He would not meet Blade's eyes. Blade touched his shoulder and said, «And the rest of it, Captain? Tell me.»

Gath looked directly at him and the skin about his blue eyes crinkled. «I have my own spies, Sire. And they have brought me reports about Sesi. For long now I have thought he was Nizra's man, but I had no proof and so gave him leave to hang himself. So, on hearing all I heard, I myself went to call upon Nizra.»

Blade felt sudden shock. He frowned. «You did not kill him?»

Gath tried to look innocent, failed at it and broke into laughter. «Not I. He is well and secure a prisoner. The thing is — he may have a few cuts and bruises. Nothing that will not heal in time.»

«That is good. I thank you, Gath. You saved me this day and it will not be forgotten. But there is one thing—»

Gath, on the point of turning away to attend to business, halted and looked back. «And that is, Sire?»

Blade grinned. «Next time do not leave it so long. I thought you would never get here.»

Blade made his way down the hill alone, oblivious of the stares of Gath's men and the defiant snarls of the Api prisoners. He went to the smoking charnel pit and looked into it, near to gagging on the sulfurous fumes and sick at his stomach. Row and criss-crossed row they stretched away, the lines of fire-blackened bodies. Blade leaped into the pit and began to search along the paths left by the corpseburners.

It was half an hour before he found the ravaged little body of Ooma with the marks of savage torture everywhere on that once smooth and tender flesh. She had not been burnt and for this much he was grateful. He picked up the frail body and carried it out of the pit and, avoiding the hill, skirted around it and walked until he came to a melon tree growing out of the ruined pavement of a long-forgotten temple.

Blade put her body down and stood gazing at it for a moment. One of her crude wooden combs was still caught in the dark tangle of hair. His face flamed, he choked, and was not ashamed of the hot tears crowding behind his eyes. For a moment he was blinded by the moisture, and the old temple, the courtyard and the single melon tree, disappeared in a scalding haze. Blade gulped, cursed himself softly and began to work.

He knelt and tore out the ancient stones with his hands. He scooped a grave in the soft earth below and placed Ooma in it. He arranged the small, twisted limbs as best he could and covered her face with a bit of his tunic. Then, for a minute or so, he stood looking down at her.

At last he took a double handful of the earth and let it spray through his fingers onto her body. He did not speak aloud, but in his mind he said, «Goodbye, Ooma.»

He filled in the grave, replaced the stones atop h, and left it unmarked. He would never come this way again.

Then Richard Blade trod wearily back up the bill to where Gath and his men were waiting to march.

Chapter Seventeen

Two weeks passed. A week of preparation and a week on the march. Blade, encapsuled in work, sleeping but two or three hours a day, was so snared by the flow of time that he forgot it. Jeddia was burned and he married the Child Princess Mitgu who, on their wedding night, proved no child after all. As dawn broke, Blade was near exhaustion and salved his conscience by admitting that a Jedd girl of ten was like a woman of thirty in Home Dimension. Mitgu had been a virgin, had bled copiously, but if she felt pain it in no way dimmed her ardor. And when she left him alone at last and he tried to sleep he was stricken with new head pains as the computer probed for him. The pains were fierce but short-lived. Lord L had missed him again.

This bright morning Blade, accompanied by Captains Gath and Kaven, had gone far ahead of the long column of trekking Jedds. They were nearing the valley mouth to the north, where the ascending terrain tunneled through a narrow gut and spread out in a broad and spreading plain. And there the way was barred by the Shining Gate.

Now, high on a crag, the three men stood and gazed, near blinded by the darling reflection of the sun on metal. Both Gath and Kaven were astounded and afraid at the sight. Blade was only astounded. He recognized at once that the gate, dam, wall or rampart — call it what you would — was of stainless steel. Half a mile across and some two hundred feet high, it blocked the valley mouth. There was no sign of life on or near it. Desolate, towering, brooding, it shimmered in the heat and mirrored the valley in itself.

Some of the desolation touched Blade and by the alchemy of time and place was turned to loneliness. It was his first leisure in weeks and now it turned sour — he sensed the beginning of an end. What the end would be he could not guess. He recognized the pattern as before, the ever upward terrain, the sense of forward progress, of wandering through the evolutionary process with eons compressed into days and weeks.

None of this could he share with his companions. No more than he could explain to them that the dam, or wall, or gate was of steel and so the Kropes who had built it must be an industrial people. There must lie, beyond that shining barrier, a highly sophisticated civilization.

Gath said, «And now, Sire Blade, now that we have reached the Shining Gate — what?»

Kaven peered at Blade anxiously, the same question in his eyes. He was awe-stricken and afraid and trying not to show it. His sword arm, still heavily bandaged, was in a sling fashioned by Blade.

Blade did not answer for a moment. His eye was on another crag, a jagged, bent needle of stone that reared far overhead and, he was certain, would overlook the shining barrier. After studying it for a minute he turned to them with a grim smile.

«Don't ask me riddles. You have never seen a Krope?»

Both men said they had not. No Jedd had actually ever seen a Krope. In long years past a few exploring parties had been sent up the valley to the wall. None had ever returned, No word had ever been sent. The Shining Gate spoke in silence. Stay clear.

Blade nodded. «They why ask me? I know as little as you Jedds. But I intend to find out» He pointed to the hook of stone outlined far over them. «From that vantage I can see over the wall.»

Both Jedds gazed up, craning their necks, then said in disbelief, «It cannot be done, Sire. No man could climb that.»

«I can. I will. But it will take me all day, and in the meantime here are orders. Get back to the column and see they are carried out at once.»

When they had gone he made his preparations for the climb. He lay on his belly and studied the terrain for an hour, formulating and discarding various attacks on the crag. For a short period disillusionment set in — this task would make Sir Edmund Hilary, the great mountaineer, himself quail — then Blade chuckled and told himself that he had no choice. Press on. He sensed that his time in this Dimension X was growing short and he still had his job to complete. It was but half done. He had made tools, or had them made, and had explored the mountains as they trekked between the ranges. They were indeed rich in every mineral known to Home Dimension. Blade had tested samples and sealed the knowledge gained away in his memory file for Lord L to unlock and record. And yet there was more to do — he must press on and on, learning all he could, until this mission came to a natural and inevitable end. When that would be he could not know.

The sun was near to setting when at last Blade lay exhausted on the upjutting needle of rock. He had done it and had cheated Death a dozen times in the doing. Now he clung to the smooth gray surface, his fingers and toes digging into crevices, and stared out over the steel wall. With the sun behind him he could see well and clearly.

The vast plain stretched out to infinity. Here and there it was dotted by small houses, also seemingly made of steel, and beyond the houses he saw row on row on row of what looked like huge factory buildings. Yet there were no chimneys, no smoke. And nothing moved. No sound came. It was like an industrial town deserted, a wasteland barren of people, lacking any slightest human touch.