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His investigation of his situation was short because there was not much to see. He was on the bare top of a pillar of hard black rock. The top was wider than the bottom, and the sides were smooth as the barrel of a ca
They were not an immediate concern. He had to get down off the pillar first, and at the moment he did not know how he was going to do that.
He returned to the bar projecting from the cliff. The Beller could be about ready to come through the gate. Even if he was reluctant, he would have to come through. This was the only way out.
Minutes passed and became an hour, if he could trust his sense of time. The sun curved down from the zenith. He walked back and forth to loosen his muscles and speed the blood in his legs and buttocks. Suddenly a foot and a leg came out of the blue air. The Beller, on the other side of the gate, was testing out the unknown.
The foot reached here and there for substance and found only air. It withdrew, and, a few seconds later, the face of the Beller, like a Cheshire Cat in reverse, appeared out of the air.
Kickaha's knife was a streak of silver shooting toward the face. The face jerked back into the nothingness, and the knife was swallowed by the sky at a point about a foot below where the face had been.
The gate was not one-way. The entrance of the knife showed that. The fact that the Beller could stick part of his body through it and then withdraw it did not have anything to do with the one-way nature of some gates. Even a one-way gate permitted a body to go halfway through and then return. Unless, of course, the Lord who had designed it wished to sever the body of the user.
Several seconds passed. Kickaha cursed. He might never find out if he had thrown true or not.
Abruptly, a head shot out of the blue and was followed by a neck and shoulders and a chest and a solar plexus from which the handle of the knife stuck out.
The rest of the body came in view as the Beller toppled through. He fell through and out and his body became smaller and smaller and then was lost in distance. But Kickaha was able to see the white splash it made as it struck the river.
He took a deep breath and sat down, trembling. The Beller was at last dead, and all the Universes were safe forever from his kind.
And here I am, Kickaha thought. Probably the only living thing in this universe. As alone as a man can be. And if I don't think of something impossible to do before my nonexistent breakfast, I will soon be one of the only two dead things in this universe.
He breathed deeply again and then did what he had to do. It hurt just as much going back out on the pole as it had coming in. When he reached the bar, he rested on it with one arm and one leg over it. After the pain had gone away in his hands and legs, he swung up onto the bar and balanced himself standing on it. His thousands of hours of practicing on tightwires and climbing to great heights paid off. He was able to maintain his equilibrium on the bar while he estimated again the point through which the Beller had fallen. It was only an undefined piece of blue, and he had one chance to hit his target.
He leaped outward and up, and his head came through the hoop and the upper part of his body and then he went "Whoof!" as his belly struck on the edge of the hoop. He reached out and gripped the stone with his fingertips and pulled himself on through. For a while, he lay on the stone until his heart resumed its normal beat. He saw that the bell was above him and the beamer was on the floor of the island only a foot from him.
He rose and examined the bell. It was indestructible, and the tips of the ante
Whatever had happened, it was fixed at its altitude above the island. And it still put up a weak resistance against a horizontal push. Kickaha presumed that its ante
It gave him his only chance to get to the ground several thousand feet below. He did not know how much of a chance. It might just stay at this level even if the ground beneath it were to suddenly drop away. If that happened, he still might be able to get to the top of the stone pillar.
He put the strap of the beamer over one shoulder, hugged the bell to his chest, and stepped out through the hoop.
His descent was as swift as if he were dangling at the end of a parachute, a speed better than he had hoped for. From time to time, he had to kick against the sides of the pillar because the bell kept drifting back toward it, as if the mass of the pillar had some attraction for it.
Then he was ten feet above the river and released his hold on the bell. He fell a little faster, hit the water, which was warm, and came up in a strong current. He had to fight to get to shore but managed it. After he had regained some of his strength, he walked along the shore until he saw the bell. It was stopped against the side of the pillar, like a baby beast nuzzling its gigantic mother. There was no way for him to get to it nor did he see any reason why he should.
A few yards on, he found the body of the Beller. It had come to rest against a reef of rock which barely protruded above the surface of the small bay. Its back was split open, and the back of the head was soft, as if it had struck concrete instead of water. The knife was still in its solar plexus. Kickaha pulled it out, and cleaned it on the wet hat of the Beller. The fall had not damaged the knife.
He pulled the body from the river. Then he considered the giant gates set hoop-like in the rock like the smaller one in the island in that other world. Two were on this side of the river and two on the other. Each was at the corner of a square two miles long. He walked to the nearest one and threw a stone into it. The stone went through and landed on the rock on the other side. It was one of Red Orc's jokes. Perhaps all four were just hoops and he would be stuck on this barren world until he starved to death.
The next hoop, in the northeast corner also proved to be just that, a hoop.
Kickaha was begi
He sat down for a minute and then he jumped up, exclaiming and cursing himself for a fool. He had forgotten that gates might work when entered in one direction but not work in the other. Picking up a stone, he went around to the other side of the big hoop and cast the stone through it. The hoop was still just a hoop.