More Than Fire

She nodded, her gaze still locked onto the images.

Before he turned to go, he saw a flash of what had to be downtown Los Angeles. There was the Bradbury Building. The next twenty views were of unfamiliar places.

Then he saw briefly a landscape of the Lavalite planet, the world from which he and Anana had escaped. A mountain was slowly rising from the surface, and the river at its base was spreading as its cha

What was the use to anyone of all these monitor views when no one was here to see them?

He felt creepy.

There were too many questions and no answers. The practical thing to do was to quit thinking about them. But being pragmatic did not stop him.

After completing the circuit, he stopped. The Horn had opened no more gates. And he had not seen any more scapes of things familiar. Nor could he see the higher views on the curving wall.

He started when Anana yelled, "I saw Red Orc again!"

Before he could get to her, the view was gone.

"He was about to walk through a gate!" she said. "He was on the same cliff by the sea, but he'd walked over to a gate. An upright hexagon!"

"Maybe he's not doing that right now. The view could be a record of the past." -'

"Maybe, maybe not."

Kickaha went back to his work with the Horn. When he was done, he had opened no new gates. Anana had not seen their most dangerous enemy again.

He started toward the tomb to examine it when Anana cried out a Thoan oath, "Elyttria!"

He wheeled just in time to see the last two seconds of the view. It showed part of the interior of the great chamber and the nearer half of the tomb and occupant. Very close were himself and Anana staring slightly upward.

"Us!" he bellowed.

After a few seconds of silence, she said, "That should not surprise us. If so many worlds and places are being monitored, it's only natural that this place should be. For one thing, the monitors should know when this room has been invaded. And we are intruders."

"Nothing has been done about us."

"So far, no."

"Keep an eye on the views," he said. He walked to the tomb and felt around the base but could not detect any protuberances or recesses. The controls, if there were any, were not on the base.

The cube resisted his efforts to raise it from the base.

After that, he toured the wall again. Inside of an hour, he had examined the wall for as far as he could see up. He even pressed his hand against the displays to find out if this disclosed any means of control. He also hoped that the pressure would swing open a part of the wall and offer access to somewhere else. As he expected, it did not happen. It was not logical that it would, but he had to try. If there was any central control area, it was not visible. And it was not available.

Meanwhile, the hidden monitors in this chamber would be recording his actions.

That thought led to another. Just how did these monitors record so many places in so many worlds? They certainly would not do it by the machines Earth people or the Lords used. The "cameras" on these worlds would be of an indetectible nature. Permanent magnetic fields of some sort? And these transmitted the pictures through gates of some sort to this place?

If they were stored as recordings, they would have to be in an immense area. Inside this planet?

He just did not know.

There had to be some purpose to all this.

"Kickaha!" Anana called.

He ran to her. "What?"

"That man who was wearing the clothes of Western Earth people of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century," she said, looking excited. "The man we saw inside that floating palace on the Lavalite planet. I just saw him!"

"Know where he was?"

She shook her head but said, "He wasn't in the house. He was walking through a forest. The trees could have been on Earth or the World of Tiers or any of hundreds of worlds. I didn't see any animals or birds."

"Curiouser and curiouser," he said in English.

He looked around again, then said, "I don't think we can do anything more here. We can't just wait around hoping to see flashes of Red Orc or the stranger or, I wish to God we would, Wolff and Chryseis."

"But we might be able to retrace our gate routes back to here someday."

"We'll do it. Meanwhile, let's go. I don't like to reenter the tower room, but we have no choice."

They walked to the wall area enclosing the gate through which they had entered the chamber. He raised the Horn to his lips and blew into the mouthpiece. The air shimmered, and they could see the room in the tower they had left a short time ago. Anana stepped through with Kickaha on her heels. But he turned around for a last view of the chamber.

He saw that the cube was being filled with many beams of many colors and hues. They flashed and died and were replaced within a blink of an eye by other beams. An orange light surrounded the corpse, which was sinking slowly toward the floor of the cube.

"Wait!" he cried out.

But the view faded swiftly. Not, however, before he saw the lid of the cube begi

He did not explain to Anana why he was blowing the Horn again. This time, the gate to the gigantic room did not open. Instead, they were in another place.

He was in despair. It seemed impossible that they could ever retrace their route to the tomb.

Nevertheless, he automatically blew the Horn again and again as they were shot through a circuit. And then they were on a plain on which twofeet-high grass flourished. Far beyond that was a thick forest, and beyond that, a wall of rock towering so high that he could not see its top. It ran unbroken to his right and his left. The sky was bright green, and the sun was yellow and as bright as Earth's.

They had time to run out of the area of influence of the gate before it shuttled them onward. They leaped like two jackrabbits startled by a coyote, and they ran. They had known instantly where they were.

They where in the universe of the planet called Alofmethbin. In English, the World off Tiers. This was his most beloved planet of all the universes. The vast wall of rock many miles in front of them was one of the five truly colossal monoliths forming the vertical parts of the Tower-of-Babylonshaped planet. And they were standing on top of one of them, though they did not as yet know which.

After they had stopped ru

"I thought of that," he said, "but we can't be sure of it. However, it did seem like we were on a nonstop train that slowed down long enough for us to jump off."

She nodded. Her face was grim.

"I think someone set it up so we'd get off here."

"Red Orc!"