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Khruuz said something, and a drawer slid out from the wall below the control panel. From it, he took a black metallic cube, four inches across. An orange button was on its top; the bottom part was curved; a strap dangled from one side of it.
"The key to the gate to the Caverned World," Khruuz said. "Your Horn of Shambarimen is the only other key."
He held up the black box. "I inherited this from a friend, a great scientist, who was killed a few days after he gave it to me. As far as I know, it's the only one in all the universes. Strap this gate-opener onto your wrist. Without it, you might as well stay here."
The preparations for the trip took two days. Eric Clifton argued that he should go with Kickaha. Khruuz said that the chances were high that Kickaha would fail in his mission. If Clifton went with Kickaha, he might die, too. Khruuz needed Clifton's knowledge of the universes of the Lords if he was to be effective in the battle against them.
"Besides," Khruuz confessed to Kickaha when Clifton was not present, "I would get very lonely, even if he is not a Khringdiz."
Thus, though impatient, Kickaha had to wait until Khruuz told him when the correct time for entering the all-nodes gate arrived.
"The node does not really revolve," the Khringdiz said. "But I use 'revolve' as a convenient term. Launching you requires exact timing. You have an interval of twenty seconds to get into the node and to take the gate that should lead you to the fault in Zazel's World. If you are delayed by ten microseconds, you'll enter another gate taking you to somewhere else."
The Khringdiz had built a nine-angled metal structure to mark the place for Kickaha to enter. An hour before the time to go, Kickaha put on an oxygen mask, an oxygen bottle, a pair of dark goggles, weapons, a backpack filled with supplies, and, strapped to his left wrist, the cube containing the device for opening the fault. Kickaha called it "the can opener."
Eric Clifton was there to see his fellow Earthman off. "God be with you," he said, and he shook Kickaha's hand. "This is a war against the Devil, so we are destined to win."
"God may win against Satan," Kickaha said. "But how about the casualties along the way?"
"We will not be among them.
A display in Khringdiz numbers on the wall indicated the time. Kickaha had learned what these meant. When he had two minutes to go, he checked a Khringdiz watch on his right wrist. It was synchronized with the wall instrument. He stood before the nonagonal structure, and when he had thirty seconds to go, made ready to enter the gate. Though Khruuz had told him that he would meet no one else, Kickaha had unstrapped the beamer in his holster.
Khruuz said, "Get ready to go. I'll give the word twenty seconds from now."
It seemed that he had just quit talking when he shouted in Thoan, "Jump!"
Kickaha leaped. He passed through the nonagon and was momentarily bewildered. He seemed to be stretched far out. His legs and feet looked as if they were very elongated. His feet were at least twenty feet from his torso. His hands, at the ends of beanpole arms, were ten feet from his shoulders.
He felt, at the same time, a shock, as if he had fallen into a polar sea. His numbed senses began to fade. Khruuz had not told him that this would happen-but then, Khruuz did not know what would happen. It was up to him, Kickaha thought, to do what was required.
He was enveloped in a dim greenish light. His rapidly chilling feet felt as if they were on a floor, but he could not see it. Nor were there any walls around him. It was like being in an invisible fog.
Then a slightly brighter light glowed behind the dusk. He walked toward it, if "walking" was the right word. More like wading through molasses, he thought. He did not know how many seconds had passed since he had entered this place-if it was a place. But it was no use wasting time in looking at the wristwatch. Either he got there in time or he did not.
The greenish dusk brightened; the light on its other side-if there was any such thing as another side here-increased. That should be the node "revolving" there. The light should be the gate he wanted.
Then the light began to fade. He strove to step up his pace. By all the holies! He had thought that twenty seconds were more than enough time to get to the gate. But now it seemed an impossibly short time. And he was begi
If he vomited in the mask, he would be in a bad way indeed.
Then the light was around him. Very slowly, or so it seemed to him, he reached for the opening device given him by Khruuz. It, too, was distorted. His right hand missed it altogether. He felt close to panic, a cold panic sluggishly moving up from wherever panics came from. He did not have much time to press the button. At least, he thought he did not. But he was sure that if he did not activate the little machine very quickly, he would not be within his allotted time.
He reached across his chest and felt his left shoulder, though that, too, took time to find. How many seconds did he have left? Finally, his fingers touched his shirt. He slid them downward, at the same time seeing an arm bent in a zigzag course, as crooked as the cue stick W C. Fields had used in a movie, the title of which Kickaha could not remember. Then his middle finger was on the button, which had a concavity on top of it that had not been there when he had leaped through the gate. But he pressed on it.
Now he was in a tu
He turned off the oxygen and removed the mask and bottle. Immediately, he noticed that the air was not moving. It was hot and heavy and gave the impression of having died a long time ago. After putting the oxygen equipment down at his feet to mark the point of entrance, he looked around. The tu
The strangest feature of this tu
The still air continued to oppress him. He decided to scratch a big X on the wall as a starting point. Then he placed the oxygen mask and bottle in his backpack.
Now, which way should he go?
Upstream was as good a direction as any. That was also the way in which the characters were going.
For five hours, he walked steadily through the tu