It was a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces, Burke decided. No matter
how he tried to analyze it, he always came out with a vital fragment or
two left over.
Take the Minotaur. Did such a creature actually exist? Or was the thing
simply a figment of imagination?
Assuming its existence, what about the strange mental powers with which
it had tried to probe his brain?
Alien powers.
Yet if it were alien, what was King Minos' relation to it? Why would a
human join hands with anything that radiated such malevolence and hate?
Or, for that matter, what was the relation between the sea-king and
his own daughter, Ariadne? Freudians would have a field day with that
business of the mind-thing's holding her within the palace at her
father's behest.
Finally, staying on the personal level, where did Pasiphae fit in? What
lay behind the legend of her having bribed Daedalus the Smith to build
her a wooden cow so that she could be joined with the sacred bull?
Could she actually have given birth to the Minotaur, or was that tale
merely symbolic?
Then, looking at the larger elements, the questions that had brought
him here to start with, what was the origin of the radiation traces on
the site of Knossos? And how had the city so mysteriously fallen in a
single night?
Questions without answers, so far. All of them.
Further--Burke checked his watch--it was past four now, and that meant
he had only eight hours more before the palace met its doom.
Yet he couldn't take Ariadne out till he'd somehow immobilized the
Minotaur.
Cursing under his breath, he wondered what had become of Pasiphae; why
she wasn't where she belonged, in the Queen's Megaron.
Now two maids appeared, an older woman between them. Hastily, Burke
flattened himself on the high ledge where he was hiding and waited to
see what would happen.
Leading the woman to one of the low benches along the wall, the maids
spread a tapestry-like cloth for their charge to sit upon, then
withdrew. The door closed behind them.
Burke frowned. There was a strangeness about the whole procedure that
puzzled him. Not a word had been spoken. And, once seated, the woman
hadn't moved.
Warily, he moved a fraction closer to the edge of his ledge, so that
he could see the woman better.
She was richly dressed, with skirts that fell in bright folds
ornamented with lotus-blossom designs. Her bodice was the most ornate
that Burke had seen.
Yet it was her face, rather than her garments, that held the largest
part of Burke's attention. That this was Pasiphae, he could have no
doubt. The resemblance between her and Ariadne was that marked.
The points of difference puzzled him, though. He tried to analyze them.
And then, all at once, he knew.
For where Ariadne's face was alive and expressive and animated, this
woman's features sagged passive and loose. Her greying hair had the
neatness of the maids' attention, but none of the flair that bespoke
personal interest. Her eyes stared out vacuous and blank upon the room.
Burke's frown deepened. Carefully, he checked every detail again and
again.
And then, in the position of her hands, he found the key.
For the fingers of the left were turned up and twisted at an awkward
angle ... yet still they stayed there, minute after minute after minute.
Burke sucked in air. "Catatonic!" he exclaimed aloud.
The woman gave no indication that she'd heard him.
Dropping from the ledge, he came close to her: passed his hand before
her eyes.
Still she gave no sign of awareness.
Burke shivered. "Pasiphae ..." he whispered. "Pasiphae!"
No answer.
Burke tried again: "Pasiphae, tell me about your son, the Minotaur."
Nothing.
"About Minos, Pasiphae. About Ariadne."
Blank, staring eyes.
Burke paused, considered. Then, leaning close, he whispered, "The
thing, Pasiphae; the mind-thing. The creature that comes into your
brain--"
Without warning, Pasiphae screamed. Then, before Burke could stop
her, she was on her feet and darting past him--fleeing like a woman
possessed down a long corridor.
Burke raced after her.
Then, just when he thought that he would catch her, she came up short;
whirled on him, eyes suddenly wild and wide. "You! Are you one of them?"
"One of them--?"
"No, you're not! You don't make my head hurt like they did! They always
hurt. Always ... always...."
* * * * *
She sagged back against the wall. Once again, her eyes began to glaze.
Burke said, "Minos, your husband ... is Minos one of them?"
Startlement. "Don't take him! Don't take my baby! I won't let them have
him! I'll get him back! I will--"
The woman struck out at Burke, then ran.
Sickness in him, he followed.
Only this time, she turned sharply; plunged down a narrow flight of
stairs.
Cursing, Burke half-fell down the steps.
It was dark at the bottom. He could see nothing of Pasiphae. But her
footsteps still sounded so, groping, he tried to follow.
The next instant he stepped off into hip-deep water. Floundering, he
fought for balance.
Something clutched at his legs.
Burke bellowed aloud from sheer shock. Desperately, he tried to
scramble out of the pool.
The thing holding him let go. Shaking, Burke dragged himself onto the
footwalk, flicked on his lighter, and stared down into the water.
An octopus with a head nearly double the size of his own met his gaze
coldly.
Shivering, Burke closed the lighter and felt his way, an uneasy step at
a time, along the edge of the tank.
Then at last he met a blank wall ... found another flight of
stairs ... groped his way down them.
Close at hand, Pasiphae screamed shrilly and ran on again.
Abruptly, then, light, as a distant door opened. Burke sprinted towards
it.
Beyond, when he reached the entry, lay the strangest room he'd ever
seen.
For this was no half-barbaric Bronze Age chamber. Instead, it shimmered
with the cold fire of a blue-white metal the like of which Burke had
never seen before. Light pulsed from it--all of it, till he felt as if
he were walking in some sort of tremendous lamp.
And there ahead, at the far end of the room, was Pasiphae.
Again, Burke sprinted.
Laughing wildly, the woman stepped into a cubicle.
Like magic, she vanished.
For an instant Burke hesitated, then entered the box-like area himself.
This time, the room through which he'd come vanished.
Almost instantly, then, another chamber appeared--one so vast Burke
couldn't be sure where it ended.
A thing like a flattened cone stood in the chamber's center, looming
like a miniature mountain.
Or perhaps one not so miniature.
It, too, was of the shimmering, blue-white metal. Not a sign of an
opening marred its shining surface.
And yet, Burke realized numbly, there must be ports of some sort.
Because the thing was beyond all doubt a space-ship, a vessel designed
for interplanetary--maybe even interstellar--travel.
It came to Burke in that moment, with grim humor, that he'd found the
answer to his questions; most of them, at any rate.
The radiation; Knossos' downfall; the mind-thing that was the Minotaur,
or vice versa--all such came clear now.
This was an alien colony, set down on Crete. Which meant that anything
which might befall the native population would, in the eyes of the
invaders, be seen as no great issue.
So, this was a good place to be away from; and the quicker, the better.
Bleakly, he looked around for Pasiphae.
She stood cowering a dozen yards away, eyes fixed blankly on the
gigantic alien craft.
Slowly, carefully, Burke approached her. The best idea he could think
of was to take her hand; he'd read somewhere that leading was the best
procedure in dealing with any mental case.
Gently, he reached out.
But when his fingers touched hers, it was as if an electric shock had
leaped between them. Screaming as before, Pasiphae ran from him.
From him, and straight towards the space-ship.
In frantic haste, Burke started to follow.
Only then, all at once, there was a blinding flash that centered on the
woman. Tendrils of smoke curled up from a charred, crumbling husk.
* * * * *
Sick with horror, Burke stared for one brief moment. Then, at the
double, he hurried back to the cubicle from which he'd stepped.
Now he noted that a duplicate stood beside it. Which, he assumed, meant
that this was a two-way transportation system, leading from the ship
to Knossos. How far apart the two were, he couldn't even guess at.
Miles, probably. The very fact that transportation was called for would
indicate that.
He stepped into the second cubicle; then, a moment later, out again in
the room beneath the palace.
It bothered him a little that he still hadn't seen any of the aliens.
He liked the idea of knowing what he was fighting.
But that couldn't be helped. The important thing now was to act
quickly; to meet and defeat the Minotaur so that he could get Ariadne
out of the palace before it was destroyed.
He checked his watch: nearly eight already. It was incredible how fast
time slipped away.
Back up the stairs and through the tank-room to the Queen's Megaron.
Then out the light-well by which he'd entered, and through the
gathering dark to the Shrine of Oracles.
Because that was where he'd have to start; he knew that from the things
he'd heard as prisoner. The entrance to the Labyrinth, the way to the
Minotaur, was through some passage in the shrine.
Only there was a guard on the first entrance he tried, and on the
second also.
In ten minutes he knew the truth: a mouse couldn't creep into the
shrine tonight without being run through by a Sudani spearman.
So, he had no choice but to try a different route, the route of legend.
First, he'd have to locate Ariadne, even though it demanded another
hair-raising human fly act, clambering down a pitch-black light-well.
Then, through her, he'd reach Daedalus, demand a thread, plunge into
the Labyrinth.
Only that wasn't right. The legend said Theseus did that.
Yet Theseus was drunk, dead drunk, back there in Ariadne's quarters.
Or was he?
It dawned on Burke, then, that nothing but delirium could account for
such confusion. How else could he be flying and falling at once? What
other explanation would take in such a strange, shifting mixture of
past and present?
Then, suddenly, he became aware of the cold stone beneath his back. In
a flash, he remembered how Theseus had trapped him ... forced him into
the sewer ... dragged him to the Labyrinth's one secret entrance ...
struck him down....