THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

"Why, yes. They could be. The resurrector catchers operate on a slightly different frequency from that of the computer. I had my wathan and Tringu's tuned to it. I could do the same for you. But why?"

Frigate started to explain, but Loga, Burton, and Nur comprehended at the same time what he meant to say.

They would go down in force, leaving several behind to do the necessary supervision. They would storm the room, and, though they might be killed over and over, they still could put out all the beamers of the computer.

"How'd you happen to think of that, Pete?" Tom Turpin said.

"I'm a science-fiction writer. I should've thought of it when I found out what the situation was."

"I should've thought of it, too," Loga said. "But we're all under great emotional pressure."

"You can duplicate these?" Burton said, holding up the pistollike sphere-ended weapon.

"As many as we'll need."

Within two minutes, the entire group was armed with the beamers. The Ethical then had his machine print out diagrams of the route to the valve room from the control room and from his private resurrectors. They studied the diagrams, identifying each corridor and chamber with the corresponding screen displays.

"There are video cameras on every wall in that area, including the valve room. Here's a picture of it from the files."

They studied the reproductions issued by the machine until they knew the room by heart. Then Loga commanded that a module be duplicated in the e-m cabinet, and he gave them the simple instructions for pulling out the old module and inserting the new.

Unfortunately, the Ethical was unable to get diagrams showing where the computer's defenses were located.

"That information must be in the computer's memory banks."

Nur said, "Why don't you ask the computer for it?"

Loga looked surprised, then laughed softly.

A moment later he had information, though it wasn't what he'd asked for. The computer refused to divulge where its weapons were.

"Well, it was worth a try."

They got into their chairs and followed the Ethical to a lift shaft. They descended in it far faster than they'd dared operate their chairs until then. When they'd gone a mile, he stopped and then went into a bay and from there into a corridor. After a few minutes Burton, who had an excellent sense of direction, realized that they were heading for the general area of the secret room at the base of the tower. At their speed, they quickly arrived at it.

The Ethical looked at the door, still kept from opening by the grail Burton had placed there. His face turned red.

"Why didn't you tell me that the doors were still open?"

"I thought about it, but it didn't seem important," Burton said.

"The agents could have come through!"

"No. They couldn't possibly have caught up with us in such a short time. They'll be using sailboats."

"I won't take any chances."

Loga turned the chair away from the door, then turned it back to face them.

"You get that boat out of the entrance while I'm gone."

"Where'll you be?" Burton said.

"I'm going to a control room so I can reactivate an automatically operated aircraft and direct it to the ledge. It'll melt it all down, and then it'11-plug up the cave entrance."

"Go with him," Burton said to Tai-Peng and de Marbot.

Loga glared but said nothing, and his chair turned and flew down the corridor.

Burton led the others into the fog-shrouded room where, with much shoving, they got the boat out into the sea. Then they went back to the corridor, the larger ones squeezing themselves again through the narrow opening above the grail.

"We should've asked Loga to open it all the way," Frigate said.

"I don't think he wants us to know how he opens it," Burton said.

"Still doesn't trust us?"

"With the life he's led, he's conditioned to trust no one."

That, however, wasn't true. Loga, trailed by the Chinese and the Frenchman, returned after fifteen minutes. He got out of the chair and banged his fist on the wall a few inches from the door. At the same time, he said, clearly, "Ah Qaaq!"

The door slid back within the recess.

Burton made a mental note of the exact area struck.

"How did you know that someone wouldn't be coming along and catch you?" he said.

"This door is one big video screen. I also have other screens which look just like part of the walls. They're situated so that I can see up this corridor past its curves for some distance."

They followed Loga into the room. Halfway down it, he stopped, turned, facing the wall, and voiced the codeword again. An apparently seamless part of the wall moved back and they slid into a recess. The room beyond was well-lit and contained some equipment on tables, a large cabinet, and two skeletons. These were pointed toward the door as if they'd been about to leave the room. On the floor by bone fingers was a metal box. It had a number of dials, gauges, buttons, and a small video screen on one side and prongs on the other.

Loga said, "If only I could have sent that signal a few seconds earlier. I would've caught them before they removed the control box."

"But you wouldn't have known that," Burton said. "You would still not have been able to take the chance of killing yourself. By the way, why were the doors closed? Those two would've had to open them to get in."

Nur said, "Since they wouldn't have known the codes, how'd they get in?"

"After seventy-five seconds, the doors close automatically unless countermanded. What happened is that the investigators located this room by tracing the circuits. That would've been a very time-consuming and arduous job because they couldn't use the computer to do the tracing. When they located this room, they must have been using magnetometers, too. They went back to find the tap-in source, and found the programmed open-shut code box. It wouldn't have taken them long to analyze the code."

"But what about the knock accompanying the code? How..."

"They figured that out, too, though it would've taken longer."

He pointed at the cabinet. "The resurrector."

He went in with Frigate at his heels. The American said, "You couldn't use your own power supply?"

Loga stopped and picked up the control box and then walked to the side of the cabinet. He inserted the prongs into receptacles on the side of the cabinet.

"No, I couldn't. I would've liked my own atomic converter so there'd be no wires to trace. But energy-matter conversion and wathlan-attracting require enormous power. The physical-extraphysical interface alone uses enough power to blackout half of the cities of ancient Earth in the late twentieth century."

Frigate said, "How'd you prevent this power drain from showing up on meters?"

"I made arrangements for it not to. To go back to the original question. If the engineers had removed the code box, I wouldn't have been able to get out of the secret room into the corridor. The outer access door is activated by a signal going to another coder-decoder. It was very fortunate that the engineers didn't work on that before they were killed. I lost the signal-generator when I had to abandon my aircraft. But the boats in the cave contain generators. These are automatically started when the sensors detect that the tower is near."

"The door mechanisms wouldn't have used much power. Why didn't you use separate power generators for them?"

"I should have. But it was simpler and more economical to use the main power supply."

He smiled slightly. "I wonder what the engineers made of the codeword. Ah Qaaq is Mayan. The Ah is the article defining the name as masculine. Qaaq means fire. Loga is Ghuurrkh for fire. Perhaps that was what identified me. They might've put the Mayan name into the computer for a search. If they did, they got an answer within a second after insertion of the question.