"If I were I wouldn't be here. But only a fool refuses to recognize
danger."
"Relax," she advised. "They will break in, true. But there may be a
little difficulty finding their way among the cages. It is a maze,
as you saw. And the animals will give them some trouble. I am not
forgetting the tracker, but the moondogs and wireflies can confuse
anything that operates on electronics. All we need is a slight delaying
action. We can count on that."
"There is another exit?" asked Pao Chung eagerly.
Her laugh crystallized in tinkling fragments, like showering shards of
glass. "Another exit, yes. The way my father goes when he hunts. If you
have the nerve to take it! But compose yourself, Pao Chung. You will
need supplies of food, water, air, special clothing. And ... there is a
price."
Hesitantly, unhappily, Pao Chung inquired the price.
"The way is dangerous," she said rapidly. "You might not come back.
And I must see that my father is protected. Give me an order on your
bank or lawyer for all the evidence you have against him; for whatever
crimes or stupidities he may have committed."
"How do you know such an order will be honored?" Pao Chung muttered
speculatively. "Once I am free--"
The girl tossed her head till the bell of ebony hair swung dangerously.
"It had better be honored," she warned crisply. "For there is only
one way back ... if you ever come back. And I can control it. I don't
think you will like your surroundings well enough to remain there
indefinitely."
Pao Chung bowed to the inevitable. Angel chuckled moodily, and Bat
Ferris faced Teucrete with admiration on his pleasantly ugly features.
"Well done," he praised. "Is there a price for me?"
"No price to a man who likes animals. I sensed that in you as we passed
the cages."
Impulsively, the girl leaned toward Ferris and forced her lips
violently on his. "That is for luck, gamma-man. On the house, but the
next one might cost you dearly. Watch yourself."
Ferris clung to the sanctuary of masculine silence. Pao Chung glowered
sullenly, and Angel's amusement sent iridescent ripples glinting from
his wings.
"How about me?" he demanded.
"No kiss, no price," she told him, "but a word of advice, mutant. Keep
those wings out of revolving doors."
Angel grinned happily, his gargoyle face wrinkling into impossible
contortions. "They are a nuisance."
Newly garbed and equipped, the men followed Teucrete from the building.
Stopping to stuff Pao Chung's order into some feminine idea of a
safety-vault, not too safe in the company of lecherous males, Teucrete
conducted her charges through a lovely formal garden that functioned by
concealed hydroponics, and on into another built up area.
But this was no cubicle of stone or steel or plastic. It was a roofless
structure of glass. Vertical panels of glass ran off beyond sight.
Panels of all colors, all degrees of transparency. Some were as lucid
as crystal, some barely translucent, and more bent or mirrored to
distort, reflect or refract light. All were tinted, some weakly, others
violently stained. The place was stridently illuminated by concealed
radi-floods. It was a solid mass of rainbow effects, a forest of
crystal mirrors and shafts and flickering, glowing prisms.
One entered by a kind of airlock, or more accurately, a lightlock.
There was no change in atmospheric pressure, but the density and
beating force of sheer luminosity increased by squares and cubes as the
travellers strode through linked cubes of glass.
They entered the light maze. Dazzling splendors beat upon them. Vision
was overwhelmed by visible vibrations. They drowned in light.