The Lavalite World

They should have drilled through the walls and floor, but these were made of some material invulnerable even to their power.

When he was a few feet from the door, the beamers swung to spray the door just ahead of him. Their contact with the door made a slight hissing, like a poisonous snake about to strike.

The two stood while scarlet flashed and splashed over the door.

"We're not to touch," Kickaha said. "Or is this just a move in the game he's playing to torment us?"

He turned and walked back toward the nearest beamer. It tracked just ahead of him, forcing him to move slowly. But the ray was always just ahead of him.

When he stopped directly before the beamer, it was pointed at his chest. He moved around it until it could no longer follow him. Of course, he was in the line of sight of the other three. But they had stopped firing now.

The weapon was easily unsecured by pulling a thick pin out of a hinge on its rear. He lifted it and tore it loose from the wires co

"So far, we're just doing what Ore wants us to do," he said. "He's programmed this whole setup. Why?"

They went to the door and pushed on it. It swung open, revealing a corridor empty of life or robots. They walked to the branch and went around the corner. At the end of this hall was the open door of the elevator shaft. The cage was within it, as if Ore has sent it there to await them.

They hesitated to enter it. What if Ore had set a trap for them, and the cage stopped halfway between floors or just fell to the bottom of the shaft?

"In that case," Kickaha said, "he would figure that we'd take a stairway. So he'd trap those."

They got into the cage and punched a button for the first floor. Arriving safely, they wandered through some halls and rooms until they came to an enormous luxuriously furnished chamber. The two robots stood by a great table of polished onyx. Anana, in the language of the Lords, ordered a meal. This was brought in five minutes. They ate so much they vomited, but after resting they ate again, though lightly. Two hours later, they had another meal. She directed a robot to show them to an apartment. They bathed in hot water and then went to sleep on a bed that floated three feet above the floor while cool air and soft music flowed over them.

When they woke, the door to the room opened before they could get out of bed. A robot pushed in a table on which were trays filled with hot delicious food and glasses of orange or muskmelon juice. They ate, went to the bathroom, showered, and emerged. The robot was waiting with clothes that fitted them exactly.

Kickaha did not know how the measurements had been taken, but he wasn't curious about it. He had more important things to consider.

"This red carpet treatment worries me. Ore is setting us up just to knock us down again."

The robot knocked on the door. Anana told him to come in. He stopped before Kickaha and handed him a note. Opening it, Kickaha said, "It's in English. I don't know whose handwriting it is, but it has to be Ore."

He read aloud, "Look out a window."

Dreading what they would see, but too curious to put it off, they hastened through several rooms and down a long corridor. The window at its end held a scene that was mostly empty air. But moving slowly across it was a tiny globe. It was the lavalite world.

"That's the kicker!" he said. "Ore's taken the palace into space! And he's marooned us up here, of course, with no way of getting to the ground!"

"And he's also deaclived all the gates, of course," Anana said.

A robot, which had followed them, made a sound exactly like a polite butler wishing to attract his master's attention. They turned, and the robot held out to Kickaha another note. He spoke in English. "Master told me to tell you, sir, that he hopes you enjoy this."

Kickaha read, "The palace is in a decaying orbit."

Kickaha spoke to the robot. "Do you have any other messages for us?"

"No, sir."

"Can you lead us to the central control chamber?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then lead on, MacDuff."

It said, "What does MacDuff mean, sir?"

"Cancel the word. What name are you called by? I mean, what is your designation?"

"One, sir."

"So you're one, too."

"No, sir. Not One-Two. One."

"For Ilmarwolkin's sake," Anana said, "quit your clowning."

They followed One into a large room where there was an open wheeled vehicle large enough for four. The robot got into the driver's seat. They stepped into the back seat, and the car moved away smoothly and silently. After driving through several corridors, the robot steered it into a large elevator. He got out and pressed some buttons, and the cage rose thirty floors. The robot got behind the wheel and drove the vehicle down a corridor almost for a quarter of a mile. The car stopped in front of a door.

"The entrance to the central control chamber, sir."

The robot got out and stood by the door. They followed him. The door had been welded, or sealed to the wall.

"Is this the only entrance?"

"Yes, sir."

It was evident that Ore had made sure that they could not get in. Doubtless, any devices, including 1 beamers, that could remove the door had been jettisoned from the palace. Or was Ore just making it more difficult for them? Perhaps he had deliberately left some tools around, but when they got into the control room, they would find that the controls had been destroyed.

They found a window and looked out into red space. Kickaha said, "It should take some time before this falls onto the planet. Meanwhile, we can eat, drink, make love, sleep. Get our strength back. And look like mad for some way of getting out of this mess. If Ore thinks we're going to suffer while we're falling, he doesn't know us."

"Yes, but the walls and door must be made of the same stuff, impervium, as the room that held the cage," she said. "Beamers won't affect it. I don't know how he managed to weld the door to the walls, but he did. So getting in to the controls seems to be out."

First, they had to make a search of the entire building and that would take days even when traveling in the little car. They found the hangar which had once housed five fliers. Ore had not even bothered to close its door. He must have set them to fly out on automatic.

They also located the great power plant. This contained the gravitic machines which now maintained an artificial field within the palace. Otherwise, they would have been floating around in free fall.

"It's a wonder he didn't turn that off," Anana said. "It would have been one more way to torment us."

"Nobody's perfect," Kickaha said.

Their search uncovered no tools which could blast into the control chamber. They hadn't thought it would.

Kickaha conferred with Anana, who knew more about parachutes than he did. Then he gave a number of robots very detailed instruction on how to manufacture two chutes out of silken hangings.

"All we have to do is to jump off and then float down," he said. "But I don't relish the idea of spending the rest of my life on that miserable world. It's better than being dead, but not by much."

There were probably a thousand, maybe two thousand gates in the walls and on the floors and possibly on the ceilings. Without the codewords to activate them, they could neither locate nor use them.

They wondered where the wallpanel was which the Englishman had used to get away from Red Ore. To search for it would take more time than they had. Then Kickaha thought of asking the robots, One and Two, if they had witnessed his

escape. To his delight, both had. They led the humans to it. Kickaha pushed in on the panel and saw a metal chute leading downward some distance, then curving.