She moaned and clutched at his arm, but came with him as he descended
slowly toward the light. The stairway opened into a long corridor
whose ceiling was faintly luminous. White-faced and frightened, they
paused on the bottom step and looked down the corridor. Mara gasped and
covered her eyes.
"Big Joe!" she whispered in awe.
He stared through the stairwell door and down the corridor through
another door into a large room. Big Joe sat in the center of the
room, sleeping his sleep of ages amid a heap of broken and whitening
bones. A creature of metal, twice the height of Asir, he had obviously
been designed to kill. Tri-fingered hands with gleaming talons, and
a monstrous head shaped like a Marswolf, with long silver fangs. Why
should a metal-creature have fangs, unless he had been built to kill?
The behemoth slept in a crouch, waiting for the intruders.
He tugged the girl through the stairwell door. A voice droned out of
nowhere: "_If you have come to plunder, go back!_"
He stiffened, looking around. The girl whimpered.
"Stay here by the stairs," he told her, and pushed her firmly back
through the door.
Asir started slowly toward the room where Big Joe waited. Beyond the
room he could see another door, and the monster's job was apparently
to keep intruders back from the inner vaults where, according to the
ritual chants, the Blaze of the Winds could be kindled.
Halfway along the corridor, the voice called out again, beginning a
kind of sing-song chant: "_Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill
you, Big Joe will kill you----_"
He turned slowly, searching for the speaker. But the voice seemed to
come from a black disk on the wall. The talking-machines perhaps, as
mentioned somewhere in the ritual.
A few paces from the entrance to the room, the voice fell silent.
He stopped at the door, staring in at the monster. Then he took a
deep breath and began chanting the twenty-four numbers in a loud but
quavering voice. Big Joe remained in his motionless crouch. Nothing
happened. He stepped through the doorway.
* * * * *
Big Joe emitted a deafening roar, straightened with a metallic groan,
and lumbered toward him, taloned hands extended and eyes blazing
furiously. Asir shrieked and ran for his life.
Then he saw Mara lying sprawled in the stairway entrance. She had
fainted. Blocking an impulse to leap over her and flee alone, he
stopped to lift her.
But suddenly he realized that there was no pursuit. He looked back. Big
Joe had returned to his former position, and he appeared to be asleep
again. Puzzled, Asir stepped back into the corridor.
"_If you have come to plunder, go back!_"
He moved gingerly ahead again.
"_Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill you, Big Joe will kill----_"
He recovered the barbed pike from the floor and stole into the zone
of silence. This time he stopped to look around. Slowly he reached the
pike-staff through the doorway. Nothing happened. He stepped closer and
waved it around inside. Big Joe remained motionless.
Then he dropped the point of the pike to the floor. The monster
bellowed and started to rise. Asir leaped back, scalp crawling. But Big
Joe settled back in his crouch.
Fighting a desire to flee, Asir reached the pike through the door and
rapped it on the floor again. This time nothing happened. He glanced
down. The pike's point rested in the center of a gray floor-tile, just
to the left of the entrance. The floor was a checkerboard pattern
of gray and white. He tapped another gray square, and this time the
monster started out of his drowse again.
After a moment's thought, he began touching each tile within reach of
the door. Most of them brought a response from Big Joe. He found four
that did not. He knelt down before the door to peer at them closely.
The first was unmarked. The second bore a dot in the center. The third
bore two, and the fourth three--in order of their distance from the
door.
He stood up and stepped inside again, standing on the first tile.
Big Joe remained motionless. He stepped diagonally left to the
second--straight ahead to the third--then diagonally right to the
fourth. He stood there for a moment, trembling and staring at the
Sleeper. He was four feet past the door!
Having assured himself that the monster was still asleep, he crouched
to peer at the next tiles. He stared for a long time, but found no
similar markings. Were the dots coincidence?
He reached out with the pike, then drew it back. He was too close to
the Sleeper to risk a mistake. He stood up and looked around carefully,
noting each detail of the room--and of the floor in particular. He
counted the rows and columns of tiles--twenty-four each way.
Twenty-four--and there were twenty-four numbers in the series that was
somehow connected with safe passage through the room. He frowned and
muttered through the series to himself--0,1,2,3,3,3,2,2, 1....
The first four numbers--0,1,2,3. And the tiles--the first with no dots,
the second with one, the third with two, the fourth with three. But the
four tiles were not in a straight line, and there were no marked ones
beyond the fourth. He backed out of the room and studied them from the
end of the corridor again.
Mara had come dizzily awake and was calling for him weakly. He replied
reassuringly and turned to his task again. "First tile, then diagonally
left, then straight, then diagonally right--"
0, 1, 2, 3, 3.
A hunch came. He advanced as far as the second tile, then reached as
far ahead as he could and touched the square diagonally right from the
fourth one. Big Joe remained motionless but began to speak. His scalp
bristled at the growling voice.
"_If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill._"
Standing tense, ready to leap back to the corridor, he touched the
square again. The motionless behemoth repeated the grim warning.
Asir tried to reach the square diagonally right from the fifth, but
could not without stepping up to the third. Taking a deep breath, he
stepped up and extended the pike cautiously, keeping his eyes on Big
Joe. The pike rapped the floor.
"_If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill._"
But the huge figure remained in his place.
* * * * *
Starting from the first square, the path went left, straight, right,
right, right. And after zero, the numbers went 1, 2, 3, 3, 3.
Apparently he had found the key. One meant a square to the southeast;
two meant south; and three southwest. Shivering, he moved up to the
fifth square upon which the monster growled his first warning. He
looked back at the door, then at Big Joe. The taloned hands could grab
him before he could dive back into the corridor.
He hesitated. He could either turn back now, or gamble his life on the
accuracy of the tentative belief. The girl was calling to him again.
"Come to the end of the corridor!" he replied.
She came hurriedly, to his surprise.
"_No!_" he bellowed. "Stay back of the entrance! Not on the tile! _No!_"
Slowly she withdrew the foot that hung poised over a trigger-tile.
"You can't come in unless you know how," he gasped.
She blinked at him and glanced nervously back over her shoulder. "But I
hear them. They're coming down the stairs."
Asir cursed softly. Now he _had_ to go ahead.
"Wait just a minute," he said. "Then I'll show you how to come through."
He advanced to the last tile that he had tested and stopped. The next
two numbers were two--for straight ahead. And they would take him
within easy reach of the long taloned arms of the murderous sentinel.
He glanced around in fright at the crushed bones scattered across the
floor. Some were human. Others were animal-sacrifices tossed in by the
priests.
He had tested only one two--back near the door. If he made a mistake,
he would never escape; no need bothering with the pike.
He stepped to the next tile and closed his eyes.
"_If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill._"
He opened his eyes again and heaved a breath of relief.
"Asir! They're getting closer! I can hear them!"
He listened for a moment. A faint murmur of angry voices in the
distance. "All right," he said calmly. "Step only on the tiles I tell
you. See the gray one at the left of the door?"