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He waited by the door because there was no other place to hide. While he waited, he tried to think of anything in the other rooms that could be converted to a boat. Nothing came to his mind except one of the sofas, and he doubted that it would float. Still, he might try it. But how did you propel a heavy object that was slowly sinking, or perhaps swiftly sinking, through mercury?
He would not know until he tried it. The thought did not cheer him up. And then he thought, could a man swim in mercury? In addition, there were poisonous vapors rising from mercury, if he remembered his chemistry correctly.
Now he remembered some phrases from his high school chemistry class. That was back in 1936 in a long ago and truly different world: Does not wet glass but forms a convex surface when in a glass container... is slightly volatile at ordinary temperatures and a health hazard due to its poisonous effect... slowly tarnishes in moist air...
The air in this dome was certainly moist, but the metal was not tarnished. And he could smell no fumes and did not feel any poisonous effects. Not as yet.
Suddenly, he stiffened. He heard, faintly, the slapping of leather on stone. The door had been left open by the Beller, so Kickaha had not moved it. He was on the other side, waiting, hoping that the bell would not enter first.
It did. The black object floated through about four feet off the floor. As soon as it had passed by, it stopped. Kickaha leaped against the door and slammed it shut. The bell continued to hover in the same spot. The door remained shut. It had no lock, and all the Beller had to do to open it was to kick it. But he was cautious, and he must have been very shaken by finding the door closed. He had no idea who was on the other side or what weapons his enemy had. Furthermore, he was now separated from his bell, his most precious possession. If it was true that the bell could not be destroyed, it was also true that it could be taken away and hidden from him.
Kickaha ran in front of the door, hoping that the Beller would not fire his heavy beamer at it at that moment. He seized the bell in his hands and plunged on. The bell resisted but went backward all the same. It did not, however, give an inch on the vertical.
At that moment, the metal of the edge of the door and the wall began to turn red, and Kickaha knew that the Beller was turning the full power of his beamer on the door and that the metal must be very resistant indeed.
But why didn't the Beller just kick the door open and then fire through it?
Perhaps he was afraid that his enemy might be hiding behind the door when it swung open, so he was making sure that there would be nothing to swing. Whatever his motives, he was giving Kickaha a little more tune, not enough though to swim across to the island. The Beller would be through the door about the tune he was halfway to the island.
Kickaha took hold of the bell with both hands and pushed it up against the wall. It did not go easily on the horizontal, but he did not have to strain to move it. He pulled it toward him and then away, estimating its resistance. Then he gave it a great shove with both hands in the direction along the wall. It moved at about two feet per second but then slowed as it scraped along the curved wall. Another shove, this time at an angle to take it away from the curve but to keep it from going out over the pool, resulted in its moving for a longer distance.
He looked at the door. The red spot was a hole now with a line of redness below it. Evidently the Beller intended to carve out a large hole or perhaps to cut out the door entirely. He could stop at any moment to peek through the hole, and, if he did, he would see his enemy and the bell. On the other hand, he might be afraid to use the hole just yet be-cause his enemy might be waiting to blast him. Kickaha had one advantage. The Beller did not know what weapons he had.
Kickaha hurried after the bell, seized it again, backed up, stopped at the wall, and then drew his feet up. He hung with his knees and toes almost touching the walk. But the bell did not lose a fraction of altitude.
"Here goes everything!" he said and shoved with all the power of his legs against the wall.
He and the bell shot out over the pool, straight toward the vertical hoop on the island. They went perhaps forty feet and then stopped. He looked down at the gray liquid below and slowly extended his feet until they were in the metal. He pushed against it, and it gave way to his feet, but he and the bell moved forward a few feet. And so he pushed steadily and made progress, though it was slow and the sweat poured out over his body and ran into his eyes and stung them and his legs began to ache as if he had run two miles as fast as he could.
Nevertheless, he got to the island, and he stood upon its stone surface with the hoop towering only a few feet from him. He looked at the door. A thin line ran down one side and across the bottom and up the other side. It curved suddenly and was ru
Kickaha looked back through the hoop. The room was visible on the other side, but he knew that if he stepped through it, he would be gated to some other place, perhaps to another universe. Unless the Lord had set it here for a joke.
He pushed the bell ahead of him and then threw himself to one side so he would not be in front of the hoop. He had had enough experience with the Lords to suspect that the place on the other side was trapped. It was always best to throw something into the trap to spring it.
There was a blast that deafened him. His face and the side of his body were seared with heat. He had shut his eyes, but light flooded them. And then he sat up and opened them in time to see the bell shooting across the pool, though still at its original height. It sped above the mercury pool and the walk and stopped only when it slammed into the wall. There it remained, a few inches from the wall because of its rebound.
Immediately thereafter, the door fell outward and down against the walk. He could not hear it; he could hear only the ringing in his ears from the blast. But he saw the Beller dive through, the beamer held close to him, hit the floor, roll, and come up with the beamer held ready. By then, Kickaha had jumped up. As he saw the Beller look around and suddenly observe him, he leaped through the hoop. He had no choice. He did not think it would be triggered again, since that was not the way the Lords arranged their traps. But if the trap on the other side was reset, it would blow him apart, and his worries would be over.
He was through, and he was falling. There were several thousands of feet of air beneath him, a blue sky above, and a thin horizontal bar just before him. He grabbed it, both hands clamping around smooth cold iron, and he was swinging at arm's length below a bar, the ends of which were set in two metal poles that extended about twenty feet out from a cliff.
It was a triumph of imagination and sadism for Red Orc. If the prisoner was careless enough to go through the hoop without sending in a decoy, he would be blown apart before he could fall to death. And if he did not jump, but stepped through the gate, he would miss the bar.
And, having caught the bar, then what?
A man with lesser nerve or muscle might have fallen. Kickaha did not waste any time. He reached out with one hand and gripped the support bar. And as quickly let loose while he cursed and swung briefly with one hand.
The support pole was almost too hot to touch.
He inched along the bar to the other support pole and touched it. That was just as hot. The metal was not quite too hot to handle. It pained him so much that Kickaha thought about letting go. But he stuck to it, and finally, hurting so much that tears came to his eyes and he groaned, he pulled himself up over the lip of the cliff. For a minute he lay on the rock ledge and moaned. The palms of his hands and the i