The spaceman shook his head. "Femmes—who needs 'em?"
The elevator's motion stopped. The door slid open. Beyond was a green passage.
"A new maze," Norton said, stepping out. "Can you guide us through this one, too, Sning?"
Again the response was a slow squeeze.
"I wish I knew what's bothering you!" Norton exclaimed. "Is there danger we can't handle?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Then let's move on through!"
They threaded the second maze. This one was curvy rather than angular, and the walls were green plaster. The chambers were ovals with bloated purple glitches attacking on cue. These were resistive to Dursten's blaster, but popped like bubbles when pricked by Excelsia's knife point or the Alicorn's horn. "Just as well," Dursten said gruffly. "My blaster's charge ain't forever."
Sning guided them through the labyrinth to a second elevator. They entered and descended to a third level—which turned out to be a yellow maze. The creatures in it were icks, like soft bowling balls with eyes where the holes should be. They rolled up, threatening to crush everything in their paths, but Dursten's blaster caused them to go all to pieces.
Then the charge gave out. The last ick was only winged. It spun out of control and banged into a wall. "Oh, the poor thing!" Excelsia exclaimed. "It's hurt!" She dashed to it and put her arms about it.
"Crazy dame! What about my blaster?" Dursten demanded.
"Oh, shove your—" But she was too ladylike to be able to complete a thought like that.
"Maybe I can stomp the ick," he said.
"Leave it alone!" she flared, cuddling the bowling ball. "Can't you see it's suffering?"
The spaceman shot a baffled glance at Norton. "Femmes! Can you figger 'em?"
"Not me," Norton said, though in truth he had some sympathy with the ick. It was perhaps a variety of wilderness creature, forced to serve as cannon fodder for the Sorceress. He bore no special ill wilt for the soldiers of the front, who tended to be victims of circumstances no matter which side they fought on.
But this delay gave him an opportunity to ponder the situation again. These multilayered mazes—were they any different from the endless mazes on any one level, if a person proceeded randomly? Was there any more point in threading endless mazes than there was in blasting endless gunks, glitches, and icks? Especially considering that Dursten's blaster had pooped out? Well, he would find out. "Is there?" he asked Sning.
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Is that why you've been hesitant? You can guide us through the mazes, but there's not much point?"
Squeeze.
"Do you know an alternative?"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
He had been afraid of that. "So we've still got to muddle through ourselves?"
A reluctant squeeze. Sning was doing his best, and he was very helpful, but his limit of information had been reached; this castle maze was too complex.
The Eviler Sorceress, Norton realized, didn't have to kill them directly. She could simply let them wear themselves out in interminable mazes until they were too tired to bother her, or until they made some mistakes and got creamed by whatever monsters defended the level they were on. They were fools to play the Sorceress' game—yet Sning lacked the power to penetrate that larger riddle.
"Hick says there's a secret room," Excelsia announced.
"Hick?" Norton asked.
"The icks are named by letters. This is H ick. He says if he'd known how nice we are, he wouldn't have tried to roll us."
Norton had an idea. "That room—does it have anything we can use—like maybe the amulet?"
"Hick doesn't know," the Damsel said.
"Sning, can you tell?"
Squeeze.
They were back in business! "It has the amulet?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
Sigh. Somehow things never turned out easy! "But it does have something that will help us shorten this rat race?"
Squeeze.
"Let's find it, then!" He turned to Excelsia. "Will Hick show us that room?"
The Damsel talked to the ick by tapping on its surface with her delicate knuckle. The ick answered by making little off-center rolls. "He says he'll try," she repeated. "But the way is difficult."
"It always is," Norton said with resignation. "We'll get through somehow. Lead the way."
The ick rolled to the side of the chamber, somewhat awkwardly because of its—his?—injury, and stopped. "He says through there," Excelsia said.
Norton contemplated the wall. It looked very solid. Well, Hick had warned that the way was difficult! "We have to break a hole?"
Squeeze.
Norton tapped the yellow wall with his knuckle. It was of the same substance as the ick, slightly resilient but quite solid, like padded plastic. He struck it with his fist, and made no impression. Just as he had suspected—soft but strong.
"A danged padded cell!" Dursten said, disgusted. "Bemme, shape up and try it."
The Bemme formed into a robot with a sledgehammer fist. She pounded this at the wall. The fist bounced off harmlessly. She changed form to that of a small crane with a dangling wrecking ball. This, too, bounced off harmlessly.
Norton saw the problem. "A brittle surface would crack, but this padding absorbs most of the shock."
"Hick says he could do it," Excelsia reported. "If he weren't injured."
"It figgers," Dursten said wryly.
The Alicorn poked at the wall with his horn. He succeeded in making a hole, but the horn got stuck and he had to wrench it out. He couldn't break through either.
Norton pondered. "If the icks can do it—too bad we can't get their cooperation. Or can we, Sning?"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Well, he could understand the little snake's problem. The creatures of the Sorceress answered to the Sorceress, so it was difficult for Sning to predict their reactions.
"Shux," Dursten opined. "We don't need them things to agree. We can trick 'em into helping."
Squeeze.
"Sning says that's it," Norton reported.
"Shore it is," the spaceman agreed complacently.
"But how—?"
"Aw, Bemme can do it. Bemme, trick 'em."
The Bemme pondered a moment, then slid to the wall, formed a dripping-ink appendage, and painted a tunnel opening on it. The picture was very realistic; the Bemme was a fair artist. Then she slid to the center of the chamber and formed into a wooden barricade with an arrow pointing to the wall and a printed sign saying: DETOUR.
"Say, that's neat!" Dursten said. "You're doing okay, Bemme." The wooden barricade purred.
The spaceman walked to the line, crossed it, and then stepped back toward the center of the chamber.
A dozen new icks rolled out of the opposite passage. They advanced on the barricade, hesitated, then made a right-angle turn and took off toward the wall. One by one, they plunged into the painted passage.
The first one struck the wall roundly and smithereened. Hot on its tail, the second struck the same spot, denting the wall and in the process fracturing itself. Rapidly the others followed, and with each impact the dent grew deeper, until the last ick crashed on through. There was a faint whistling sound, followed seconds later by a distant thunk.
The Alicorn trotted up to the hole in the wall and poked his head through. He neighed with surprise and withdrew.
Norton looked next. Only a little light came through from Excelsia's candle; that showed beyond the wall a void—a crevasse whose height and depth were lost in darkness. There seemed to be no way around it; it paralleled the wall.
Excelsia brought her candle and joined him. The candlelight showed another wall about ten feet beyond—evidently the confinement for the next chamber.
"Where do we go from here?" Excelsia asked. "We don't need to break into another ick chamber, do we? We could get into that by going through the tunnels."
True. This was apparently the interstice between the chambers of the maze, and since
the secret chamber they sought was outside the maze, this was where they wanted to be. But it seemed impossible to pass!
"Well, we must have to follow this, uh, space to the key chamber," Norton said. "If the Alicorn can fly it—"
"He can fly it," Excelsia said confidently. "He will carry anyone I ask him to. But he can bear only one person."
"If he could ferry us across one at a time—"
"But he doesn't know where to go," she said.
"The ick knows," Dursten said. "Take the ick first."
The Damsel nodded. "And return for the rest of us once he knows the way. Spaceman, you aren't quite as stupid as you seem."
"Thank you, gal," Dursten said, skuffling his feet.
"Nor as ugly as you look," the Bemme added. The spaceman patted her on a bug eye affectionately.
They rigged a harness from Dursten's shirt to fasten Hick to the Alicorn's back. Then the Alicorn scrambled through the hole, fell into the void, spread his wings, righted himself, and flew upward. His wing tips brushed the walls on either side, despite a considerably shortened stroke; he was cramped but remained airborne. He disappeared to the right.
The others waited anxiously. Would the ick lead them the right way? If the creature had only been pretending to join them, it could guide them right into disaster—or simply deprive them of the Alicorn by leading the animal into a trap. How could they be sure?
Squeeze.
That was a relief. Sning might not be able to fathom the labyrinth of the castle interstices, but he had confidence in Hick.
The Alicorn returned, wearing the empty harness. They put the Bemme in it, and the winged unicorn departed again. It seemed that the Bemme could assume the form of an Alicorn, but could not actually fly like one; that was a matter of muscle and magic, not mere appearance.
"Say, pardner," Dursten drawled, getting bored with the wait; he had a short attention span. "Do you have all this shipment in your world?"
"I suppose we do," Norton answered. "We have both science and magic, so there could be castles like this, though I never encountered any myself." Something about his own statement bothered him, but he couldn't quite nail it down.
"'Cept you live backward," the spaceman said.
"Backward?" Excelsia asked, her fair brow furrowing in the pretty way it had.
"Mine is a terrene-matter world," Norton explained. "Yours is contraterrene, otherwise known as antimatter, so your time is reversed."
"But we are together!" she protested.
"That's because I am Chronos. I live backward. In my own world, everyone else is going the other way."
"That must be very awkward for you," she said.
"It is, on occasion. It does interfere with continuing social relations."
"There be no such problem here," she pointed out.
He looked at her. She was lovely. How nice it would be to have a continuing relationship with her, forever searching out new enchantments. But his world was in trouble, and he had to go back as soon as he could manage.
The Alicorn returned, and Excelsia boarded. Now Norton and Dursten waited, watching her candlelight recede. They were in darkness.
"I ain't so dumb I can't see how she likes you, Nort," Dursten said. "If I was in your britches, I'd shore stick around!"
Norton sighed. "I'm sure that's what Satan has in mind. If I am tempted to remain here, he can have his will with Earth."
"Who's Satan?"
"The Incarnation of Evil. You have no Devil here?"
"Hell, no! I'm a science man myself. I don't believe none o' that ship."
"Perhaps he doesn't exist here."
"Must be," Dursten agreed. "We ain't superstitious." He glanced at the hole; Norton could tell by the sound of his body moving. "I shore hope that there animal don't get lost in the dark, knock on wood." He tapped the plastic floor.
Then they heard the beat of great wings and relaxed. The spaceman's nonsuperstitious knocking must have helped.
Dursten was next. "We'd never a needed this, Nort, if my danged spaceship had fitted in here," he remarked as he mounted invisibly. "But I gotta admit, this shore's a good horse." Then they were through the hole and gone, and Norton was alone.
Now the darkness seemed to press in on him. He was an adult, but he didn't like this. He liked to see where he was and he liked company. He really felt the isolation of his office! This antimatter Cloud was indeed tempting, because of the companionship it allowed. To be able to interact with a woman like Excelsia, who seemed much more interested in him than she had been on the prior adventure, and to have her remember in the same sequence he did; to touch her, love her—
Touch her? Again he felt a wrongness. What was it? Not merely that Satan was tempting him; he knew that. Not that Excelsia would be unwilling; she was virginal but ready to be wooed. Not that there was any insurmountable difference between their cultures; they were remarkably similar. He loved the wilderness; she was a creature of it, not even knowing the city life. They had the same language—
Same language? How could that be? There had never been any contact between the people of the Glob or those of the Magic-Lantern Cloud and the people of the normal galaxy! There couldn't be, because matter and antimatter could not touch. When the two came together, they annihilated each other, dissolving into total energy with an explosion that dwarfed any nuclear detonation.
Explosion? Total conversion? Then how was he able to exist here? He was normal matter; he knew that. He had lived most of his life normally, until taking the Hourglass. After that he lived backward—but he remained terrene, for he had touched normal people, such as Agleh, and normal Incarnations, such as Clotho, and could phase in with them any time.
Well, his magic white cloak protected him from attack, and might also protect him from the ravage of contact with antimatter. But he kept that cloak shield withdrawn when interacting with friends—which meant it wasn't operating.
The more he pondered, the more certain he became that Satan had lied to him. This was no contraterrene frame! It couldn't be! He had kissed Excelsia, and neither of them had exploded. There had to have been social contact between Earth and these other worlds before. The Alicorn had referred to the Latins, Italians, and Arabs, and it was simply not to be believed that there could have been similar names in a frame having no contact with Earth. Without the antimatter aspect, such contact became feasible.
But how was it, then, that the time scale was backward?
He heard the wingbeats of the Alicorn's return, and his thought was interrupted. But he remained shaken. There was definitely something about this too similar to Earth setting that didn't mesh, but he did not yet comprehend the full nature of Satan's lie. And why should he? Satan was the Father of Lies, the ultimate professional in deception, while Norton was only a man, not long experienced in his present office. Still, now he was sure there was a lie to decipher! That was a significant revelation, and he would go on from there.
The Alicorn came to him in the dark, and Norton fumbled to a mounting. He braced his legs against the firm front anchorage of the great wings and grabbed two handfulls of mane. "Let's go, gallant beast!" he said.
They squeezed through the hole and dropped into the void. The wings beat, and the Alicorn forged, as Excelsia would put it, onward and upward. They were flying—and it was a wonderful feeling! Little jets of flame showed at the creature's nostrils as the Alicorn exerted himself, and the flame lighted the region dimly. No wonder the beast could handle himself in the dark; his own breath gave him just enough light to aid his excellent vision. This was certainly the finest of steeds!
They flew swiftly through the dark reaches, then cruised around a comer where two voids intersected. Norton saw dimly how massive arches of substance crossed from wall to wall, requiring the Alicorn to travel above or below; these would be the casings for the passages between chambers of the regular mazes. This castle was twice as complicated as he had thought! Then they flew down to a cold nether pass, up to a warm hi
gh pass, and into the view of Excelsia's flickering candle. The Alicorn landed neatly on a high, strong ledge where the rest of the party waited.
"You're safe, Sir Norton!" Excelsia exclaimed, almost singeing his ear with the candle flame as she flung her arms about him. She planted a moist kiss on him.
Contraterrene? Not likely!
The ledge was the edge of a sloping surface that proceeded toward a dim glow inland. Hick rolled confidently down, and the others followed.
The glow expanded as they approached. It turned out to be a hot section of the pavement before a passage into a mound. The ick rolled to a stop at the edge of the glow.
"In there?" Norton asked, unpleased.
"Hick says yes," Excelsia said. It was unclear how she communicated with either ick or Alicorn, as she did not always tap the former or touch the latter, but obviously she understood them. "He can't go there; the heat would melt him. And it would singe Ali's wings, too; he can't escape it in that low tunnel."
"How far in is the chamber?" Norton asked.
"Hick says not far. About fifty feet."
This frame had the same measurements as Earth, too. Feet, inches. Everything was the same! "Then Hick and the Alicorn can wait here while the rest of us go in."
The Damsel tested the air near the passage by extending her hand. "Ooo, that would bum my tender flesh!"
She was correct. The ambience was too hot for any of them. "I'll go alone," Norton decided. "If I can find a way."
Squeeze.
"There is a way?" Yet again he was frustrated by Sning's inability to speak. "Some way I can be protected from the heat?"
Squeeze.
Norton looked around, but saw nothing. "Sning says I can be protected—though I don't know how."
The Bemme slid up. She settled into a furry puddle about eight feet in diameter. "Her?" Norton asked, and received Sning's squeeze in response.
"Oh, I get it," Dursten said. "She's a heat shield. Put her on."
"Put her on?" Norton repeated dubiously.
The spaceman bent to pick up the thin material. It flopped and folded in his hands like a quilt. He held it out to Norton. "Yep. She's good at this—she superinsulates, when she wants to. The perfect blanket." The blanket purred.
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