V
Normally, he would have shot down the smooth funnel, inclined at thirty-five degrees, at a terrific speed. But he had not become the most resourceful financier of the solar system for nothing. No wizard in an emergency, he yet liked to be prepared.
So it was that he flicked the switch of the anti-grav unit around his waist, and quickly slowed to a half-speed. He had wanted to wear a full power machine, but it would have been too bulky to conceal beneath the loose folds of his garments. He had to be content with a moderate rate of descent.
After twenty seconds of sliding, he slipped out of the mouth of the funnel. It was as he had hoped. His checked speed enabled him to drop onto a granite ledge beneath the opening. Even so, he fell close to the very edge. A little more velocity, and he would have gone completely over.
Shuddering, he clutched the rim of rock until he’d regained some of his composure. After a while, he inched forward until his head hung over the lip of the precipice, and he could gaze downward into the abyss.
Below, seemingly a thousand feet down, though he knew the distance must be an illusion fabricated by Da Vincelleo, was a lake of molten lava rising in great billows, then sinking into deep valleys, and releasing gigantic bubbles that rose and burst, and loosed a stench of sulfur that almost suffocated him. Smoke spiralled up past his head, and collected against the roof far above. The heat that ascended was strong enough to crisp his face if he had looked long into it.
Nowhere was there a sign of Dafess’s inhabitants. All had been dissolved in the roaring sea of lava, in the hell that had been prophesied for all their enemies.
Quailing, Revanche looked to left and right along the narrow ledge for an avenue of escape. There was none. Both ends tapered off into the rock.
Straight across, perhaps a hundred feet away, was the balcony from which he had hoped to see the show. If he had the guts, he thought, he could step up his anti-grav past the danger point and, almost weightless for a second, could leap to the balcony.
If the pack didn’t burn out while he was in midair. If he didn’t misgauge and miss the balcony... if the hellish blast from below didn’t crisp him before he completed the jump... if....
He stood up, and by the glow thrown up from the bright ocean, he peered up the slide. Another if. What if he could brace his legs against the sides of the O, and painfully work his way back up?
At that moment a figure shot out of the shadows of the tunnel, a figure that approached at express-train speed and quickly loomed larger and larger. Its blood-colored halo, the mask with the snarl of tenderness, the furnace-door eyes, and the dripping sword—all could be made out in frightening detail.
Like the lost soul he believed he was, Revanche screamed and dropped flat to the ledge, crushing his snipped nose into the granite. He moaned, and waited for the clang of armor and the final whistle of the blade through the air before it thudded into his neck.
Above him something dark and monstrous shot out of the O and roared by.
Whoosh!
It missed the ledge by many feet, and fell into the lava ocean.
A train of shadows flickered over Revanche. The air was disturbed by the constant passage of flying elephantine bodies.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
One by one, like living shells exploded out of a circus cannon, they projectiled over their intended prey. By the thousands they meteored over him, eyeballs matching the glare of the lava below, swords automatically slashing out even as they spun and turned over and over, and splashed into the liquid rock.
Whish! Brrr! Whoosh! Splash!
Suddenly—silence.
Slowly, Revanche rose. He could not believe it. He looked over the ledge. Only the bare and boiling sea. He turned and glanced up the tube. Silence and shadows, and the gleaming greasy symbol for zero.
Understanding melted the glacier on his brain. He broke into a wild dance, wept tears for gladness, whistled three times, and shouted, “I’ve won! Revanche has won! And I’ve beat them!”
Clippety-clop! Clippety-clop!
The unbelievable ring of iron horseshoes jumped out of the tube’s mouth.
Revanche froze in a pirouette, stood poised, then seemed to collapse into a strange loose creature that shambled over to the funnel and leaned backward to look up, like a dazed and stiffnecked Neanderthal.
The liquid film of joy glazed over his mind again, grew white and cold and lumpy.
A mount and its rider were coming out of the darkness and into the brimstone glare. The horse was a nightmare black, its eyeballs burning tiger-yellow bright. It stretched back cruel and foaming lips, and revealed teeth sharp enough to rend him.
A ghost horse, it cried for blood while its magnetic shoes clung briefly to the metal floor before lifting again.
Clippety-clop rang its hooves.
Then it stopped and hung its head down over the tube’s lip and fixed Revanche with one demon’s eye while its rider dismounted. It remained in that attitude, and did not move even when its master dropped gently onto the ledge to face Revanche.
The financier felt his bulging eyes threaten to leave his head, like balloons tugging at their moorings.
His eyes understood before his brain did.
They took in a face that was a compound of two persons, a masterly paradox of features and traits: compassionate and merciless, sensitive and coarse, loving and hating. It was a hybrid of X, and of himself.
It was not that contradictory face that told him so much, that explained why his interferer had failed to work, even why he had been “herded,” and was now facing this fantastic and vengeful creation.
It was something else that told him that not only Dafess City but he, Revanche, had been the victim of a Caligulan sense of humor, the butt of the most colossal practical joke the Messinan had ever played.
That something else he had been too shocked to think about. Why had the Bioids, who carried full-power anti-gravs within their bodies, fallen over the ledge? It was because Da Vincelleo had deliberately destroyed them to raise his hopes. And then had brought out this—this thing—this joke! Not satisfied to make Revanche squirm, he had wanted him to sweat blood.
The creature that was drawing a saber from its scabbard, was dressed in a uniform now long dead, but easily recognizable because it had been resurrected recently in many of the romantic historical novels that enjoyed a Solarwide vogue.
It wore the rugged active-service boots, the dun-colored trousers, and the stiff abbreviated jacket of a twentieth century foot soldier of officer caste. It was singing softly from a rigid mouth.
“Death to the enemy.”
It was plain whom the enemy was to be.
Revanche fell to his knees.
“Mercy!”
Its saber lifted. The immobile lips roared.
“Justice!”