helping her.”
Let appeared to be thinking. He walked over to his bed, sat down, and pressed his heel against the side board. There was a tiny click. Nothing else happened. “Why won’t they open the door?” he asked.
“It’s been locked,” Alter said. Suddenly she looked at the clock beside the Prince’s bed, and turned to the window. Light from the crystal chandelier caught on the shells that were strung on leather thongs around her neck as she turned.
Let put his hand quietly on the newel post of his bed and pressed his thumb hard on the purple garnet that encrusted the crowning ornamental dolphin. Nothing happened except a tiny click.
At the window, Alter reached out her hand, just as a bundle appeared outside on a lowered rope. She pulled them in, untied them, and shook them out as the rope suddenly flew out the window again. “Here,” she said. “Get into these.” It was a suit of rags. She tossed them to him.
Finally Let slipped out of his pajama pants and into the suit.
“Now look in your pocket,” Alter said.
The boy did and took out a bunch of keys.
“You can open the door with those,” Alter said. “Go on.”
Let paused, then went to the door. Before he put the key in the lock though, he bent down and looked through the keyhole. “Hey,” he said, looking back at the girl. “Come here. Do you see anything?”
Alter crossed the room, bent down, and looked. The only motion Let made was to lean against one of the panels on the wall, which gave a slight click. Nothing happened.
“I don’t see anything,” Alter said. “Open the door.”
Let found the proper key, put it in the lock, and the door swung back.
“All right, you kids,” said the guard who was standing on the other side of the door (who incidentally wore a size seventeen uniform), “you come along with me.” He took Let firmly by one arm and Alter by the other and marched them down the hall. “I’m warning you to keep quiet,” the guard said to Let as they turned the last corner.
Three minutes later they were outside the castle. As the guard passed another uniformed man at the Sentry’s post, he said, “More stupid kids trying to break into the palace.”
“What a night,” said the guard and scratched his head. “A girl too?”
“Looks like it,” said the guard who was escorting Alter and the Prince. “I’m taking them to be photographed.”
“Sure,” answered the guard, and saluted.
The two children were marched down the street toward the guard house. Before they got there, they were turned off into a side street. Then suddenly the guard was gone. A black-haired boy with green eyes was coming toward them.
“Is this the Prince?” Tel asked.
“Un-huh,” said Alter.
“Who are you?” Let asked. “Where are you taking me?”
“My name is Tel. I’m a fisherman’s son.”
“My name is Alter,” Alter introduced herself.
“She’s an acrobat,” Tel added.
“I’m the Prince,” Let said. “Really. I’m Prince Let.”
The two others looked at the blond boy who stood in front of them in rags like their own. Suddenly they laughed. The Prince frowned. “Where are you taking me?” he asked again.
“We’re taking you to get something to eat and where you can get a good night’s sleep,” Alter answered. “Come on.”
“If you hurt me, my mother will put you in jail.”
“Nobody’s going to hurt you, silly,” Tel said. “Come on.”
CHAPTER VI
The Duchess of Petra said, “Now, your first direct assignment will be…”
* * * *
Then, the sudden green of beetles’ wings; the red of polished carbuncle; a web of silver fire; lightning and blue smoke. Columns of jade caught red light through the great crack in the roof. The light across the floor was red. Jon felt that there were others with him, but he could not be sure. Before him, on a stone platform, three marble crescents were filled with pulsating shadows. Jon Koshar looked at them, and then away. There were many more columns, most broken.
He saw a huge break in the sanctuary wall. Outside he could look down on an immense red plain. At a scribed line, the plain changed color to an even more luminous red. Near the temple a few geometrical buildings cast maroon pinions of shadow over the russet expanse. Suddenly he realized that the further half of the plain was an immense red sea, yet with a perfectly straight shore line. Calmly it rippled toward the bright horizon.
At the horizon, filling up nearly a quarter of the sky, was what seemed to be a completely rounded mountain of dull red. No, it was a segment of a huge red disk, a great dull sun lipping the horizon of the planet. Yet it was dim enough so that he could stare directly at it without blinking. Above it, the atmosphere was a rich purple.
Then there was a voice from behind him, and he turned to the triple throne once more.
“Hail, hosts of Earth,” the voice began. The very shadows of the room were like red bruises on the stone. “You are in the halls of an extinct city on Creton III. Twelve million years ago this planet housed a civilization higher than yours today. Now it is dead, and only we are left, sitting on their thrones in the twilight of their dying, ruddy sun.”
“Who are you?” demanded Jon, but his voice sounded strange, distorted. As he bit the last word off, another voice broke in.
“What do you really want from us?”
Then a third voice.
“What are you going to do with us?”
Jon looked around but saw no one else. Suddenly another picture, the picture of a world of white desert where the sky was deep blue and each object cast double shadows, filled his mind. “This isn’t the world you took me to before…” he exclaimed.
“No,” came the quiet voice, “this is not the world we took you to before. Listen. We are homeless wanderers of space. Our origin was not only in another galaxy, but in another universe, eternities ago. By way of this universe we can move from star to star without transversing any segment of time, unless we desire. Thus we have dwelt quietly in the dead cities of myriad suns till now. We have never tampered with any living species, though there is something in us that yearns for the extinct cultures.
“Recently according to our standards, though still much older than your solar system, a dark force has come into the universe. It has evolved similarly to us, and also leaps among galaxies in moments. Yet it holds no culture sacred that it finds, and has already tampered with a score of civilizations. It is younger than we are, and can only exist in one individual at a time, while our entity has three lobes, so to speak. This rival thinks nothing
