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attracting cold stares from the busy creatures around it. A second machine scuttled into view from
between giant mechanisms, paused a moment, jittering on thin legs, then darted to the first, leaped at it.
With a metallic clatter, the two rolled across the floor, struck the lean shank of a demon that bounded
aside, whirled, struck out.
A third cat-brained machine dashed to join the fray; two more appeared at the same moment, saw each
other, came together with a crash five enraged toms, each sure he was attacking a rival for the imagined
female the image of whose presence I had evoked a dirty trick but effective.
The two guardian demons bounded from their posts, sprang at the combatants, cuffed them apart but
only for an instant. Nimbly, the fighting cats danced aside from the rush of the dog-things, darted back to
re-engage.
I moved from my corner, scurried along the baseboard to the guarded door, fired a triggering pulse at its
mechanism. It stood firm. I extended a sensing probe. I perceived the required form for the unlocking
signal, transmitted it. The moronic apparatus responded, withdrew the magnetic locking field. I nudged
the door, felt it swing open. I slipped past it, and pushed it shut behind me.
A narrow stairwell led up toward light. I started up, feeling my thin limbs tiring now. My power-pack
needed recharging; I felt a powerful reflexive urge to descend to a dimly-conceived place where a niche
waited, where I could snuggle against comforting contacts and receive a pleasure-flow of renewed
vitality . . .
I overrode the conditioned urge, clambered up the high-looming steps. They were scaled to the long legs
of the demons, almost too high for my limited agility. There was no alarm from below; the
demon-guardians had failed to notice the penetration of their sanctum.
I reached a landing, started up a second flight. The top of the tower had to be close now, judging from
the distance I had come. The light ahead beckoned . . . only a little farther . . .
I dragged myself up over the last step. I was looking into a round room, walled with nacreous material
like mother-of-pearl, with glazed openings beyond which the black lunar sky pressed close. At the center
of the chamber, a shallow bowl rested on a short column, like a truncated birdbath of polished metal.
After a moment's rest, I moved into the room. I was aware of a curious humming, a sense of vast power
idling at the edge of perceptibility. The floor was smooth under me, extending to a curving join with the
walls, which rose, darkening, to form a shadowed dome many yards overhead. The light was diffuse and
soft. I circled the gleaming pedestal, searching for some indication of the meaning or utility of this strange
place, so unlike the functional ugliness of the levels below. There was nothing no indication of life, no
sign of controls or instrumentation. Perhaps, after all, the Place That Must Be Defended was no more
than a temple dedicated to whatever strange deities might command the devotion of the monsters that
prowled the levels below . . .
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
There was a sound a dry clicking, like a dead twig tapping a window. I crouched near the pedestal,
stared around me. I saw nothing. The walls of the empty room gleamed softly.
The sound came again then a dry squeaking, as of leather sliding against bare metal. A diffuse shadow,
faint, formless, glided down the walls. I turned my sensors upward and saw it.
It hung in the gloom of the dome, a bulging, grayish body in a cluster of tentacular members like giant
angleworms, clinging to a bright filament depending from the peak of the onion-shaped dome. As I
watched, it dropped down another foot, its glistening reticulated arms moving with a hideous, fluid grace.
A cluster of stemmed sense organs poked from the upper side of the body crab-eyes on a torso like a
bag of oil. I recognized the shape of the creature; it was the one on which my borrowed mechanical form
was modeled.
The thing saw me then I was sure of it. It paused in its descent, tilted its eyes toward me. I didn't
move. Then the worm-arms twitched, flowed; it dropped lower, unreeling the cable as it came. It was
five yards above the parabolic bowl, then four, then three. There was a feeling of haste in its movements
now, something frantic in its scrambling descent. Whatever the thing was, its objective was clear: to reach
the polished bowl before I did.
I sprang to the pedestal and reared up, my forelimbs catching at the edge of the bowl. I scrabbled with
other legs at the smooth base, found purchase for another pair of limbs; I was clear of the floor now,
rising to the edge
The thing above me emitted a mewing cry, dropped abruptly another yard, then released its support and
launched itself at me; the flailing tentacles wrapped me in an embrace like a nest of constrictors. I lost my
hold, fell back with a stunning crash. The alien thing broke away, reached for the bowl, and swung itself [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]