More Than Fire

"The body does not always override the dictates of the mind."

She laughed, then said, "You know the Thoan proverbs well. I admire

you, Kickaha. Fidelity is a rare trait, especially when I am the temptress." "That is the truth. Please go before I weaken too much."

Three days later, Kickaha and Manathu Vorcyon were standing before the silvery screen of the glindglassa. Kickaha was fully clothed and well armed with various weapons. His backpack contained food, water, and some medical supplies. His head was full of advice from the Great Mother.

She leaned close to the glindglassa and whispered a code word. Its surface instantly shimmered and expanded slightly, then contracted slightly. Kickaha looked into it but could see nothing beyond.

Manathu Vorcyon turned, enfolded him in her arms, pressed him close to her breasts, and kissed his forehead.

"I shall miss you, Kickaha," she murmured. "May you succeed in your mission. I will be attempting to keep you under surveillance as much as possible, but even that will not be much."

"It's been more than fun," he said. "It's been very educational. And you have highly honored me."

She released him. He stepped toward the gate. She lightly touched the back of his neck and ran the tip of her finger down his spine. A shiver ran through him. It felt as if a goddess had blessed him.

She said, "If anyone can stop Red Orc, you'll be the one."

He wondered if she really meant it. It did not matter. He agreed wholeheartedly with her. However, his best might not be enough.

He stepped through the wavering and shimmering curtain.

11

THOUGH KICKAHA HAD BEEN TOLD BY THE GIANTESS THAT HE would find nothing dangerous during his first transit, he was ready for the unexpected. He was crouching, beamer in hand, when he was suddenly surrounded by darkness. Per Manathu Vorcyon's instructions, he walked forward three steps. Bright sunlight dazzled him. Before him was an open plain-no surprise, since the Great Mother had told him what to expect. He straightened up, looked around, and reholstered the weapon.

The sky seemed to be one vast aurora with shifting and wavering bands of violet, green, blue, yellow, and gray. The plain was covered with tall yellow grasses except for groves of trees here and there. Far away, a large herd of huge black animals was grazing. Behind him was a house-sized and roughly pyramid-shaped boulder of some smooth, greasy, and greenish stone.

He had fifty seconds to get to the other side of the boulder. The Great Mother had arranged this detour to mystify any enemy who might be traveling through the gateways. He ran around the stone and saw a shimmering on its side. But he stopped for several seconds. Here was something not even the Great Mother could have anticipated. Two tiger-sized beasts with long snouts and predators' teeth were standing in front of the gate. They roared but did not charge.

Kickaha, yelling, ran at them, his beamer again in his hand. One beast bounded away; the other held its ground and crouched down to spring at him. His beamer ray drilled through its head. It slumped and was silent. He leaped over the carcass, which stank of burnt flesh, and through the gate. A roar filled his ears. The other beast had turned and was, he supposed, charging him. He envisioned the gate disappearing and the animal bouncing off the suddenly hard side of the boulder. But he was rammed forward by its flying body and slammed into a wall. The force of the impact stu

When, after an undeterminable time, he regained his senses, his groping hand felt a sticky liquid. An odor like a weasel's filled his nostrils. But he also smelled blood. He felt the device on his wrist and pressed a button. Light sprang from it, momentarily dazzling him. It lit up a small chamber cut out of stone like the first one. But he doubted that he was in the same boulder, if it was a boulder. He got to his feet and noted as he stepped over the big predator that only its front part had gotten through the gate.

He walked toward the wall through which he had just entered. There were shimmerings on each of the other walls. The Great Mother had told him that two were false gates containing devices that would spray poison on the intruder. He jumped throught the safe gate while hoping that he had not been delayed too long by the animal. As he emerged on the other side and yelled out the code word, he landed on top of a six-foot-square and six-inch-deep metal box. It was poised a thousand feet in the air above a land of bare stone. The sky was blue, and the wind whistling past him was cold. Below were row on row of Brobdingnagian busts carved out of monoliths. They extended to the horizons. Manathu Vorcyon had told him that this was the world of Arathmeem the strutter. That Lord, long since slain by Red Orc, had made a planet of which a fourth consisted of billions of rock or jewel busts of himself.

He was glad that he had not arrived when an electrical storm was in full rage. Thunder and lightning and a strong wind might have drowned out the code word. In which situation, the metal box would have automatically turned over and dumped him.

On the bottom of the box, near the edge, was a slightly raised metal plate. He got down on his belly, reached over the edge, felt the plate, and pressed it. Then he was, as the Great Mother had said he would be, in darkness and enclosed by a very thick fluid. It pressed on him and flowed up his nostrils and into his ears. He had not been given an oxygen mask because he would not be in this gate-trap very long. But an enemy of Manathu Vorcyon would be unless he knew what Kickaha knew.

He reached out with his right hand and felt up and down the wall until his fingers came to a rounded protuberance. He pushed with the flat of his hand on it, and he was free of the strangest trap he had ever been in. It was inside a massive rock on Wooth's World, a stone that was a living-nonliving thing, analogous to a virus. The slow-moving fluid eventually emerged from fissures in the rock and dripped onto the ground outside the gigantic boulder. From this lava were born-if that word could be used for the bizarre process-small balls flat on the bottom.

The natives on this planet worshiped the "mother," and they would take the "babies" and set them in the center of their villages. These minor gods grew into stones as large as the mother. Moreover, there was a thriving trade in "babies." Those villages that had a monopoly on the supply sold them to those who lacked them. Many wars had been fought to protect or to seize a source of the most precious commodity on this planet.

Dripping with the heavy gray fluid, Kickaha stood motionless until it had oozed away from him and spread in a puddle around him. Then he jumped to the ground beyond the puddle. He began walking toward the east. Manathu Vorcyon, during mille

Getting there was not easy. He was on the Unwanted World, a planet so crowded with dangerous beasts, birds, plants, and other forms of life that it was a wonder they had not killed each other off long ago. After some days of avoiding or shooting these, Kickaha had great respect for the survival abilities of Red Orc. After ten days, four of them spent in hiding from a five-foot-high and city-block-wide creature that oozed across the ground and emitted a deadly gas, Kickaha topped a high ridge. Below him was a plain and a river. Near the river were the remains of the gigantic square nest built by some kind of creatures. Manathu Vorcyon did not know what they were. The structure was built with a concrete-like substance made in the creatures' bellies and spat out to dry.