He assisted Alayna into the narrow opening after she again discarded
the cape which hampered her movement. Shorty followed. He was of small
build, not very much larger than Alayna. Finally Roal wormed his own
way into it, thankful he was not bothered by claustrophobia.
He lay on his side with one arm extended forward, the other down
towards the mouth of the tube. This made it possible to guard the
entrance with the flame lance.
It was stifling hot in the tube, and dust rose to choke them as
the result of their struggles. Roal assumed Alayna was making good
progress. And Shorty seemed to be having no trouble but he was creeping
forward by painful inches.
The opening was visible as a dim spot of light beyond his feet, but
suddenly that spot of light wavered and darkened. Someone had passed
before it. Roal stopped moving and stared down. It wasn't merely
someone standing before the opening. A Martian was bending forward,
looking into it. And Roal caught the glimmer of light on a gun as it
was aimed down the tube towards him.
Quickly, he squeezed the trigger of his own lance at full power. A
dozen bursts of flame plunged down the length of the air tube. The
first one toppled the Martian in the mouth of the tube. Successive
shots bit into the roof and walls near the mouth. A hiss of melting
sand turned into a roar as the tube collapsed behind them. Waves of
choking dust smothered them and threw them into coughing spasms.
Alayna gave a frantic cry of alarm and Shorty tried to squirm about to
see what had happened. Roal explained to them. "And it means there's
only one way to go, now--forward. Is there any chance of them cutting
us off, Alayna?"
"Plenty. It all depends on how many controls the Thousand Minds may
have near the other end. Fortunately, the main controls were there in
the lab with my father and you killed many of them. But we'll soon be
through. I'll try to go faster."
Roal could have said that she needn't hurry on his account. Already
Shorty was a considerable distance ahead of him, and Alayna was
probably much farther by the sound of her voice.
They were silent then until Alayna called that she had finally dropped
into a chamber opening from the tube. Roal increased his struggles, but
Shorty was out long before he was.
When he emerged, a gasp of recognition came to his lips. It was one of
the dream rooms of Starhouse.
Alayna nodded as she saw Roal's eyes widen. "This is Starhouse," she
said. "Follow me as if you were merely spacemen visiting here for
dreams."
She led them into the hall outside. The noise of the tavern increased
as they approached the main room. "Wait beside the door," Alayna asked.
Roal opened his mouth to question, but she was gone before he could
speak. Spacemen looked up suddenly as she appeared in their midst, and
the room became quiet as if Alayna carried an advancing wave of silence
with her.
She took up her position on the little dais beside the old piano
and nodded to the bleary-eyed player. And then her song began. With
it came again that magic spell that Roal could hardly fight off. He
wondered if it were entirely the song of Alayna or if the mighty power
of the Thousand Minds were seizing the spell of her song, weaving,
intensifying it until it called out to him to flee back to Earth and
blue skies and green fields--to find someone like Alayna--to take
Alayna with him.
And he knew within himself that the Thousand Minds had nothing to
do with that dream. It was the dream of all spacemen who spend long
years amid the cold and blackness of space and the wasteland of alien
planets. Their dreams, concentrated and distilled to their strongest
essence, flowed forth upon the low, husky notes from the throat of
Alayna.
She sang of a sweetheart who waited for the return of a spaceman, and
to each man in the room Alayna was the sweetheart and he was the one
for whom she waited.
* * * * *
Her song ended and the spotlight upon her shifted from the warm pink
glow to a sunny blue. She stood there watching them, keeping their eyes
upon her.