The Lavalite World

"Here goes nothing," he said to Anana. He jumped into it sitting up and slid down and around and was shot into a narrow dimly lit hall. He yelled back up the chute to her and told her he was going on. But he was quickly stopped by a dead end.

After tapping and probing around, he went back to the chute and, bracing himself against the sides, climbed back up.

"Either there's another panel I couldn't locate or there's a gate in the end of the hall," he told her.

They sent the robots to the supply room to get a drill and hammers. Though the drills wouldn't work on the material enclosing the control room, they might work on the plastic composing the walls of the hidden hall. After the robots returned, Kickaha and Anana went down the chute with them and bored holes into the walls. After making a circle of many perforations, he knocked the circle through with a sledgehammer.

Light streamed out through it. He caustiously looked within. He gasped.

"Well, I'll be swoggled! Red Ore!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

IN THE MIDDLE of a large bare room was a transparent cube about twelve feet long. A chair, a narrow bed, and a small red box on the floor by a wall shared the cube with its human occupant, Ore. Kickaha noted that a large pipe ran from the base of the wall of the room to the cube, penetrated the transparent material, and ended in the red box. Presumably, this furnished water and perhaps a semiliquid type of food. A smaller pipe within the large one must provide air.

Red Ore was sitting on the chair before the table, his profile to the watchers through the hole. Evidently, the cube was soundproof, since he had not heard the drilling or pounding. The Horn and a beamer lay on the table before him. From this Kickaha surmised that the cube was invulnerable to the beamer's rays.

Red Ore, once the secret Lord of the Two Earths, looked as dejected as a man could be. No wonder. He had stepped through a gate in the control room, expecting to enter another universe, possessing the Horn, the Lords' greatest treasure, and leaving behind him two of his worst enemies to die. But Urthona had prepared his trap well, and Red Ore had been gated to this prison instead of to freedom.

As far as he knew, no one was aware that he was locked in this room. He was doubtless contemplating how long it would be before the palace fell to

Urthona's world and he perished in the smash, caught in his own trap.

Kickaha and Anana cut a larger hole in the wall for entrance. During this procedure, Ore saw them. He rose up from his chair and stared from a pale-gray face. He could expect no mercy. The only change in his situation was that he would die sooner.

His niece and her lover were not so sure that anything had been changed. If he couldn't cut his way out of the cube, they couldn't cut their way in. Especially when they didn't have a beamer. But the pipe which was Ore's life supply was of copper. After the robots got some more tools, Kickaha slicked off the copper at the junction with the impervium which projected outside the cube.

This left an opening through which Ore could still get air and also could communicate. Kickaha and Anana did not place themselves directly before the hole, though. Ore might shoot them through it.

Kickaha said, "The rules of the game have been changed, Ore. You need us, and we need you. If you cooperate, I promise to let you go wherever you want to, alive and unharmed. If you don't, you'll die. We might die, too, but what good will that do you?"

"I can't trust you to keep your word," Ore said sullenly.

"If that's the way you want it, so be it. But Anana and I aren't going to be killed. We're having parachutes made. That means we'll be marooned here, but at least we'll be alive."

"Parachutes?" Ore said. It was evident from his expression that he had not thought of their making them.

"Yeah. There's an old American saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat. And I'm a cat-ski

Ore gritted his teeth, then said, "Very well. What do you want?"

"A complete description of what happened when you gated from the control chamber to this trap. And anything that might be relevant."

Ore told how he had checked out the immense room and its hundreds of controls. His task had been considerably speeded up by questioning robots One and Two. Then he had found out how to open several gates. He had done so cautiously and before activating them himself he had ordered the robots to do so. Thus, if they were trapped, they would be the victims.

One gate apparently had access to the gates enclosed in various boulders scattered over the planet below. Urthona must have had some means of identifying these. He would have been hoping that, while roaming the planet with the others, he would recognize one. Then, with a simple codeword or two, he would have transported himself to the palace. But Urthona hadn't had any luck.

Ore identified three gates to other worlds. One was to Jadawin's, one to Earth I, and one to dead Urizen's. There were other gates, but Ore hadn't wanted to activate them. He didn't want to push his luck. So far, he hadn't set off any traps. Besides, the gate to Earth I was the one he wanted.

Having made sure that his escape routes were open, Ore had then had the robots, One and Two, seal the control room.

"So you had our torments all fixed up ahead of time?" Anana said.

"Why not?" Ore said. "Wouldn't you have done the same to me?"

"At one time I would have. Actually, you did us a favor by letting us loose so we could savor the terrors of the fall. But you didn't mean to, I'm sure."

"He did himself a favor, too," Kickaha said.

Ore had then activated the gate to Earth I. He had stepped through the hole between the universes, fully expecting to emerge in a cave. He could see through its entrance a valley and a wooded mountain range beyond. He thought that it was possibly the same cave through which Kickaha and Anana had gone in southern California.

But Urthona had set up a simulacrum to lull the unwary. To strengthen its impression, Urthona had also programmed the robots in case a crafty Lord wanted to use the gate. At least, Red Ore supposed he had done so. Ore had ordered the robot called Six to walk through first. Six had done so, had traveled through the cave, stepped outside, looked around, then had returned through the gate.

Satisfied, Ore had ordered the robots, One and Two, to seal up the control room door with impervium flux. Then he had stepped through.

"Apparently," Ore said, "that wily shagg (a sort of polecat) had counted on the robot being used as a sacrifice. So he had arranged it that the robot would not be affected."

"Urthona always was a sneaky one," Anana said. "But he had depended on his technological defenses too long. Thrown on his own resources, he was not the man he should have been."

She paused, then added, "Just like you, uncle."

"I haven't done so badly," he said, his face red.

Kickaha and Anana burst out laughing.

"No," she said. "Of course not. Just look where you are."

Ore had been whisked away when he was only a few feet from leaving the cave or what he thought was a cave. The next second he was standing in the cube.

Kickaha drew Anana to a corner of the room to confer quietly. "Somehow, that mysterious Englishman discovered a gateway to another universe in the wall at the end of the corridor," he said. "Maybe he had found Urthona's codebook. Anyway, where one can go through, others can. And the Horn can get us through. But we can't get to the Horn.