The two at the hatch hovered for a moment in the air. Then both plunged their tips into the narrow crack around the edge of the circular hatch. Metal sc.r.a.ped against metal as they wedged themselves deep into the crack. Ripples ran up and down the tentacles as they explored it. The one around Blade's waist tightened its grip.

Then the tentacles found what they were looking for. Two sharp clicks sounded. Silently, without the faintest whine or hiss or clanking, the hatch swung outward. Blade saw darkness in which a few humped metal shapes gleamed dully.

The tentacle around his waist tightened its grip still more. Blade held his breath. The other two tentacles arched downward again. One crept under his head, to cradle head, neck, and shoulders in its coils. The other supported him from knees to feet. Then all three tentacles lifted. They lifted him in through the hatch as easily as a housewife lifting a loaf of bread from the grocery shelf. They laid him down as gently on a smooth but warm and yielding surface. Then they withdrew, and in the same silence the hatch swung closed. Two clicks sounded again in the darkness as the latches snapped into place.

Chapter 7.

Lights flashed on. For a moment the sudden white glare after the darkness dazzled Blade. He closed his eyes, then opened them slowly as they adjusted to the light. He did not try to rise or even move so much as a finger or a toe. The relief at being safe for the time being from those coiling tentacles was too great. His skin dripped a cold sweat from head to foot.

His plan had worked. He was where he had to be to learn to operate the machine and then drive it away from the city. But awareness of that stayed in the back of his mind for a couple of minutes, while he savored the sheer delight and relief at being alive.

After those minutes Blade gathered his legs under him and rose to his feet. His head promptly banged into the roof of the cabin, hard enough to make him wince and swear. He hunched his shoulders, rubbed the sore spot on his skull, and looked about the cabin.

The machine had obviously been built by and for humans, or at least beings about that size and shape. That was good news. Blade had been too busy to consider the problems of operating a machine designed for a crew with seven stalked eyes, four arms, three legs, and a prehensile tail. But they would have been nasty problems. He was perfectly happy not to have to face them.

The layout of the controls was a model of simple design. Six screens on the forward wall of the cabin. No doubt they showed views in four directions plus up and down when they were turned on. A control panel with various dials and large switches. A black-enameled wheel on a central shaft in front of a leather-upholstered seat. Three more control levers sprouting from the shaft.

Blade sat down in the chair and fastened the seat belt snugly around his waist. His first few efforts to control the machine would probably be a bit erratic. He didn't want to be splattered all over the cabin if the thing turned over or started doing loops. Then he examined the switches and levers more closely.

One was most likely the main power control. The dial above it glowed silvery blue for about a quarter of the way across its face. Blade left that one strictly alone for the moment.

Of the three levers on the control column, the bottom one had a purple b.u.t.ton on top. Blade left that one alone too. The color suggested it might be the firing b.u.t.ton for the machine's ray-weapon.

Of the other two, one had a silvery zig zag on its black handle. Blade had to study it for a while before he realized that the silvery zigzag looked like a stylized metal leg. It would be the control for starting and stopping the machine's four metal legs. The computer probably took care of controlling their movements on a continuous basis.

Probably. Blade wished he didn't have to use that word so often. But what else to do? It would be silly to press the wrong b.u.t.ton and blow himself and the machine all over the plain. But it would be a d.a.m.ned sight sillier to sit here doing nothing, after going to so much trouble to get into the machine in the first place!

Blade grasped the leg-control lever and wiggled it gently. it would not go forward or sideways. Even more gently he pulled it back. A shudder ran through the machine and the grating of badly lubricated metal echoed in the control cabin. The machine shuddered again, then lurched upward with clanking and clashing noises as the legs extended themselves. The machine settled down again as the legs bent. Then it rose and fell in a steady, slightly wobbling rhythm as the legs settled down to "walking" across the plain.

Blade took his hand off the lever. It made no difference to the steady gait of the metal legs. He leaned forward, found the switches to activate the screens, and turned them on. The screen overlooking the view of the city showed the smoke billowing still thicker and still higher, and the other two war machines still standing motionless. So far no one seemed to have noticed that the third war machine was walking off on its own. Blade suspected that he had better be ready to leave in a hurry when somebody did notice it.

Blade pulled the lever farther back. The speed of the legs increased, and so did the shuddering of the machine. It began to corkscrew around both axes at once. Blade pushed the lever forward. Obviously the machine couldn't walk too fast without risk of something vital shaking loose.

The legs slowed. Blade looked at the screens again. It seemed that the whole city must be aflame now, although Blade found it hard to believe there could be that much left to burn in the long-deserted buildings. The noise must be terrific, but none of it got through the hull of the war machine. It was like watching a particularly eerie silent movie.

Then Blade saw something gleaming and metallic flash near the base of one of the nearer towers. He watched more closely, not sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

They weren't. Something large and metallic was moving slowly out of the city toward the open plain. Blade kept his eyes on the screen. What was emerging looked like an enormous slab-sided box with a large square turret on top. Blade could see no other signs of weapons, tentacles, or legs. But to loom so large at this distance, the new arrival must be three or four times the size of the war machine.

One thing was certain. It was time for Blade to try operating the antigravity and find out just how high and fast this war machine would go. He didn't want to have to learn with somebody shooting at him.

He bent forward, and one long arm reached out to the lever under the large dial to the right of the control column. It was at the bottom of its slot. Blade took a firm grip on it and pushed it upward.

Instantly a new humming and vibration filled the cabin. Then a light over the large dial on the left side, the power dial, lit up. The machine seemed to heave itself upward, then sag down again onto its legs. Somewhere a warning signal sounded with a fast, angry beep-beep-beep-beeeeeee that swiftly rose to an ear-torturing screech.

Blade pulled the lever back down. Instantly the signal died away and the light over the main power dial went dark. Blade flicked his eyes across the control panel, then relaxed. What he had done wrong was almost childishly simple. He hadn't realized that lifting the machine on its antigravity might take more power than walking it on its legs.

He reached for the main power control and slowly opened it until about two-thirds of the dial above glowed blue. Then he grasped the lift control a second time and pushed it upward.

Again the war machine heaved itself upward. But this time it went on rising slowly. On the screens Blade saw the ground slowly dropping away and the dark smashed-down trail the machine left in the gra.s.s behind it.

Blade let the machine rise until it was about thirty feet above the ground. Then he inched the lift control back down until the machine stopped rising and hovered as steadily as a rock.

Blade turned back to the screens. The big square machine was now well out from the city. It seemed to be moving slowly and steadily toward the center of the triangle that had been formed by the three war machines. A second large machine was emerging from the city. The turret on top of the first one was now clearly visible. It bristled with antennae and lenses. In the center of one side was a large black tube.

Blade decided it was time to test out his machine somewhat more. He didn't like the purposeful way the two big machines were moving out from the city. If they were armed in proportion to their size, he didn't want to play sitting duck for their weapons.

The bottommost of the three levers on the control column could only move horizontally. That made it the most likely candidate for sending the machine forward and backward. Once again Blade's hand gently closed on a lever and moved it. For a moment there was no sign or sensation of anything happening. Then, in the rearward-looking screen, Blade saw that the gra.s.s below was slowly drifting away behind him. He was on the move.

He fed in more power and shoved the speed control up farther. Now the plain rolled toward him at an increasing clip. He guessed he must be hitting close to thirty miles an hour. The machine's ma.s.sive weight still kept it as steady in the air as if it were running on rails.

Blade took the control wheel firmly in both hands and twisted it to the right. The plain slid across the screens and the floor of the cabin tilted as the machine swung around in the same direction. Blade turned the wheel left. The machine swung back on course, then over to the left. Blade looked at the speed control, tempted to open it wider. He resisted the temptation. He didn't yet know enough about controlling this machine or its power.

A faint whistle sounded high overhead, from outside the machine. It rose in seconds to an ear-splitting shriek. Something trailing grayish white smoke plunged out of the sky and struck the plain a mile ahead. No explosion, only an enormous ma.s.s of red smoke rolling and boiling up. Moments later Blade's machine wobbled slightly in midair, then started to slow down of its own accord. The dance of the lights on the control board began again.

Blade noticed that the speed lever was sliding backward and that the machine seemed to be sinking toward the ground. He reached for the lift control and shoved it back to its previous position. Then he pushed the speed control forward again. By the time the machine pa.s.sed through the cloud of red smoke, it was moving as fast as before.

The temptation to make a run for it was growing in Blade. It was obvious that the red smoke rocket had been some sort of signal to the machine to stop and land. The computer had been doing just that when he overrode it. That override would be a signal to the other machines that something was wrong in this one. Blade wanted to find out what they would do next, and for that he knew he would have to stay around for a while. On the other hand, he had to get away if he wanted to study this machine at leisure and in detail. He was d.a.m.ned if he did and d.a.m.ned if he didn't. He was also a man who hated to turn his back on an opponent, even for the best of reasons.

So he did not speed up. But he did lift the machine until it was some fifty feet up. Then he started zigzagging, making sharp turns at irregular intervals. He was not going to be an easy target, if he had to be one.

A minute pa.s.sed, a second, then a third. Blade's teeth were locked tight together with the strain of waiting. When were they going to shoot, if they were? Or maybe they weren't? Maybe he had succeeded in overloading whatever tracking computer the other machines might have? Maybe-?

The howl of an incoming rocket sounded from above. This time the burst came off to the right, less than a hundred yards away. Ma.s.ses of earth and gra.s.s flew into the air on top of a vast cloud of gray brown smoke. This time the blast wave in the air s.n.a.t.c.hed at Blade's machine like a terrier grabbing a rat in its jaws.

The machine lurched wildly, tilting far over to the left. If Blade hadn't been strapped in, he would have sailed out of the chair and smashed into the wall hard enough to break every bone in his body. He clutched the control wheel, his knuckles standing out white. Now he knew what weapons the big machines carried. Now it was time to- Another rocket hit, this time a hundred yards almost directly behind him. The blast practically stood Blade's machine on its nose. By sheer reflex he pulled the control wheel backward. The machine straightened out of its dive just above the gra.s.s.

Blade threw a quick glance behind him. For the moment the machines firing at him were invisible behind the smoke from the second burst. Was he invisible to them?

Probably not. Very likely they carried radar or something like it to track him. But neither radar nor the human eye could see over the horizon. If he stayed low as he ran- Before he had completed the thought, his hand was shoving the speed control all the way forward in one smooth motion.

A giant rubbery fist shoved him back hard into the control chair. On the screens the plain suddenly turned flat, featureless, seemingly as bare as a tabletop. The smoke cloud from the second burst shrank as if by magic. The towers of the abandoned city dwindled to toys, sank down toward the horizon, and vanished. In the dim distance behind him, Blade saw a third rocket burst in a third tree of smoke. But he neither heard nor felt anything. Then the last smoke vanished and he was alone in the machine as it raced away over the plain.

How fast was he moving? There was no speed indicator he could read. But from the blur below him, he knew he must be going not much less than four hundred miles an hour.

Four hundred miles an hour, in a machine with the strength and some of the weapons of a tank. The builders of this machine had built something worth studying, no matter how badly they seemed to have maintained it.

And after he had studied the machine, perhaps he should try studying its makers? Blade grinned. That might be a good idea, if he could ever find them. For all he had seen, he might be the only human being alive in this dimension. But it was going to be interesting nonetheless.

Chapter 8.

Blade kept the machine low and fast for a while, partly to be sure he was completely out of range, partly to test the machine's power. By the time he slowed down, even the miles-high cloud of smoke rising above the city had long since dropped below the horizon.

Blade slowed down to about two hundred miles an hour and climbed to a hundred feet. He could now see for miles across the plains and there was far less danger of the ground suddenly and disastrously rising to meet him. The machine looked indestructible but probably wasn't. Blade knew he certainly wasn't.

From the position of the sun Blade guessed he must be heading almost due west. An hour later he came to a stop and landed. By that time he knew he must be a good three hundred miles from the city. If anyone was going to chase him, they would almost certainly have done so long since. As far as he could tell, he was alone on the plain.

Blade did not bother deploying the legs, but simply brought the machine down on its metal belly. It rocked back and forth once or twice, then dug itself into the earth with its own weight. Blade unstrapped himself and began examining the machine more carefully.

The first thing he looked for was food and water. He was not particularly hungry. But he was as thirsty as if he had been marooned in a desert for three weeks. Fortunately the first thing to turn up was a water tap lurking under the control panel, complete with plasticlike cups. Blade emptied his cup seven or eight times before he stopped feeling thirsty.

After that Blade scrambled up into the turret and examined the controls for the ray-tube. They were as simply and carefully laid out as the main controls. After a few minutes Blade felt he could hit anything he aimed at with the purple ray. What the ray would do when it hit was still very much a mystery.

In lockers on either side of the hatch Blade found boxes and cans of concentrated food, as well as sets of clothing. The food was just edible, like emergency rations in every dimension. The clothing was obviously combat uniforms of some sort, camouflaged coveralls with heavy padding from throat to groin, and knee-length boots. The belts, packs, and helmets were made of something that looked like leather but weighed a good deal more. When it came to finding an outfit that he could get into comfortably, Blade had his usual struggle. There were times when he couldn't help wishing he was about three inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter.

There were no hand weapons, but there were a couple of businesslike knives on each belt. There was also a long sharp-pointed tool, rather like a short crowbar with a heavy needle on the end. Blade realized that this was probably the tool for opening the hatch from the outside. After pressing the b.u.t.ton to release the hatch and climbing outside, a quick test confirmed his guess. Now he could climb in and out of the machine without having to let those grisly tentacles fumble over him.

He turned on the power, lifted the machine into the air, and headed west again.

The sun sank down toward the horizon, swelling and turning from yellow to orange and from orange to red as it did so. Blade began to think about landing for the night. He did not want to push on in the darkness and risk missing something important or suddenly running out of power.

Then on the plain two miles ahead he saw the hors.e.m.e.n.

There were at least twenty of them. Blade's machine was coming at them out of the twilight, so he saw them before they saw him. But when they did see him, they scattered in all directions, as fast as their horses would carry them.

Blade swooped down and examined the fleeing riders on the screens. All the horses were of the same kind-heavy-chested, heavy-rumped, short-legged, s.h.a.ggy. They looked enormously tough. They also looked like the horses whose skeletons Blade had seen near the city.

The riders, on the other hand, were unmistakably of three different peoples, apparently the same three whose skeletons Blade had found along with the horses. Some were as stockily built as their mounts. Others were tall and graceful, and most of them were unmistakably women. Still others seemed to be combinations of the first two.

Then one tall rider's horse put a foot wrong and stumbled. The rider went sailing out of the saddle and sprawled on the gra.s.s as his horse bolted. In the fall the rider's leather cap came off, revealing a totally bald head. The man turned a grimy, deeply lined face up toward the approaching machine. Blade could see terror on the man's face, terror that fought with a grim determination not to show it to a hated and despised enemy.

Blade's hands danced over the controls, swinging the machine in a wide circle around the bald man. There was something familiar about the bald man-not as an individual, but as a type. Memory stirred in Blade, forming more precise images.

Blade could have sworn he was looking at a neuter of Tharn!

The man's garb was barbaric, his face was filthy and aged by strain and fear. But the bald head, the thin neck and limbs, the great intent eyes-if this wasn't a neuter of Tharn, what was it? And where was he?

Blade decided he'd been offered a perfect opportunity to find out where he was. A quick glance at the screens showed the hors.e.m.e.n still heading for the horizon as fast as their mounts could cover ground. They were already far out of bowshot. Soon they would be clear out of sight. The bald man below carried a short sword and a knife in his belt, but no bow. Nor did he look like a fighter, with his spindly limbs.

Blade's hands moved again. The machine spiraled down in a tighter and tighter circle, until it touched down on the gra.s.s less than fifty feet from the neuter. No-from the bald man. Blade told himself sharply not to let his hopes rise. The man might be the image of a neuter of Tharn, but it was long odds against his actually being one.

But the impossible had been known to happen, a small voice in the back of Blade's mind put in.

Blade unstrapped himself, rose, and stretched. Then he went to the locker and pulled out a helmet with knives and a hatch-key. He wouldn't need any other weapons or protection against this man.

He drank several cups of water, found a canteen, filled it, and added it to the gear hanging from his belt. He looked at the screen again. The bald man was standing knee-deep in the gra.s.s, motionless, his arms crossed on his chest. He looked like a man resigned to his fate, but still slightly bewildered by the suddenness of it all. Or was he bewildered by the absence of subsonics and the hypnotic light? He must have realized by now that there was something unusual about this machine's behavior.

Blade stepped to the hatch and jabbed the b.u.t.ton in the center. The hatch swung open and the cool evening breezes flowed in and played pleasantly over his bare skin. He stepped out onto the rear platform, closed the hatch behind him, and turned to look at the man.

The man was staring wide-eyed at Blade. His hands had dropped to his sides and Blade could see them shaking slightly. The man's tongue was creeping back and forth over trembling lips. Whatever he had been expecting to crawl out of the machine, Blade was certainly not it!

Blade stepped down off the platform and strode through the gra.s.s toward the bald man. As he moved he spread his arms wide and kept his empty hands in clear sight, in an unmistakable gesture of peace. There was no danger for him in that. Blade suspected that he could break this man in two with his bare hands, if it became necessary. He hoped it wouldn't.

The bald man froze as Blade started toward him. When Blade was twenty feet away the other swallowed convulsively several times, then spoke.

"You-you are of the Looters?"

Blade stopped in mid-stride so suddenly that he nearly fell on his nose in the gra.s.s. The man's speech had come out in a series of clicks, whistles, and trills. Yet Blade's brain had registered them as plain English words.

That was a miracle, but it was a miracle that Blade was used to by now. The computer altered his brain each time he entered a new dimension, so that he could both understand and speak the language there. How this happened was something still poorly understood even by Lord Leighton and the high-powered doctors and linguists on the Project Dimension X staff. But this was not the miracle that stopped Blade dead in his tracks.

That series of clicks, whistles, and trills was unmistakably the language of Tharn.

He was back in Tharn.

He had returned to a dimension he had once visited.

Chapter 9.

For a long moment Blade stood as motionless as the neuter. The realization of what had happened was too overpowering for him to do anything else. It flooded into his mind and completely absorbed his attention. He could not have moved or spoken to save his life.

At last he cleared his mind of the shock and bewilderment. His eyes focused again on the neuter. He replied in the same clicks, whistles, and trills the neuter had used.

"I am no Looter, whatever they may be. I have come to Tharn from another land, for other purposes than those of the Looters."

The neuter quivered all over as though he had just been stabbed. Then he clasped his hands together until their calloused and grimy knuckles stood out white and the fingers knotted together stopped shaking. It was his turn to speak.

"How is it that you know the true name of this land?"

Blade smiled. He had to fight to keep the smile from turning into a foolish grin. "I have been in Tharn before. I saw the great battle with the Pethcines, and saw them perish by the thousands. I saw the end of the power and the destruction of Urcit. Then I went away. I have traveled far since then, but now I have returned to Tharn. Now I have returned." Blade was having trouble keeping complete control of his voice. The first overpowering surprise was pa.s.sing now. In its place was a swelling exaltation, bubbling up inside him like vintage champagne in a gla.s.s.

They had done it! After all the time and money wasted on a dozen schemes to bring about a controlled return, he was back in a dimension he had visited before! Back in Tharn, by pure accident. Or was it pure accident? He had been thinking of Tharn as the computer gripped his brain. A clear image of Zulekia, the Maiduke girl he had loved, the girl he had left carrying his child, had been floating before his eyes as he was whirled away from Home Dimension. Did this possibly have something to do with where he had landed?

Possibly. But that was a question for Lord Leighton, back in Home Dimension. For the moment he had landed in Tharn, on his own, as he had always been. But in Tharn he had been Mazda, HE WHO CAME TO THEY. He had been given G.o.dlike reverence even before he turned Tharn upside down, ended the power, slaughtered the Pethcines, and finally helped bring about the destruction of Urcit, the great city of Tharn.

A thought struck Blade. Could he be sure that Mazda was remembered with favor, considering how much destruction he had wrought in Tharn? It had been needed to break the mold which had caught and frozen Tharn for centuries, the mold that held people, neuters, Maidukes, bearer maidens, ceboids, and even the Pethcines. They had all been dying in that mold. But what he'd wrought was destruction nonetheless.

Blade remembered the battlefield littered with the corpses of men, women, and horses, the smoke boiling up from Urcit as the explosion of the power pool destroyed it, the screams of the maimed and dying. Was it possible that Mazda would be remembered as a force for evil, who had brought destruction and death when he came to his people?

Blade could not really blame the people of Tharn if that was their att.i.tude. But he had to find out, preferably before he came up against some Tharnians who would take vengeance on Mazda by filling him full of spears and arrows on the spot.