Because my head was on backward! "It is that as

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records may err, so may persons. Tashin, who would be- come, thinks of much, and says in error. It is that Tashin would become."

The rigamarole was back on track. "You who visit, see no more the one who brought you." A robed figure led Eeshta and Limila inside . . . and there was nothing Bar- ton could do about it.

"You who would become, may you become as you wish." The cloth bag; Barton took it. "This is to use by those who do not become, no shame to their eggs."

Barton remembered to do the erect curtsey before fol- lowing his own guide to the great ship. Only then did he venture to feel the cloth bag, to determine the outlines of the object within.

It was a knife in there-a sharply pointed, two-edged dagger.

Inside the ship Barton paused, stunned. Seeing his guide hesitate, he programmed himself to follow auto- matically. But his mind rocked, bombarded by the total impact of the place.

It wasn't the flood of colors, which flashed and changed and flowed along every surface. It wasn't the thunderous music-or what would have been music, to anyone who heard mostly in the subsonic range. He thought: but the Demu's hearing extends above ours, not below. It wasn't the strange scents of the air, or its shimmer ....

Barton had once attended a showing of Escher's works-M. C. Escher, the man who drew in more that three dimensions, who twisted space so that one man walked on a surface that was another's vertical wall, and each validly oriented to the viewer's perspective. And more-Barton had been amazed and delighted by the exhibit. But now he found himself in an Escherlike en- vironment-one little figure among many, madly juxta- posed.

And which way was up? Shimmering air and vast dis- tances diluted the reality of what he saw. But surely, there-at the farthest reach of vision-six Demu walked in single file, taking their slanting course up a vertical wall.

He looked up. and was shocked-where was the top of what he could see? Two hundred meters above? Five hundred? The great ship was much taller, but still ....

And the space was half-empty, half-filled with spirals

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and ribbons, floating circles, moving shapes that inter- locked and moved apart again. Barton's attention was caught by a meter-wide ribbon, probably metal, that stretched like a twisted length of crepe paper almost ver- tically from the floor to a vanishing poiot high above, where other objects hid it. Perhaps twenty meters above him, a Demu walked sure-footedly down its spiraled course-while on the ribbon's other side, another, up- ward bound, passed the first-each unseeing and oblivi- ous of the other, each body extending nearly horizontal from the double footpath.

Savagely,1 Barton shook his head. All right, he said to himself, so they have artificial gravity on any individual surface they damn well please. Quit acting like a coun- try boy at the nudies, and watch it!

Still following the Demu guide, he looked 'around, trying to find Limila and Eeshta. Impossible-robes and hoods, shimmering air, shifting lights and colors-well, it all helped his own disguise, too, for what that was worth.

After about twenty minutes his guided path ap- proached the center of the place. There, something new was added-on the floor were two circles, each nearly two meters in diameter and the same distance apart. One was brightly opalescent, the other a deep, throbbing red- purple. Demu moved onto the lighter one and rose ver- tically, visibly unsupported. From above, others drifted down onto the darker one. Beats the hell. Barton thought, out of waiting for elevators, -i

Barton was led- to the opalescent up-circle. If I could think of anything better to do, he thought, I'd do it. But he couldn't-he followed his leader, who gave the pre- ceding Demu about three meters' vertical head start be- fore entering the circle. Noting, Barton did the same.

As he began to rise he heard a cry: "Eeshfa!" The ^ voice was Hishtoo's, and if Barton could have jumped down he would have done so, even from the height he'd reached before the voice registered. But if -there was a way to move out of the path of the lift force, he didn't know it All he could do was realize how thoroughly he had managed to trap the lot of them.

He rose and rose-above the open volume, into space divided by levels. He looked up and saw Demu entering and leaving the lift-the way to leave, he saw, was to

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reach an arm toward one of the large metal rings that bordered the lift-space at each level. Barton quit cursing his ignorance-down below, where he had wanted out, there were no such rings. He was on the express, and no help for it. Forever and a little longer, he rose.

Above, his guide whistled a signal. Not exactly a whistle, but close. Barton looked up again; the top of the shaft was near. By choice, he did not look down- not even to see if Hishtoo were following.

The guide reached toward a ring, drifted to it and grasped it, and stepped out onto solidity. Moments later, Barton did the same. Then-only then-he looked down.

He couldn't see the bottom, only rising figures in di- minishing perspective. None were looking up; if Hish- too was among them, Barton couldn't identify him.

The guide touched his robed arm, and he straightened and looked around. A Demu approached and entered I- the down-shaft, paying Barton no special attention. The ^ lighting was steady here, a pale yellow with occasional

(bursts of orange, and the music was faint.

Barton was led along a corridor that was out of Escher by Dali- It was not long; Barton guessed that they might y be near the pointed top of the great ship, where space would be limited. The only door, at the end of the corri- dor, was black and featureless-shocking, by contrast, in its very simplicity. The guide reached toward it and pushed; it moved only enough to indicate that it was not locked. .

"It is," said the Demu, "that here, in the place of be- coming, you become-or do not. I am become; now I bring others who would." It gestured toward Barton's cloth bag. "For those who do not become, no shame to the eggs. It is said-I go."

Barton entered the room and closed the door-there was no lock. Slipping the bag and its knife inside his belt, he turned and looked around the room.

The lighting was steady and adequate, but not bril- liant-the sourceless light he remembered from the cage on Ashura, and the Demu ship. There were none of the color effects he'd seen below.

The room, though large, was simple-black floor gray walls, white ceiling. And the room contained nothini but the pictures on its walls and the pedestaled statue

that crowded its floor. Puzzled, Barton began an inspec- tion tour of the strangest art gallery he'd ever seen.

Demu were portrayed repeatedly, though subtly dif- ferent from the way Barton knew them, and never clothed. But the predominant life form shown, among several others, was one Barton had never seen nor ever imagined. It had too many arms and legs, too many eyes.

It was not spiderlike-it was simply a large humanoid with too many arms and legs. too many eyes.

Barton looked, and looked. And then-he saw.

He took out the two-way radio, hoping to God that the great ship's hull was pervious to its special type of emis- sion.

"Ship One! Barton to Ship One!"

"Ship One here-Abdul speaking. What-?"

"First things first-tape this!" Quickly he told what he had seen, was seeing-and what it meant.

"Got it, Abdul? . . . Okay, put it on the beam for Thirteen and Thirty-four, along with the landing warning. But coded, under seal. And the following in- structions ..."

Abdul read it back; then there was a brief, silent pause. "It's going out now. But not with the landing warning-Thirteen and Thirty-four arrived this morning;

they are overhead, in synchronous orbit. Do you wish one or both to pursue the escaped Demu ship?"

"No. I think we win or lose it, right here."

"Very well. Barton-I assume you are all right?"

"Remains to be seen-so far, I'm unharmed and un- detected. Limila and Eeshta, though-we got separated, earlier-a ritual thing, takes too long to explain." He shook his head; that line of thought could freeze his mind. "Anything new at your end?"

"Approximately an hour ago, more than one hundred Demu approached, from the direction opposite to you."

"Armed how?"

"Hand weapons only, except for a self-propelled unit ridden by one Demu."

"Portable Shield maybe, like our bigger ones?"

"No, Barton. The vehicle passed the perimeter of our sleep-field; the driver fell off, and it stopped. Approxi- mately - half the Demu also entered the field and dropped; the other half have been busy, trying to retrieve them. Some have fired their hand weapons at the ship,

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but without effect. Naturally, we are alert for a major attack, with larger weapons or by ships."

"Five gets you ten, it won't happen."