More Than Fire

Having made sure that Wigshab was out of sight, Kickaha stepped outside the hut to check out the situation. Highly looped Krazb must have forgotten to post guards. Except for the drunken sleepers on the ground, not a Whaziss was to be seen.

Kickaha breathed in deeply. The breeze was cool enough to be pleasant. Most of the torches had been taken away, but four bright brands on the temple wall made enough light in this moonless night to guide them.

Anana stepped out from the hut. Like Kickaha, she had drunk very lightly.

"Did you hear Krazb when he said something about the price for admission to the Door?" she said. "That sounds ominous."

2

"IT WAS TOO NOISY. WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT THE PRICE?"

"That we'd talk about it in the morning. That there were two prices. One was for just looking at the Door. Another, the much higher price, for using the Door."

The price, Kickaha knew, would not be in money. The Whaziss economy was based only on the trading of goods or services. The only item of any value Kickaha could offer was the Horn of Shambarimen. Krazb wouldn't know what it could do. He would desire it just because there was nothing like it anywhere on his world.

Thus, he and Anana were not going to get through the Door unless they gave up the Horn. If they did not surrender it, they would have to fight the Whazisses, whom Krazb would use when no one was watching.

He told Anana his thoughts while they stood in the doorway of the hut.

"I think we should sneak into the temple right now and find out if there is a gate. If there is, we go through it. Provided we can."

"That's what I expected," she said. "Let's go."

While they were putting on their belts, backpacks, and quivers, Kickaha was thinking; What a woman! No hesitancies, no shilly-shallying for her. She quickly figures out what the situation is-probably had it figured out before I did-and then acts as the situation demands.

On the other hand, he did get irritated sometimes because she knew what his thoughts were before he voiced them. And lately, she obviously was having the same reactions to him that he was having to her.

For far too long, they had rarely been out of each other's sight, and they had been without the company of other human beings. The Whazisses were unsatisfactory substitutes for "people." They had a very stunted sense of humor and of art, and their technology had not progressed for thousands of years. Though they could lie, they were unable to conceive of the big whoppers that humans told just for the fun of it. Nowhere had Kickaha heard a Whaziss express an unconventional thought, and their cultures differed very little from each other.

Anana, holding her spear in one hand and a torch in the other, led the way. Tomahawk in hand, Kickaha walked a few steps back from her side until they reached the temple. The log building was dark. The guards who should have been here were drunk and snoring in the village square. While Anana followed him and cast the light of the torch around for him, he went around the temple to check for other entrances. But it had only one, the big wooden two-sectioned door in its front.

That had a thick wooden beam across the sections. He pulled it back from one of its slots and then swung a section back. Torchlights burning in wall sockets showed a smaller building in the center of the temple floor. It was a duplicate of the temple.

No Whaziss was here, unless he was inside the House of the Door, as the priest had called it.

Kickaha shot back the bar on the small door and swung a section open. Anana got close behind him. He stayed outside the building but leaned far in to look around it. The two torches there lit up a structure flanked by two wooden idols.

Anana said, "At last!"

"I told you that this was it."

"Many times."

Both had seen gates like the one before them. It was an upright sixangled structure composed of arm-thick silver-colored metal beams. It was wide enough to admit two persons abreast.

They walked into the building and stopped a few inches from the hexagonal gate. Kickaha thrust the head of his tomahawk into the space enclosed by the beams. It did not, as he had half expected, disappear. And when he went to the other side and stuck the tomahawk in it, it was clearly visible.

"Unactivated," he said. "Okay. We don't need the code word. We'll try the Horn."

He put the tomahawk shaft inside his belt and opened the bag hanging from his belt. He withdrew the Horn of Shambarimen from it. It was of a silvery metal, almost two and a half feet long, and did not quite weigh a fourth of a pound. Its tube was shaped like an African buffalo's horn. The mouthpiece was of some soft golden substance. The other end, flaring out broadly, contained a web or grill of silvery threads a half-inch inside it. The underside of the Horn bore seven small buttons in a row.

When the light struck the Horn at the right angle, it revealed a hieroglyph inscribed on the top and halfway along its length.

This was the highly treasured artifact made by the supreme craftsman and scientist of the ancient Thoan, which meant "Lords." It was unique. No one knew how to reproduce it because its i

Kickaha lifted the Horn and put its mouthpiece to his lips. He blew upon it while his fingers pressed the buttons in the sequence he knew by heart. He saw in his mind seven notes fly out as if they were golden geese with silver wings.

The musical phrase would reveal and activate a hidden gate or "flaw" if one was within sound range of the Horn. The notes would also activate a visible gate. It was the universal key.

He lowered the Horn. Nothing seemed to have happened, but just activated gates did not often give signs of their changed state. Anana thrust the blade of her spear into the gate. The blade disappeared.

"It's on!" she cried, and she pulled the blade back until it was free of the gate.

Kickaha trembled with excitement. "Fifteen years!" he howled. Anana looked at him and put a finger to her lips.

"They're all passed out," he said. "What you should be worried about is what's on the other side of the gate."

He could stick his head through the gate and see what waited for them in another universe. Or perhaps somewhere in this universe, since this gate could lead to another on this planet. But he knew that doing that might trigger a trap. A blade might sweep down (or up) and cut his head off. Or fire might burn his face off. Sometimes, anything stuck through a gate to probe the other side conducted a fatal electrical charge or a spurt of flaming liquid or guided a shearing laser beam or any of a hundred fatal things.

The best way to probe was to get someone you didn't care for, a slave, for instance, if one was handy. That was the way of the Lords. Kickaha and Anana would not do that unless they had captured an enemy who had tried to kill them.

Her spear had come back from that other world without damage. But a trap could be set for action only if it detected flesh or high-order brain waves.

Anana said, "You want me to go first?"

"No. Here goes nothing-I hope not."

"I'll go first," Anana said, but he jumped through the empty space in the hexagonal frame before she could finish.

He landed on both feet, knees bent, gripping his tomahawk and trying to see in front of him and on both sides at the same time. Then he stepped forward to allow Anana to come through without colliding with him.

The place was twilit without any visible source of light. It was an enormous cavern with dim stalagmites sticking up from the ground and stalactites hanging down from above. These stone icicles were formed from carbonate of calcium dissolving from the water seeping down from above. They looked like the teeth in the jaws of a trap.