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Gosseyn picked up the Distorter and began to follow the railing around the pit’s edge. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Certainly he had no desire to go down into the pit. Somewhere along here must be a way out of these tree roots. A stairway, an elevator, something.
It turned out to be an elevator. Rather a row of elevator shafts with elevators in two of the shafts. Gosseyn tried the door catch of the first one. It slid open without a sound. He stepped in boldly and examined the control apparatus. It was more complicated than he had expected. There was bank of tubes, but no control lever. Gosseyn felt the blood drain from his face as he realized what it was. A Distorter-type elevator. It wouldn’t only go up and down. It would go to any one of—he counted the tubes—twelve destinations.
He groaned inwardly and bent to examine each tube carefully for markings. It was then he saw, with relief, that each tube was shaped to point in a different direction. Only one of them pointed straight up. Gosseyn did not hesitate. It might take him into instant captivity, but that was a danger he had to risk. His fingers touched the tube and pressed down.
This time he tried to watch the sensation. But the anesthesia that blurred his senses affected his brain. When his vision cleared, he saw that the scene outside the elevator had changed.
He was very definitely in a tree. Beyond the transparent door of the elevator was an unpolished, natural “room.” Light splashed down on it from a hole higher up. It was all very rough and uneven, and there were many dark corners.
It was in one of the dark corners that Gosseyn hid the Distorter, and then cautiously he climbed up toward the hole. The corridor mounted steeply ahead of him, narrowing steadily. Halfway up, he realized he wouldn’t be able to get the Distorter through. That was jarring, but he decided he couldn’t let it make any difference. He had to contact the Venusians. Later, with their help, he could come back for the Distorter.
During the final third of the climb, he had to use his hands and clutch at projecting edges of dry-rotted wood to pull himself up. He came out on a lower limb of a titanic Venusian tree, through a hole that was only about twice as big as his body. It was an unevenly shaped, natural-looking hole. It was probably one of hundreds of similar holes in this very tree, and therefore he would have to mark its location very carefully.
He had already noticed that there was a great meadow on one side of him-over the pit, perhaps. In the opposite direction was dense Venusian forest. Gosseyn picked out landmarks, and then started along the broad limb onto which he had emerged. About seventy-five yards from the bole it joined an equally massive limb of another tree. He felt a thrill as he saw it. There was a thalamic pleasure in tree ru
He had proceeded about fifty feet along the limb when the bark under him collapsed. He fell down onto a floor. Instantly, the long trapdoor above him closed, and he was in darkness. Gosseyn scarcely noticed the absence of light. Because, as he hit the smooth floor, it tilted downward. Tilted sharply, fifty, sixty, seventy degrees. Gosseyn made one desperate leap upward. His fingers clawed against smooth wood, then slid off into emptiness. He hit the floor again, hard, and slid down that steep incline. It was not a long journey that he took then, not more than thirty feet. But its implications were bottomless. He was caught.
He had no intention of giving up. Even while he was still sliding, Gosseyn fought to get to his feet, fought to turn, to return before the floor could rise back into place out of his reach. He failed. In the very act of whirling, of flinging himself, he heard the click of the floor fitting itself into position above him. And still he did not pause. He jumped to the uttermost height that his strength would take him, and reached into the darkness with clawing fingers that groped only at air. This time he gathered himself for the fall and landed on his feet, balanced, conscious that if there was a way of escape he must find it within minutes. And yet, for a moment, he forced himself to stand still, to make the null-A cortical-thalamic pause, to think.
So far everything had seemed automatic. The section of tree limb had caved in because he had put his weight upon it. The floor had tilted for the same reason. The fact that such trapdoors existed was depressing. Alarms would be ringing. He’d have to find a way out before anybody came, or never!
He dropped to his knees, made a swinging but relaxed sweep of the floor. To his right, he touched a rug. He crawled over the rug and in seconds had fingered a chest of drawers, a table, an easy chair, and a bed. A bedroom! There’d be a light switch, perhaps a table lamp or bed light. His swift thought paused there, yielded to action.
The wall switch clicked under his fingers, and so, approximately three minutes after his first fall, he was able to see his prison.
It was not bad. There were twin beds, but they were in a large alcove of coral pink that opened onto a large living room at least as big, at least as luxurious, as the one in Crang’s apartment. The furniture had the glowing quality of fine wood beautifully finished. There were paintings on the walls, but Gosseyn did not pause to look at them because his restless gaze had lighted on a closed door. A sound came from it, a key clicking in the lock.
Gosseyn drew back, drawing his guns. As the door opened, he saw a robogun floating there. And the voice of Jim Thorson called out, “All right, Gosseyn, drop your weapons and submit to a search.”
There was nothing else to do. A moment later, after soldiers had come in and relieved him of his weapons, the gun drew back. And Jim Thorson came through the door.
XXVII
On a cliff of metal on the planet of beasts, the League, ambassador landed. He walked slowly over to the parapet of that vast building and stared uneasily down at the jungle four miles below.
“I suppose,” he thought, “I’ll be expected to go hunting with the”—he paused, searched for the right word, then grimly—“extroverts who build hunting lodges as big as this.”
A voice behind him murmured, “This way, Your Excellency. The hunting party will leave in an hour, and Enro the Red will confer with you en route.”
“Tell His Excellency, the foreign minister of the Greatest Empire,” the ambassador began firmly, “that I have just arrived, and that—”
He stopped, the refusal unspoken. No one, least of all League agents, turned down the invitations of the reigning overlord of an empire of sixty thousand star systems, especially when one’s purpose required considerable tact. The ambassador finished quietly, “—and that I will be ready in time.”
It was a bloodthirsty business. There were guns for each type of beast, carried by noiseless machines, one machine for each hunter. The robots were always at hand, holding out just the right weapon, yet they never got in the way. The most dangerous animals were held off by energy screens while the hunters maneuvered for firing position.
There was one long, sleek, powerful, hoofed animal, gray in color, which realized after one burst of effort that it was trapped. It sat down on its haunches and began to cry. Enro the Red himself put a bullet through its nearest eye. It pitched over and lay sobbing and writhing for a minute, then grew still. Afterward, on the way back to that gigantic combination hunting lodge and alternate foreign office, the red-haired giant came over to the League ambassador.
“Great sport, eh?” he growled. “Though I notice you didn’t shoot much.”