Assassin from Another World

Assassin from Another World

chapter 2

I

To be honest, Lourié was wandering willy-nilly. The place was just too huge, and he had no idea where Vera and Dust might be. A vast hall without a single person in it spread before Lourié. A small airfield would easily fit inside it. On all sides of him was stone—but the surprising thing was that there wasn’t a single seam in the walls, floor, or ceiling. This place had been hollowed out of the rock. He’d thought about turning back, but the door had shut just seconds after he entered, and now it wouldn’t budge at all. This was a one-way street—the room didn’t allow you to exit again.

Shaking his head, Lourié cleared it of all thoughts of going back. Right up until the time he vanished, his father had kept telling him, “Don’t look back, son. Taking the long way around is fine. But don’t look back. If you look back, you’ll want to turn back. And that keeps you from moving forward. The important things always lie ahead.”

Along with Crey, the boy had been brought back outside. The cells had been opened and the two of them freed by a shadow cast on the floor. Or perhaps it would be better to describe it as something like a shadow. As it had no substance, it was difficult to make that call. Two parts of the black mass had stretched like hands through the bars to grab both of them by the ankles. An instant later, they were both outside the castle. Their backpacks had also, generously, been left there. The snowstorm had abated, and stars blinked in the darkened sky. If they wanted to make a run for it, it looked like their chances were good.

However, that’s not what the two of them had done.

“I’m going back in,” Crey had murmured as he gazed at the towering castle walls about a hundred yards away, seeming to gnaw the words off. His right hand gripped a knife. Whether it was the one he’d been carrying or a new one that’d been stashed in his belongings was unclear.

“Squirt, get while the getting’s good. I’ll raise a ruckus so no one goes after you.”

At Crey’s words Lourié had shaken his head, saying, “I’m going back, too.”

“Why on earth . . .”

“Mr. Crey, are you going to go rescue Miss Vera and Mr. Dust?”

When those clear, innocent eyes looked straight at him, the outlaw grew embarrassed. “Well, actually—oh, you know how it is, right?”

“So you won’t go look for them, will you?”

“Aw, don’t say it like that. It’s just—”

“That’s why I’m going back.”

“Hey, we didn’t come up here to rescue anyone! That’s just their fate. In a situation like this, you’ve got to think of yourself first, am I right?”

“Mr. Crey, why are you going back to the castle?”

“Well—I’ve got reasons a kid wouldn’t understand, you little dope.”

“If you’re going back into that castle, Mr. Crey, I think it must be a pretty important reason. Do what you have to do. But I can’t leave those two behind.”

“Squirt, how can you feel so much responsibility when you’re still just a little kid? The weight of it’s gonna crush you. Besides, what do you think you can accomplish going back to that castle alone?”

“It’s better than doing nothing.”

Crey glared at the boy. He quickly said, “Okay, do as you like. I’ll stick with you till we’ve snuck in. But if you run into that shadow that saved you, you be sure to thank it all proper like, okay?”

“Of course.”

And so the two of them returned to the castle.

The nearest wall had a rusted iron door set in it.

“Guess I don’t have much choice, do I?” Crey said, drawing his knife. “Don’t screw with me, you two-bit Noble.”

His right hand flashed out. All the boy saw was a white streak like a shooting star. The lock portion of the iron door was cut out in a neat square.

As soon as they were in, the pair split up.

“I’m going upstairs. Wanna come along?” Crey invited the boy, but he shook his head. Though he had no way of knowing for sure, he suspected the prison could only be underground.

Descending staircases and getting on moving sidewalks, Lourié traveled down farther and farther. And now, after stone walls and corridors as far as the eye could see, he was in an empty hall. There was no point in just standing around. Lourié began walking toward the center of the room. The enormous weight of the rock seemed to press down on his diminutive form from all sides, and time and again Lourié had to take a deep breath.

When he’d more or less reached the center, Lourié saw a rectangular hole open in the floor before him. A section fifteen feet long and ten feet wide had suddenly subsided—that was the impression he got. Though he was poised to run off at any moment, his eyes were drawn to the hole.

–

He’d found no escalators or elevators, and the stairways simply went on forever, so Crey finally sat himself down cross-legged in the middle of the stairs. Sweat dripped from him in endless streams—but he didn’t even have time to spare for noticing how unpleasant that felt as his lungs gulped for air.

Someone was coming down from above.

Wiping his sweat-stung eyes, Crey looked up the stairs to where they dissolved into darkness.

A faceless creature with four arms was coming down. Its mask and garments, even its body that looked like intertwined wires, were all silvery gray, with its cape alone being crimson. The inscribed baton it carried to its right drew Crey’s gaze. It was a weapon. Power instinctively flooded into the outlaw’s legs and drained from his upper body.

Just twenty steps above him, the figure in the crimson cape halted. The baton in one of its right hands grew with a swish. It was a long spear. Tension knifed through every inch of Crey, becoming a will to fight that set him ablaze. Aware that his breathing was growing heavier, he turned his body into a spring and bounded off to his right.

“Come and get me!” he shouted.

–

D stood before the door. His gait hadn’t faltered once as he traveled there, as if this had been his goal from the very start.

“I don’t know either. What’s behind this thing?”

The words of his left hand were overlaid with the sound of a door opening and closing.

D went inside.

It was a vast hall. Save for a few exceptions, it was a plain of stone as far as the eye could see. The exceptions were clustered near the center of the hall. There were three figures. A short one was sandwiched between a taller figure squaring off against a giant. Two of them the Hunter recognized: the short one—Lourié—and the figure in the golden cape that towered before him.

“What’s that bastard Gilzen doing here?”

No sooner had the hoarse voice muttered that than the figures, who’d been halted like a movie still, went into motion in unison. The one on the other side of Lourié—a figure in a featureless mask wearing a green cape—made a horizontal sweep of its right hand. The baton grasped in a fist that looked like twisted wire grew to over fifteen feet in length, mowing through Gilzen’s neck. Sparks flew. Gilzen’s right hand—and the gold scepter it carried—had parried the blow. Both actions had occurred with a speed imperceptible to the naked eye. D alone had caught them.

The gleam of the opponent’s weapon drew back, then came at the Nobleman again—this time falling from above as if splitting firewood. Gilzen dodged it, changing his stance. But a split second before he did so, the long spear slashed up at him from below. It looked as if the Nobleman was constantly on the defensive. The movements of the two were succinct, with crimson sparks glowing incessantly in the gloom. Minute piled upon minute, with Gilzen always on the receiving end.

“His opponent’s not bad, either. It’s keeping the same Gilzen who defeated you on the defensive!” the hoarse voice said, making sure to place special emphasis on the “who defeated you” part. But then it let out a gasp of surprise.

Changing his footwork, Gilzen halted for a moment. Not missing that chance, his foe whipped its long spear around in a flashing arc—which Gilzen dipped at an angle to avert, his bizarre rib sword then bursting from his torso and stabbing into his opponent’s abdomen at an angle. Letting out a cry that fell short of words, the Nobleman’s foe swung its long spear, severing the stark implement of death before the creature made a great leap back.

“Looks like the tide has turned,” the hoarse voice said, its words surging forward.

Gilzen pursued his foe, while Lourié remained where he was. Like a swallow in flight, D dashed over and scooped up the diminutive figure, pulling him back out of the heat of battle.

II

“So, you came, D?” Gilzen said to the Hunter without turning to face him. “Looks like your DNA responded to the alien presence after all. Yes, this is an invader from far beyond the Milky Way! As you are no doubt well aware, since Earth was first created, countless aliens have visited it. Of them all, none ever held more sinister intentions than these.”

His opponent hauled back its long spear, then hurled it at Gilzen. Easily batting it aside with his scepter, the Nobleman aimed the black jewel adorning the scepter’s top at his foe. The beam it unleashed was black as ink. It bounced off his opponent’s chest, melting the floor by D’s feet and sending up scalding vapor. It was an insanely powerful beam.

“This light can penetrate three floors—punching through a hundred feet of rock,” said Gilzen. “It looks like I have a foe unaffected by beam weapons.”

“When did you get that weapon?” the hoarse voice inquired. “Ten thousand years ago, the Nobility might’ve been physically far superior to human beings, but I never heard their science was equally advanced. The technology they’ve got now is the result of ten millennia of progress. You were asleep all that time, yet you’ve got command of a science beyond modern levels. Is that alien technology?”

“Indeed.”

Gilzen bent down. A crossbow-like weapon on his foe’s back had just popped up over its shoulder. There was a sound like the dull hiss of escaping gas, which was then coupled with the strident clash of iron on steel.

“Oh?” A cry of surprise escaped the Hunter’s left hand.

Pressed to the left side of his chest, D’s fist held a black arrow. It’d been fired at Gilzen, who’d deflected it with his scepter and sent it to assail D, to his rear.

The golden cape danced out. Spreading in the air above his opponent’s head, it looked like a gold cloud. His foe’s right hand reached for some kind of gun. A crimson beam pierced the gloom and the gleaming cloud. Flaming, the cape hit the floor—but when the foe realized it was only the Noble’s cape and turned, its body was pierced from behind by an arcing, scimitar-like rib sword. No doubt imagining the scene to follow, his foe tried to flee. But its body was pinned by the rib and held fast. The scepter brought down from overhead smashed the foe’s head and sent orange brains flying in all directions.

“Cause me trouble, will you?”

Looking down at the titanic form that lay at his feet and confirming that it was dead, Gilzen turned his eyes toward D. There was a loud snap by the Nobleman’s chest. The arrow D had hurled had been caught by Gilzen’s chest, stopping it dead.

“So, the man called D favors cowardly acts?”

“You did it first,” the hoarse voice shot back.

The fact that the arrow Gilzen deflected had gone straight at D was no coincidence.

“At any rate, the technology in this castle was obtained from these creatures. When they came to Earth ten thousand years ago, it was not the human race that tracked them down and fought them off, but our kind. Although the science of their weapons was more advanced than our own, none of their weapons could slay immortals. We destroyed their spaceships and exterminated hundreds of their kind, taking fewer than ten of them captive. The Sacred Ancestor ordered that they should be disposed of immediately, no doubt because he was loath to have anyone but himself acquire their technology. I was entombed deep in the earth because I stood at the fore in the battle against the Sacred Ancestor, but also because I disobeyed him in this.”

In Gilzen’s fingers, the metal arrow twisted as if it were made of rubber. His eyes were burning red, as if running to ground the memories of the past.

“Yes, the Sacred Ancestor buried me in the cold, dark earth. He said our minds weren’t yet ready to acquire the technology of an alien world. Such preening. If we had adopted that technology then, the Nobility could’ve ruled the world without waiting for nuclear war first. I have read the record matrix stored in this castle that remained here aboveground but disassembled, and I know what has passed in the last ten millennia. The Sacred Ancestor is a fool! Had we done things my way, we would’ve ruled over the humans while their power was still intact, and could’ve avoided our present decline. D, do you know what kind of future he wanted?”

The fearsome scepter was pointed at D, but he didn’t flinch in the slightest.

“To a degree,” he said.

“Then this should be easy to explain. To tell the truth, the Sacred Ancestor and I adopted the same approach. However, unlike him, I also used the aliens.”

Lourié, who was clinging to D’s waist, suddenly looked up at the Hunter.

“So they were sealed away in this castle and subjected to memory analysis? But it seems that wasn’t enough.”

That came from D.

Gilzen lowered his scepter and grinned bitterly. “You’re right. I believed we’d adopted their techniques perfectly, but there was some flaw in the way we put them to sleep. They escaped, and now they wander the castle searching for a way out.”

“How many are there?”

“Four—now three remain. They’re formidable. What do you say, D? Will you give me a hand?”

“This has nothing to do with me.”

“Nothing to do with you?”

Lourié’s body flew a good fifteen feet, where the boy landed on his ass on the stone floor. One sweep of D’s arm had done that.

“I was hired to take the contents of that coffin alive—or failing that, to destroy it. Gilzen, will you accept that you’re on the road to your own destruction?”

“No, thank you.”

The Nobleman’s right hand rose, and then a terrific spray of sparks exploded in front of his face. The distant stone walls shook from the impact. His scepter had parried D’s blade, striking in the same motion the Hunter had drawn it.

“Are you in a hurry to die, D?”

As Gilzen leapt back ten feet, he aimed the black jewel in his scepter at D. But the strange beam that could carve through a hundred feet of rock didn’t fire. With D approaching right before him, Gilzen projected his scythe-like ribs from his sides. It looked as if the one his opponent had lopped off earlier had returned as well.

A sweet-and-sour stench assailed Lourié’s nostrils. A sword for a pen, and blood as the ink? In this hall where the stink of alien blood had begun to waft, they would write of a new battle, a new tale of life and death.

However, the fray came to a hasty conclusion. D and Gilzen had both turned to look in the same direction Lourié had initially come from.

“That voice—he’s been finished, I suppose.”

Gilzen made a light leap. D’s blade flew after him. All it cut was a piece of his cape, and by that point Gilzen had reached the door.

“I’m going on ahead. I shall be back. But, D, what would’ve happened if I wasn’t here right now, but rather was standing behind you?”

Before the Hunter knew it, the door had opened, and now it closed behind Gilzen.

“That bastard’s gained the power to teleport! The Nobility’s scientists couldn’t make that a reality for all their trying, but it looks like the aliens had the technology to do it. Anyway, I do wonder what would’ve happened.”

Despite the needling tone, D kept his silence, but his eyes suddenly shot toward Lourié. The diminutive figure was just being swallowed up by a pit that’d opened without warning. A black dagger whistled from D’s right hand, sinking halfway into the gap between the closing floor sections. Walking over like a shadow, D grabbed the dagger’s hilt with his left hand, and in an instant had twisted it in an impossible direction. Far off to the right something heavy moved. Beyond a concealed door loomed the entrance to a passageway wide enough for two adults to walk abreast.

“Looks like things aren’t going your way, eh? D, are you gonna look for the kid? Or—”

“The search for Gilzen comes first,” D informed the hoarse voice in a low, clipped tone before walking toward the passageway.

–

The woman had a hole in her chest that you could see clean through.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

To Vera’s query, the Huntress Lilia replied, “A little. I’m sure for the real Nobility, something like this would be a walk in the park, but for the half-baked version like me it’s not quite so easy.” Looking at the door to the back of the room, Lilia said, “Forget me; how’s she doing?”

“She” was the owner of the room they were in—Jeanne. The two of them were in an artlessly appointed living room with just a table and a few rough chairs, while the owner of the room lay in bed in the back bedroom now that her injury had been tended to.

“The wound’s no great problem, but the pain won’t subside. Unless Duke Gilzen lifts his curse, there’s nothing that can be done.”

“So that formless man is here to comfort her, then? He must be her beau.”

As Lilia extended her thumb, the gesture for boyfriend in some regions, the doctor applied a sterile pad to her naked back.

“Stop moving around. And I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Vera said reprovingly. But as she leveled that reproach, she couldn’t help but admit to herself that the woman who sat there with her thumb up was the only reason she and Jeanne were still alive.

It had been a horrifying split second—the faceless creature’s gun had pierced Lilia’s heart, and ignoring her as she staggered, it had drawn the longsword from its hip as it bore down on them. Vera had felt the wings of death brush her. But their foe was knocked thirty feet down the corridor, where it slammed into a stone pillar. Look as she might, Vera had seen no one there but the other two women.

III

“Get into her room,” a masculine voice from midair had urged them. “Hurry. I’m going to reorganize the area.”

And before their very eyes a stone wall the width of the corridor lowered from the ceiling, cutting the faceless figure off from the three women.

Thirty minutes had passed since they’d followed those directions, and nothing had happened. Apparently the faceless figure had left.

Securing her ample bosom once more in a bra and donning her beloved combat gear, Lilia stretched her shoulders. The bones creaked.

“I’m fine now. Doctor, that was an interesting experience, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” she had to confess.

Naturally, Vera had never treated a Noble or a pseudo-Noble—one who’d been bitten but not turned—before. Even though the Huntress’s heart had narrowly escaped injury, what seemed to be a kind of heat ray had blasted right through the woman—yet to the doctor’s amazement, the Huntress was still breathing normally. And Vera could hardly believe that Lilia’s wound had half closed by the time she put her clothes back on. If this was what a pseudo-Noble was like, she couldn’t begin to imagine the regenerative abilities of the Nobility. That a primitive thing like a wooden stake could destroy them was like something out of a nightmare.

“Even if we’d left it alone it would’ve healed, but you have my thanks anyway, Doctor.”

Lilia smiled at her, seeming no different than she’d been before—or, if anything, far more cheerful.

She’s been bitten by a Noble? The only things that kept Vera from questioning that were the ferocity of the unearthly aura she’d seen earlier when Lilia had faced the featureless opponent and the white scarf wound around Lilia’s neck.

“What’ll become of you?” Vera said, giving voice to the question that had arisen while she was looking at the Huntress. It was a question that’d been posed by the families, friends, and lovers of countless victims of the Nobility.

Lilia smiled thinly. “It’s a little late to be asking that, isn’t it. You know full well.”

“You don’t have a problem with becoming a Noble?” Vera asked, unwilling to let the issue rest.

“There’s nothing I can do about it. Oh, Doctor, in the interest of medical science, I’ll tell you all about what it’s like being a victim of the Nobility. Think of it as my last bit of humanity, if you will. First, for the physical stuff—well, it’s a strange feeling. You feel lethargic, and yet it’s like you’re in prime shape—like a really powerful motor that’s not firing on all cylinders, if you can understand that.”

“More or less, I suppose.”

Lilia’s smile broadened. Incisors peeked disturbingly from the corners of her vermilion lips. A chill raced down Vera’s spine.

“Great,” Lilia said with an impassive nod. “Next, for the psychological effects: well, first of all, there’s this respect and fear toward the one who bit you. Like the sort of feelings a servant has toward the master of the house.”

In her heart, Vera sighed with grief.

“But is that your will? It’s not the Noble forcing his consciousness onto you?”

“It’s completely me. Come on, don’t make that face. I’m not sad about it at all. I’m filled with so much more power than before, I tremble at the thought of it.”

“Oh, Lilia—you’ll go on to attack humans!”

“Stop it!” Lilia exclaimed, but her words were no more than meaningless sound waves to Vera. This woman professed joy at being made a servant of the Nobility—and she had given medical aid to such a creature. If she could, right on this very spot, she’d see to it that—

“Doctor, don’t get any funny ideas, okay?”

“Huh?” Vera thought the woman had her pegged.

“Doctor,” Lilia said, her eyes burning red. Making no effort to disguise her naked supernatural aura, she took Vera’s hand. The Huntress’s grip was so cold that the doctor felt numbness before she experienced any pain.

“Stop. I didn’t do anything.”

“The victim of a victim becomes just like them,” Lilia said, her breath brushing the doctor’s throat.

“Don’t!”

The lady doctor was paralyzed by the greatest fear known to mankind. Becoming a Noble—that meant devolving into a demon that roamed the night in search of living human blood. This was no nightmare. It was reality, and less than two inches from her.

“Doctor . . .”

Something hard touched the nape of her neck. It slowly poked into her. In two spots.

“Stop!”

Vera shook from head to toe.

A tiny scream rose near her ear—and moved off.

“What happened?” asked a masculine voice. It was that of the man without form.

“I don’t know—look,” said Lilia.

“But that’s—” The man’s voice was tense. “Your right hand exploded. Who did that to you? Never mind. I know.”

Know what?

Vera’s shaking didn’t seem likely to stop. She trembled with a speed so far beyond the normal range it had injured the Huntress, but she hadn’t even noticed.

“Calm down,” the man’s voice said. “You’re an incredibly dangerous woman, it seems. There’s still work that we would have you do. We won’t harm you.”

Vera felt her tremors abating. She opened her eyes.

Lilia was slumped against the wall, gazing at her. Her left hand held her right arm, which was missing its hand from the wrist down. No blood flowed from it. The stub was charred black. Gazing at Vera, she gave her a look that seemed to say, Not too shabby. Hers wasn’t a very grave injury.

“What—what did I do?”

“I’ll tell you later. In the meantime, you can continue your doctoring.”

Vera shook her head. She was terribly weary. “I’ve already done all I can for her.”

“This is another case. Come with me,” said the man’s voice.

“But I can’t even see you!”

“You can hear me, though.”

Ultimately, Vera had no choice but to comply. Following the voice’s directions, she left Jeanne’s quarters and advanced down the corridor. Her terror of running into that faceless creature was beyond the pale, but fortunately she didn’t encounter it in her travels. She asked what it was, but got no reply.

“Here.”

She stood before a stone door. She didn’t have long to wait before it opened. The smell of disinfectant struck her. Stepping into a room the color of a cloudy day, Vera gasped out loud and froze in her tracks.

–

Lourié was at the bottom of the hole, surveying his surroundings. It felt like he’d fallen more than a thousand yards, but he couldn’t be sure. Halfway down it’d become too much trouble to keep track of the distance. As he fell, he wondered what kind of scientific technology the castle was equipped with. For instance, the pit that he was falling into obviously had to be some mode of transportation. But it was so primitive. Yet the way the mountain had been transformed into a castle in the blink of an eye seemed a feat that would be impossible without otherworldly technology. There was a tremendous gap between the two—and try as he might, the boy could find no way to bridge it.

I’ve slowed down all of a sudden, he thought, and at that moment there was a light impact on the soles of his shoes, then his body rose slowly. He realized he’d sunk into something soft, and was now rising from the recoil.

“How primitive,” he said, in spite of himself.

It was the same principle as dropping something onto a sack of feathers. The thought of the bottom half of the pit—a thousand yards’ worth of feathers—nearly made Lourié laugh. The boy’s heart didn’t lack for courage.

When he stopped rising, he found an iron door set in the wall before him. He pushed against it, and it opened easily. Stone corridors just like the others continued on the other side. All he could do was press forward. He was worried about his father—and Vera, Lilia, and Dust. Dr. Vera was kind. Lilia talked tough, but she wasn’t a bad person. There was something about Dust that reminded him of his father. And he wouldn’t abandon any of them. Don’t turn your back on what needs to be done. That was the one principle his father had impressed upon him.

“What’s this?”

He was nearly out of breath when he halted.

A change had come over the smooth walls, floor, and ceiling of the corridor. Horrible cracks that took the boy’s breath away ran through everything, leaving the rock beneath exposed and tilting the floor up ahead of him. He climbed a fairly steep ascent to the top of a rise.

“Did an earthquake do this?”

But Lourié quickly realized it hadn’t been that. At the bottom of a great cone-shaped subsidence the far side of which he couldn’t make out, an enormous dome-like tent of what could’ve been vinyl or metal had come into view.

“What in the world is that?”

Terror wrapped around his heart, threatening to stop it. Still, his hands and feet didn’t halt. The protrusions and cracks in the rock proved useful for hand- and footholds. He descended a good five hundred yards.

At last he understood the scale of the tent. It was roughly the size of a small pyramid. Standing fifty yards high, it was over a hundred yards long. The material looked like metal.

He arrived at the bottom. All the while checking his surroundings for any sound or sign of anyone else, Lourié went over to the tent. There was no way in or out of it. Reaching for the bottom edge of the metal covering, he tried to pull it up. It lifted without any resistance. A dazzling light illuminated the boy’s legs below the knees. Bending over, he squeezed through. There was no hesitation.

Light enveloped him from head to toe. Countless lights supported by iron frames were brightly illuminating an object sunk in the stone floor about ten yards up ahead. Its overall outline resembled the planet Saturn stretched out horizontally. Only it wasn’t a ring that surrounded the elliptical craft; it was a disk. Both the craft and the disk were twisted at the point of some long-ago impact, crumpled and looking like the slightest push would make them squeal like an accordion. With one glance Lourié noticed that the crumpled portion of the top of the craft gaped open.

About sixty feet up, the saucer was connected to the ground by what looked to be a simple elevator. When the boy approached it, the stench of oil struck him. Apparently it used an old gasoline-powered motor. At the very least, when this craft crashed here, the Nobility’s civilization could manage no more than this. Locating an operating lever on the side of the greasy motor, he gave it a pull. It began to whine. It performed just as it had ten thousand years earlier. In light of the restoration that had taken place in the castle, fixing up one small motor probably hadn’t been a problem.

Getting into a box with an iron-mesh bottom, Lourié pushed a button set in the wall. With a rasping sound the elevator began to climb. Moving at considerable speed, it soon reached the top.

From the elevator door to the crumpled front of the craft, iron plates had been laid out. More than the thought of how much effort that had entailed, it was the thickness of the saucer skin Lourié saw during his ascent that made his eyes bug in their sockets. It was like gold leaf. It was less than four hundredths of an inch thick. Forget what would happen if it collided with something; it seemed as if the approach of a candle would be enough to melt it like lead. Yet it felt overwhelmingly strong beneath his feet.

The damaged portion had a hole in it large enough for two adults to pass through side by side. Halting, Lourié fought to control his breathing. Fear of the unknown and unmistakable excitement burned in his chest.

Sufficient light filled the damaged section of the interior. Apparently the crew’s sense of sight didn’t differ greatly from that of human beings. Judging from the form of the foe he’d encountered in the great hall above, he thought the craft wouldn’t be much different from one built for humans, and things were pretty much as he expected. The passageway and walls were made of the same material as the saucer, which didn’t seem incongruous. However, the tilt of the craft was steep, and Lourié quickly abandoned plans to climb up higher. As there were no handrails, he kept both feet planted firmly and followed the passageway lower—descending into the nose of the craft.

Something strange happened after the boy had gone a few yards. It felt as if his body was being pushed against the floor—and the instant he realized the truth, the mystery of it was solved.

It’s creating artificial gravity, Lourié thought, standing up straight. His body was at an angle, but it stood perpendicular to the floor. Even after ten thousand long years, this thing still worked! The computer that ran the craft had begun to create a comfortable environment for the new “crewman” that’d boarded it.

It came as no surprise there were signs of terrible destruction where it sank into the ground, with the walls cracked or utterly crumpled. It seemed unlikely Lourié would be able to advance any farther. On the right wall of the corridor he spied what appeared to be an elevator. There was a switch to the right of it. Though he pressed the up button, nothing happened. Down. That one lit up with red. Another door into the unknown opened.

The boy’s body trembled. His eyes were agleam.

There was no switch inside. The walls and ceiling were made of a material that might’ve been either glass or plastic. He touched it in a number of places, but there was no response. Thinking for a moment, he said, “The lower deck.”

The ceiling gleamed and the door closed.

“It understands what I say,” Lourié remarked, but he had no time at all for surprise before the door opened.

He thought it must’ve been an error, but the scene outside was different. He’d arrived without even the slightest sensation of moving.

Oddly enough, the lower deck was less damaged than the front portion. The elevator was at the center of two intersecting corridors, and there was a door to either side of it.

Standing before the closer one, he commanded, “Open.”

It opened.

Taking a cautious peek inside, Lourié gasped. Something hot bubbled up beneath his feet, and his body quaked violently.