stifling.
There was no time to take stock of manifold discomforts.
The race was neck and neck. Death sniffed at their heels in the guise ofmechanical trackers. On Venus, life is to the swift and cunning. ToNewlin, life was perilous, but sweet.
Their helmet microphones picked up and amplified a curious droning buzz.It was the deathsong of the electronic tracker and it seemed closer thanit was.
Slowly, inexorably, it grew louder. Sound swelled steadily, and it was awhiplash to their flagging energies. They fled in panic through thestreets of the dead city.
It was no real refuge to them, but its megalithic precincts gave somelying illusion of safety. They chose a twisting, tangled route into thevery heart of the ruined city, with the instinct of a hunted animal toconfuse its trail. They doubled back to cross their own trail twice, inthe vain hope of baffling the electronic enemy.
Newlin had been hunted before, on Mars, but by live bloodhounds. Pepper,oil of mustard, and perfumes had saved him then. But this hound followednot scent, but something intangible, electrical, and as mysterious asthe soul-aura itself. It sorted two life-complexes from all otherimpulses and followed its own prime-directive--hunt down and kill.
The end was inevitable as death.
* * * * *
Newlin laid ambush for the mechanical monster. Crouched in a nest ofrubble, he waited for it, blaster gun ready. Around a corner ofshattered stones, it appeared. It moved like a whipping shadow, likepart of the gathering twilight.
Silent, save for the high, nerve-tearing drone, it came warily acrossthe courtyard paved with eroded stone. It was low, not animal inappearance, with the form of a fat, ugly snake. Fading light of theVenusian day cast a glint of metallic gray from its scaling ofinterlocked rings.
Newlin waited for a close shot. How vulnerable was such a soul-less,mechanical monster to even the shattering-heat-forces of a blaster gun?
Songeen lay quietly beside him, her body quivering as much from strainedmuscles as from fear. Behind the face-mask, her thin features were pale,ghostlike.
With elaborate caution, the tracker circled their hiding place. Itsfroglike head, with a ruff of exposed filaments lifted, like an animalscenting blood. It edged slowly closer, its movement a glide, sinuous,crafty, with no suggestion of mechanical action.
Newlin pushed the girl's form roughly away, lest her trembling foul hisaim. Sighting, he pressed trigger. Bright flame leaped from the weapon,crackling.
The beam lashed at the tracker, which stopped suddenly, threw back itsmonstrous head, and burst into hideous uproar of sparking, electricaldischarge. Like a live thing, it twitched, jerked, and flung itself inmad spasms. Convulsions stopped as short-circuits flared in both headand body. Molten, flowing, its metallic carcass glowed eerily in thedimness. Dying, it blazed up in a fireworks display spectacular enoughto attract half of Venus to the terrified fugitives.
But the drone continued.
From behind the same corner came a duplicate of the first metal monster.Another tracker.
Its drone rose into shrill crescendo. Like a dog, it approached thewreckage of its fellow. And like a dog, it summoned help. Then, withoutpausing to examine the mechanical casualty, it turned its electronicattentions back to the hunted.
Hopelessly, Newlin urged Songeen to her feet. They fled, and the gamebegan all over again.
* * * * *
It was a madman's dream. Desperate flight, the haunted ruins of anunknown city, deadly pursuit closing in, slowly, patiently inevitably.The familiar hare and hounds pattern of nightmare.
They fled through vague, littered streets, treacherous with the rubbleof lost centuries. Buildings were lighter patterns upon the gatheringdarkness. Stone flagging underfoot was rough, eroded, rotten.
A pinnacled precipice rose suddenly to bar their way. Immense, sheer,buttressed by spills of loose rock, it towered above them and lost itsheights in gloom.
Within a massive, deep-carved archway of stone, set an oval of polishedred granite. A doorway, barren of carving save for one, scrawled andmonstrous hieroglyph. Uneasiness stirred in Newlin, for something in hisburied race-memories recalled that symbol with supernal dread. Iceformed about his spine and melted in trickling terror-drops. Instinctcringed, but his conscious mind rebelled at even the effort of memory.
Songeen stopped and stared at the hideously marked doorway, as iftranced.
"I _remember_ this place," she said in swift excitement. "But I hadthought it vanished--eons ago."
Newlin swerved on her angrily. "This is no time for experiments withyour subconscious," he growled, savage with strain.
"It is--sanctuary," she replied softly. "Come!"
Boldly she stood before the oval door. Her finger traced its complexsymbol, and the symbol responded with a glow like moonfire.
Again, as it had been with that oval door in Monta Park, there wasbaffling suggestion of unmechanical movement.
The stone block did not slide, roll, or swing open. It gave a slightquiver and dissolved.
Songeen stepped through its aperture and the inner darkness of thebuilding claimed her. Reluctantly, Newlin followed--caught as much bycuriosity as driven by the yelping spectres of pursuit.
No light entered the building from any source. It was dark as the pitsof Ganymede or the under-surface laboratories of Pluto. It was dense andtangible as a block of black crystal. Newlin could see nothing, not evenSongeen. And there was an alien _feel_ to the interior.
He was aware that Songeen operated some hidden mechanism, and that thedoor, though he could not see it, was replaced.
"Now, for the moment, we are safe," she said slowly. "They cannot enterhere."
Newlin shrugged bitterly. "It's all one. They can't enter and we don'tdare go out. So we stay here and die of thirst. If you were really atop-rung witch, you'd think of details like air, food and water."
Songeen's laugh was a ripple of eery crystal in the darkness.
"How did you guess I was a witch?" she asked whimsically. "But we neednot die here. Not unless you prefer to die among surroundings familiarto you. There is another way out. If we dare take it. For me, it will besimple. For you--"
"Not so simple, eh? You paint an interesting picture. Like one I oncesaw on Mars, in the Gneiss Gallery. 'Nocturne--Venusport,' it wastitled. Beautiful. Dark purple background, the city seemed likefountains of flowering stars. It's not like that, not from the placesI've seen it. Filth and dirt, people dying from poverty, disease orviolence. Just a comparison. How close does your picture match thereality?"
"Close enough. You're a strange man, full of contradictions. I thinkyou're only slightly mad. But for anyone, the way I could take you wouldbe difficult. The pathway leads to my own world. To you--or anyone, notnative--it will seem madness. Something of it you saw in the tower."
Around him in the darkness, he was conscious of her swift movements. Sheseemed untroubled by the lack of light. Neither by vision or hearingcould he distinguish anything, but he sensed activity.
Then, suddenly, as if she had uncovered a cache of implements and strucka fire, radiance spread around her. Its source was not definite, and itspread slowly, like a stain through water. But something illuminated avast, vaulted interior, Gothic in a sense, with a church-like air ofgloom and mystery. It was Gothic, but of spiderweb delicacy, soaringarches, vague fretted ceilings, walls intricately carved into laceworkof stone. Everywhere were echoes of that same eery symbolism in the doorhieroglyph, and Newlin's folk-memories were oddly disturbed.
* * * * *
He could not place the feeling. Certainly none of the symbols bore evenslight resemblance to any written language known to him.
Something about their intricacy clouded even clear perception, and theemotional effect was not religious in any sense--it was stark, abysmalfear, as if the mysteries behind such symbols were too great forhumanity to bear.
Ignoring him, Songeen persisted at
her curious tasks. Newlin went andstood beside her, watching.
With gloved hand, she appeared to be tracing out some maze of deep cutmarkings that figured what must have been an altar-fane.
"Do you expect any results from this ritual mumbo-jumbo?" he questionedirritably.
Songeen looked up, startled. "Not more ritual than any othermathematics," she chided. "This is no temple, as you seem to imagine. Itis the old quarantine station. I seek a doorway, but not into a hiddenpassage. There are other doorways. This one leads between dimensions. Myworld exists in a different plane. At least, our pathway to it followsstrange ways, that you could never understand. You are no scientist orscholar. How could you grasp such unknown and forgotten matters? Howcould anyone in your world?"
Newlin stared at her, seeing things he had only guessed before.
"You are--_alien_," he said.
"You can't guess how alien," she answered. "I said I was not of
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