Yet near the shining barrier itself there was movement Near one end of the wall, closest to Blade, was a large structure built of the same metal as the gate. Through its doors the figures constantly came and went. Blade frowned. If they were men — and they moved and looked like men — they were the strangest he had ever seen. They were made of metal and they glistened in the last rays of sunlight f ailing over the great wall.

Blade frowned and considered. Then he had it, given the hint by the very faint awkwardness of articulation. These Kropes, if they were Kropes, moved with an arthritic stiffness.

Robots!

Blade studied the figures for a long time, checking and doublechecking, then accepted it as fact. He was up against robots. Mechanical and electronic men.

That meant a central control. Blade took the risk of standing on his crag and, shading his eyes with a hand, sought to find again what he in one fleeting second thought he had seen. Something floating in the clouds far away over the plain.

He did see it. Saw it for a microsecond before the low clouds closed in again. The very tip of a tower, the spire of a tall building far away, the upthrust lance of a skyscraper that took his breath away. Then it was gone, wrapped in moist clouds, but not before he had made a rapid triangulation and worked it out in his head. He slipped down to his rock again and did the computation over and did not believe himself. And yet he had seen it.

The tower he had seen must be twice as high, plus a little, as the Empire State Building!

Central control.

He shook off his awe and turned to tactics, to practical things. And was in luck. Within five minutes he had located a possible way around the steel barrier. The Kropes were careless, or their control inefficient, for at the end of the wall nearest Blade, where the wall abutted on the sheer cliffside of the valley, erosion had taken a minute toll. But it was enough. Centuries of rain and wind had so eaten away the living rock that a narrow and shallow trench had been dredged between the end of the wall and the cliff. One resolute man might worm and squeeze his way through. Blade marked it well and began his descent, thankful for the moon that would rise soon. It would take Mm nearly all night to get down from his perch.

It lacked two hours of dawn when he rejoined the Jedds. The orders he had given Gath and Kaven had been carried out to the letter. The main body of the column had camped far back in the valley, protected by its twisting and turning course, and out of sight of the Shining Gate.

Kaven and Gath, along with Captains Crofta and Holferne, met Blade a mile north of the camp as had been arranged. They were accompanied by a few Jedd soldiers carrying torches. Blade fell into step with the captains.

«Put out all torches before we round the next bend,» he told Crofta. «For there we will be in sight of the wall.»

When Crofta had left to execute the order, Blade looked at Gath. «All is done as I wished?»

«It has been done, Sire. Not without difficulty. We had to kill several of the Api before the others would obey.»

«That is no matter. And Nizra? The Wise One? How is he taking it?»

Kaven laughed. «In silence, Sire. He sits in his iron cage, with that huge melon head of his sunken low, and will say not a word.»

Blade smiled. «I can understand that. You have not allowed him to be tormented?»

Gath shook his head. «No, Sire, though it has not been easy. I have had to station a guard around his cage to keep the people from stoning him and poking sharp sticks into his cage.»

For a moment Blade made no comment, then he said, «Let us go and have a look, then. It will be dawn soon.»

The little party halted at the next bend of the valley. False dawn tossed pearly shadows on the cliffs to their left as they sought concealment among the rocks and boulders littering the valley floor. Blade kept Gath and Kaven with him.

From their vantage they could look straight down the valley to the Shining Wall. Just in front of them was a narrow cut, and beyond it the valley floor ran fairly level to the wall. Crofta's engineers had erected a fence of sharpened iron stakes across the cut and beyond this, between it and the wall itself, were half the Api captives. They milled about in confusion or sat in groups and chittered in their high feminine voices. Nearest the wall, in a small iron cage so constructed as to be carried on poles, sat the Wise One, Nizra. In the faint light Blade could make out, barely, the slumped figure of the former High Minister, the great head sunken forward on the scrawny chest. The Api, for reasons of their own, stayed well away from the cage.

Guinea pigs, Blade thought. They were expendable. He had a moment of pity for the brute Api, who had only followed orders, and no pity at all for Nizra. By his orders Ooma had been raped, tortured and flung into the charnel pit.

The light grew steadily. Soon they would know. Blade, watching Nizra intently, saw the big head come erect as the man gazed around. Nizra knew what was happening and why he was there. He also knew he was being watched. As a first ray of sunlight lanced into the valley and splotched golden on the cliff walls, the Wise One lifted his puny fist and shook it at Blade and the other watchers. He knew. He was defiant to the last.

Full dawn. Broad daylight and nothing happened. Blade frowned and stared at the glistening steel wall that dammed the end of the valley. Could he have been so wrong about the danger? It had been a hundred years or more since the last Jedd exploring party had been this way. Things could have changed and—

It was over before Blade and his party could see what really happened. A huge ball of blinding white light, shaming the sun, rolled out from the steel wall and burst over the Api and the iron cage. It vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. For a moment the morning air was tainted with the harsh acridity of scorched flesh, then even that was gone.

Everything was gone. Nizra, the iron cage, the Api — all had vanished. Not even bones remained. There was, where they had lived but a second before, just the faintest trace of scorching, of burnt earth, nothing else. Blade nodded to himself and drew farther back into concealment. Some sort of ray. Disintegration ray. Control, somewhere beyond the steel wall — probably in the tower Blade had spotted — was not asleep.

And now Blade knew. Knew what he must do. Alone.

Gath and Kaven, at his side, were stricken with fear and awe. He did not blame them. They were the bravest of the Jedds, but this thing they had just seen was too much for them to cope with. Blade smiled at them and smote Gath on a shoulder.

«It will be all right. I will see to it. Now give the order to turn back. Quietly, and stay out of sight of the wall.»

The journey back to the Jedd camp was a somber one. Little was said. Blade, his mind crowded with plans, stalked on ahead and the captains, sensing his mood, left him alone.

He did not go at once to the tent where Mitgu waited. Instead he sent for servants and was barbered and washed and arrayed in fresh clothes. When at last he entered the royal tent, the little Empress — for Mitgu was now Jeddock and Blade her Regent — was anxiously awaiting him. With her first words Blade knew that the servants' grapevine had been at work. He never ceased to marvel at its efficiency. Anything he did, or had done to him, was known immediately among the people. Sometimes before he had even had a chance to weigh and judge the matter.

Mitgu, her naked golden body gleaming beneath a near-transparent coverlet, stretched her arms to him and laughed in relief. «Sire — Sire! You have come to me. I–I feared. I have been told an awful tale of—»

He stood tall beside her pallet, looking down at this miniature beauty, his child-wife, with a half frown and half smile. «Put it out of your mind, Empress. Servants lie, and when they cannot think of a lie they make one up.»