.

“Yes, I suppose I can’t blame you.”

“You look near-starved,” Nur said. “You shouldn’t be eating so fast. Too much food too soon after a long starvation can kill you.”

“I’m not that starved. But I seem to have lost my appetite.”

He looked around. “Where are the others?”

“Dead.”

“May God take pity on their souls.”

“He hasn’t and won’t unless we do something fast.”

“Göring!” Loga said sharply. “Did you come alone?”

Göring looked at him strangely. “Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About an hour.”

“Were there any others close behind you when you were in the mountains?”

“No. At least, I saw no one.”

“How did you get here so fast?”

Göring and other Virolanders had dived into the hold of the
Not For Hire
before it slipped over the shelf into the abyss. They had brought up some sections of the batacitor and rebolted them together in a wooden sailboat. They had also brought up two small electric motors, a spare propeller of the smaller launch, the
Gascon,
and other parts. They’d worked fast, and four left in the reconverted boat two weeks after the
Post No Bills
had departed.

Unlike Burton’s group, they’d not taken days off for rest or recreation.

“Where are your companions?” Loga said, though he’d probably guessed their fate.

“Two quit early and went back. I went on with my wife, but she slipped and fell down the face of a mountain.”

He made the circular sign, the blessing, used so much by the Chancers.

“You should sit down,” Burton said kindly. “We have much to tell you.”

When he’d heard Loga and Burton tell what has happened, Göring looked horrified.

“All those
wathans
? And my wife’s among them?”

“Yes, and now we don’t know what to do. Kill the computer so that no more
wathans
may be caught. Or hope that we can think of some way to countermand its prime command.”

Hermann said, “No. There’s a third choice.”

“What?”

“Let me try to get the module in.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. I have a debt to pay.”

Burton thought of his recurring dream of God.

“
You owe for the flesh. Pay up.
”

“If you die, your
wathan
will be doomed.”

“Perhaps not,” Hermann said quietly. “I may be ready to Go On. I don’t know that I am. God knows that I am far from a saint. But if I can save all those souls…
wathans
…then I will have made complete recompense.”

No one argued with him.

“Very well,” Loga said. “You are the most courageous person I’ve ever met. I think you clearly understand that you may have very little chance to succeed. But here’s what we’re going to do.”

Burton was very sorry that he had played his little joke on the German. The man was risking his soul, would face the equivalent of damnation, if he failed. Loga was right. Göring was the bravest man he’d ever known. He may not have been once, but he was now.

Loga decided that they should return to the top level to be near their apartments. On the way, they stopped at a floor where Göring could see the caged
wathans.

He gazed at the glowing, contracting-expanding swirling darting things for a few minutes, then turned away.

“The most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring, the most hideous.”

He made the circular sign again, though Burton thought that this was more than a blessing. He caught intimations of a prayer for salvation and for stiffening of his determination.

When they got to the control room, the Ethical immediately set about working at the console on the revolving platform. After five minutes, he sent Göring into a cabinet. There his measurements were made by beams. Loga put more data into the computer, finishing in an hour.

He waited for a few seconds before punching another button.

He left the platform and limped to a large energy-matter converter. The others crowding behind him, he opened its door.

The parts of a suit of armor were on the floor. Loga picked them up and threw them to those outside the cabinet. They put these on Göring and, when they were done, he looked more like a robot than an armored knight. The addition of the backpack, his air supply, made him resemble an astronaut.

Except for the narrow but long window in the front of the globular helmet, the suit was made of the gray metal. Though thick, it weighed only nine pounds.

“The window isn’t as resistant as the metal,” Loga said. “And the beams will cut entirely through the metal if they’re applied to one spot for more than ten seconds. So keep moving.”

Göring tested the flexibility of the shoulder, wrist, finger, knee, and ankle joints. They gave him as much mobility as he’d need. He ran back and forth and leaped forward and sideways and backwards. Then he practiced with the beamers until he knew its full capabilities.

His armor removed, he ate again.

After Hermann had gone to an apartment to sleep, Loga took a chair off to a floor below sea level. He returned in an hour in a two-man research submarine which floated in the air.

“I didn’t think of this until a couple of hours ago. This will help him get through the initial defenses. But he’ll have to go on foot after that. The entrances won’t be wide enough to admit the vessel.”

During his absence, the others had been busy attaching beamers to the sides of the coffin-shaped clean-up robots and drilling the holes needed for passage of cables. Loga installed video equipment and trigger mechanisms. Then he programmed navigational boxes and installed them.

Burton went to wake up the German but found him on his knees praying by the bedside.

“You should’ve slept,” Burton said.

“I used my time for something better.”

They went back to the control room where Hermann ate a light meal before learning the route and the operation of the submarine. Loga showed him how to remove the old module and insert the new. The latter was a piece of the gray metal the size and shape of a playing card. Though it contained very complex circuits, its surface was smooth. One corner was nicked with a V, indicating that that end was to be inserted into the recess of the assembly. The code number was in bas-relief, and the card was to be put in with the code-side up.

“What could go wrong with a module like that?” Frigate said.

“Nothing,” Loga said. “If it’s inserted properly. I suspect human error. If the card was put in upside down, the circuits would operate properly. But every time there was a voltage surge, one of the circuits would be slightly damaged. There aren’t many surges, but over a long period of time the damage would be cumulative. The error would have been noticed long ago—if the technicians hadn’t been dead.”

He put the card inside a metal cube and attached it to a leg-piece of armor just above the knee.

“All he has to do is press that inset button in the cube, and the magnetism will be cancelled. The cube is thick enough to withstand many shots from the beamers.”

All of Göring’s armor was put on him except the globular helmet. Loga poured out the yellow wine into exquisite goblets brought from his apartment. He lifted his high and said, “To your success, Hermann Göring. May the Creator be with you.”

“With all of us,” Hermann said.

They drank, and the helmet was secured. Göring climbed up a short ladder into the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch. Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation instructions. Then he closed the hatch.

Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments taught them by the Ethical.

The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway. That was Burton’s. Behind it came Alice’s, then the others. They single-filed through the exit and turned right.

When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.

The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief. Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell backwards.

Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from them.

Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upwards to the right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no damage.

A few seconds later, the screen went blank.

One of the computer’s weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.

Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was nothing he could do except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of Loga’s cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor, its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn’t get hit by their companions.

The last beamer in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the next as one room after another was conquered. Alice’s robot was melted down. De Marbot’s camera was destroyed. Tai-Peng’s was pierced by three beams at once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.

The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick hull drilled into by the computer’s beamers.

The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the hull.

Ahead of him, at the opposite wall, was another entrance. Here was where he would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull, climbed out. Immediately, the beamers transferred to him.

Göring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through the door entrance. Ranks of beamers turned toward him and tracked him as he ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled through the hole, his beamer in his hand.

Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.

A cry of agony.

“My leg!”

“You’re almost there!” Loga shouted.

Purplish vapors poured out through the hole.

“Poison gas,” Loga said.

The screen shifted the view to the valve room. This was large and on the right-hand wall (from Hermann) a down-curving metal tube came out of the wall about ten feet above the floor. Near it was a small metal box on a table from which thin cables ran to another box. The front of the box had recesses from which the ends of modules stuck out.

Göring crawled to the cube as at least a hundred beamers poured their ravening energy into his suit.

His voice came to the watchers.

“I can’t stand it. I’m going to faint.”

“Hang on, Göring!” Loga said. “A minute more, and you’ll have done it!”

They saw the bulky gray figure grab the cube, turn it over, and let the card module drop out. They saw Hermann pick it up and crawl toward the module box. They heard his scream and saw him fall forward. The module fell from his fingers at the foot of the table.