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Kickaha clung with one hand to the stem of the plant and peered out from under the lifted edge of the pad. What he saw almost made him gasp. He was fortunate to have restrained himself, because his mouth was under water.
The black bell was floating along the edge of the pool at a height of about seven feet above the floor.
It went by slowly and then stopped at the door. A moment later, the Beller entered and walked confidently toward it.
Kickaha began to get some idea of what had happened in Red Orc's house.
The Beller, while in the laboratories of Wolff, must have equipped his bell with an antigravity device. And he must have added some device for controlling it at a distance with his thoughts. He had not been able to use it while on Earth nor had any reason to do so until he was taken prisoner by Orc. Then, when he had recovered enough from the wound, he saw his chance and summoned the bell to him with his thoughts. Or, to be more exact, by controlled patterns of brainwaves which could be detected by the bell. The control must be rough and limited, but it had been effective enough.
Somehow, the bell, operating at the command of the Beller's brain-wave patterns, had released him. And the Beller had seized one of Orc's men, discharged the neural pattern of the man's mind, and transferred his mind from the wounded body of Thabuuz to the brain of the servant.
The bell could detect the mental call of the Beller when it extended the two tiny drill-ante
And then he had been shunted through the escape gate into a building on Mars.
Kickaha watched the Beller approach. Unable to hang onto the skull any longer and handle his gun at the same time, he let the skull drop. It sank silently into the depths while he held onto the stem with his left hand and pulled the beamer from his belt with the other. The Beller went on by him and then stopped at the door. After opening this, he waited until the bell had floated on through ahead of him.
Apparently, the bell could detect other living beings, too. Its range must be limited, otherwise it would have detected Kickaha in the water as it went by. It was possible, of course, that the water and the lilypad shielded him from the bell's probe.
Kickaha pulled himself higher out of the water with his left hand and rifted the beamer above the surface. From under the darkness of the pad, he aimed at the Beller. It would be necessary to get him with the first beam. If it missed, the Beller would get through the door and then Kickaha would be up against a weapon much more powerful than his. If he missed the Beller, the beam would slice through the wall of the building, and the air would boil out into the thin atmosphere of Mars. And both of them would have had it.
The Beller was presenting his profile. Kickaha held his beamer steadily as he pointed it so that the thread-thin ray would burn a hole through the hip of the man. And then, as he fell, he would be cut in two.
His finger started to squeeze on the trigger. Suddenly, something touched his calf and he opened his mouth to scream. So intense was the pain, it almost shocked him into unconsciousness. He doubled over, and water entered his mouth and nostrils, and he choked. His hand came loose from the plant stem and the beamer fell from the other hand.
In the light-filled water, he saw a frog-like creature swim away swiftly, and he knew that it was this that had bitten him. He swam upward because he had to get air, knowing even as he did that the Beller would easily kill him, if the Beller had heard him.
He came up and, with a massive effort of will, kept himself from blowing out water and air and gasping and thrashing around. His head came up under the pad again, and he eased the water out. He saw that the Beller had disappeared.
But in the next second he doubled over again with agony. The frog had returned and bitten him on the leg again. His blood poured out from the wounds and darkened the water. He swam quickly to the edge of the pool and pulled himself out with a single smooth motion. His legs tingled.
On the walk, he pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips to bind around his wounds. The animal must have had teeth as sharp as a shark's; they had sheared through the cloth of his pants and taken out skin and flesh. But the wounds were not deep.
The Lord must have been greatly amused when he planted the savage little carnivore in this pool.
Kickaha was not amused. He did not know why the Beller was in the next room, but he suspected that he would soon be back. He had to get away, but he also needed his beamer. Not that he would be able to get it. Not while that frog-thing was in the pool.
At least he had the knife. He took it from his belt and put it between his teeth while he splashed water on the walk where his blood had dripped. Then he straightened up and limped past the pool and into the next room.
He passed through a short bare-walled hall. The room beyond was as large as the one with the pool. It was warm and humid and filled with plant life that looked neither Terrestrial nor Martian. It was true that he had not seen any Martian vegetation other than the cactusoids in the valley. But these plants were so tall, green, stinking, fleshy, and so active, they just did not look as if they could survive on the rare-aired Mars-scape.
One side of the wall was transparent, and this showed a gray fog. That was all. Strain his eyes as much as he could, he could see nothing but the grayness. And it did not seem to be a watery fog but one composed of thousands upon thousands of exceedingly tiny particles. More like dust of some kind, he thought.
He was surely no longer on Mars. When he had passed from the hall into this room, he had stepped through a gate which had shot him instantaneously into a building on some other planet or satellite. The gravity seemed no different than Earth's so he must be on a planet of similar size. That, plus the cloud, made him think that it must be
Venus.
With a start, he realized that the gravity in the Martian building should have been much less than Earth's. How much? A sixth? He did not remember, but he knew that when he had leaped, he should have soared far more than he did.
But that building was on Mars. He was sure of that. This meant that the building had been equipped with a device to ensure an Earth-gravity locally. Which meant that this building could be on, say, Jupiter, and yet the titanic drag of the planet would be nullified by the Lord's machines.
He shrugged. It really did not matter much where he was if he could not survive outside of the building. The problem he had to solve was staying alive and finding a way back to Earth. He went on to another short and bare hall and then into a twilit room the size of Grand Central Station. It was dome-shaped and filled with a silvery gray metal liquid except for a narrow walk around the wall and for a small round island in the middle. The metal looked like mercury, and the walk went all the way around the room. Nowhere along the wall was there any sign of any opening.
The island was about fifty yards from the wall. Its surface was only a foot above the still lake of quicksilver. The island seemed to be of stone, and in its exact center was a huge hoop of metal set vertically in the stone. He knew at once that it was a gate and that if he could get to it, he would be transported to a place where he would at least have a fighting chance. That was the rule of the game. If the prisoner was intelligent enough and strong enough and swift enough-and, above all, lucky enough-he just might get free.