GODS OF RIVERWORLD

He set the fuse by voice and looked around the door again. He said, "Oh, my God!" Star Spoon had somehow determined that Alice was in her room, perhaps with a heat-and-sound detector. Alice had done the only thing she could do, closed the door with a codeword. And Star Spoon was sealing it.

Burton jumped out from behind the door, aimed the beamer, and saw the ray, a bright scarlet rod with a diameter of one-fourth of an inch, leap from the bulb at the end of his weapon to the side of the transparent sphere. If the ray could have pierced the shield, it would have gone through Star Spoon's head near her left ear. Instead, the armor glowed at the point, and she saw it at once. She moved a control on the board by her right hand. The vehicle, rotating, moved away from the door, stopped, and shot toward Burton.

36

He turned and ran close to the wall, hoping that the second door would block him from her view. If he could avoid being hit, if she came by the door just as the explosive went off, if he could get inside the next door before it did ... He wanted to look behind him to calculate the velocity of her vehicle. She might have accelerated to the point where she would pass the trap before it exploded. But he could not afford to glance behind because it would slow him, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway.

He grabbed the edge of the door and swung himself around it so vigorously that he banged his left shoulder on the doorway and was spun halfway around. Two scarlet rays shot past the door. Probably, other rays had hit the door. No matter, he thought. I'm in. Another shock wave knocked him down, but this one had far less impact than the first.

He got up, praying, and, clinging to the edges of the door, looked around it. Since there was not much smoke, he could clearly see the vehicle against the wall opposite the doorway where the charge had been placed. The explosion had thrust it across the corridor and slammed it against the wall. Star Spoon was unconscious. Burton watched as the car resumed its original speed, grating against the metal wall, and collided with the wall at the next intersection. There it stuck.

Li Po and Frigate, beamers ready, ran around the corners and up to Burton. "I boobytrapped her," he said. "But we have to get her out before she comes to."

"Where's Alice and Gull?" Frigate said.

"No time for that," Burton said. "Pete, have the hypodermic syringe ready. Po, you come with me."

Frigate removed the syringe from the case attached to his belt. While Burton held his beamer ray steady on one point of the armor, the Chinese ran to the nearest room to order from the converter a ladder and two stepladders to use to climb up to the car. Burton wanted to take her alive, but he hoped that, if she showed signs of rousing, the hole would have been burned through the shell so that he could put a hole through her body.

However, Li Po returned quickly, and they burned off the i hatch locks while she lay unmoving. Burton crawled in, took the syringe from Frigate, blew the drug into her arm, and used the controls to ease the vehicle to the floor. They carried her into the nearest room, placed her on a bed, stripped her, searched her clothes, and then put her in the converter so that the Computer could probe her neural system. It reported that her brain was too complex to be an android's.

"I'd say we have her," Burton said. "Only ... what if she's anticipated this possibility and ordered the Computer to make a false report? She'll be alive somewhere in this labyrinth."

"I don't believe that she would consider that possibility," Li Po said. "She must have believed that she was invulnerable in her armored vehicle. You have to take some things on faith."

"No, I don't."

Though he thought that Li Po was right, he intended to search the tower thoroughly. Not until then would he be at ease about her.

Leaving Frigate to watch the woman, Burton and Li Po burned off the sealant over Alice's door. Though not hysterical, she needed a long drink to quiet her nerves. She had thought that she might be imprisoned in the room forever or at least for a time that would have seemed forever.

On the way back to the room where Star Spoon was, they saw Gull's body lying face up on the floor of the corridor. Li Po explained that Gull had been caught by a ray from the vehicle as Star Spoon was pursuing Burton.

"He must have left the room just as I dived into mine," Li Po said. "I don't know why he did it. He told me just before we took our stations that he could not use his beamer. It was all right to kill the androids because they were not human beings, but he could not fight Star Spoon."

"He should have said so at once and stayed with Alice," Burton said.

"I think that he probably went out into the corridor to plead with Star Spoon," Li Po said. "He was as crazy as she."

After conferring, they decided that it would be cruel to lock Star Spoon up in a room with the hope of curing her insanity. Questioning the Computer, they learned that the cryogenic techniques of the Ethicals far surpassed those of Earth. She could be frozen instantaneously without tissue damage, and so she was. Star Spoon would wait in her casket until the Gardenworlders arrived.

After a day of rest, they began the search. The first room they went to was the one she had left when she set out to finish them off. The Computer would not directly give them the location, but it immediately yielded the records of the passage of the orange light on the diagrams. Entrance to the room on the one hundred and sixteenth level—the Ethicals counted the stories from the top instead of the bottom—was easy. Star Spoon had not closed the door, because she had thought that only she would be alive when her mission was accomplished.

They went cautiously into a very large room with halls ru

The only one of the all-male prisoners, one in each room, whom he recognized was Dunaway, the man who had raped Star Spoon in Turpinville. The others were three Chinese, two Caucasians, an Amerindian, two Negroes, and a Neanderthal. Li Po knew one of the Chinese.

"He is Wang Chih Mao, a minor official of the emperor. I met him once. Star Spoon later told me about him. He is the man who raped her when she was ten years old."

Four of them were gibbering insane. Two seemed to be close to going crazy. Dunaway was one of the two who had retreated into catatonia. The ninth was hiding under the bed and would not come out when Burton called him via the screen.

Burton watched the past displays on the ceilings, floors, and walls of all the rooms. Over and over again, as seen through Star Spoon's eyes, the rapings were shown on large screens, in living color, and at high volume. The men could escape these only by sleep, which would not have come easily, by madness, or by death. Suicide was almost impossible. They were naked and so could not make nooses from their clothes. Their converters gave them only bread, boneless meat, and vegetables. Except for the beds, which consisted only of frame and mattress, there was no furniture. The bathrooms had a seatless toilet and a faucet for cold water above a small bowl. No soap, no towels and no toilet paper.

Alice shuddered. "She got her revenge. Horrible!"

"Poetic justice," Frigate said. "Gotten with the aid of science."

"There's nothing we can do for them," Burton said, "unless we can shut off the converter power and let them starve to death."