Sart said, «You must help me, master. Save me. Else I will swear that you did this thing.»

Blade struck him, a terrible blow that knocked Sart sprawling across the chamber. He made no effort to rise but spat out teeth and looked up at Blade.

«I will, master. Blows will not change it. You must kill me or help me, or I will swear to Jantor that you killed his Alixe. He will believe me, for you have been seen quarreling with her. Remember the woman who entered unbidden and saw you striking her?»

Blade regarded him calmly, chin in hand. He was back in control of himself now. There was truth in what the man said. He had quarreled with Alixe and he had struck her; the impatient Gnoman woman had been a witness. Whether she would remember or not, or if her story ever reached Jantor's ears did not much matter now. The die was cast and the crunch was upon him.

Jantor was coming. He had sent word to that effect. Soon or late made no difference. Jantor was coming and he would expect to see his Alixe. Whether or not Sart's story was believed made no real difference. There was the Gnomen law-Blade was responsible for his slave's act.

Blade looked at Sart with distaste. He must use the slave as best he could, for what he had in mind could not be done alone. This was going to take all his skill and cunning and strength.

He kept his voice as calm and friendly as possible. He told Sart to get up. When the man shambled to his feet, looking distrustful, Blade continued in the same calm tone.

«You are right in one thing, Sart. I am in as much trouble as you are so something must be done. Are you man enough to fight for your life?»

Sart nodded. «I will fight, master, but how? We have no bars. We are prisoners. The guard outnumber us many to one. How can we fight?»

«Come,» ordered Blade. «We will speak elsewhere. I do not like this place.»

He lighted the way out of the chamber. He saw Sart glance once at the slight body in the corner and again make the sign of the fylfot. Blade led the way to Sart's chamber, a small barren room with only a sleeping pad. He thrust the torch into an empty sconce.

«From this point on,» said Blade, «we will forget what you have done. No word of it will be spoken. Do you understand that?»

Blade meant it. Recrimination or squeamishness was a luxury one could not afford in Dimension X.

Sart mumbled that he understood, but his eyes shifted and he did not look Blade in the face. He was thinking again and Blade left him to it.

«Time is important,» Blade explained. «Jantor is coming to see me.»

Sart trembled and nearly went to his knees again. «Jantor-here, master? When?»

«I do not know that. Late or early. Let us hope it is late. We must not be here when he comes.»

Sart nodded. That he understood well enough. «But how, master? How can we escape? There is but one way out and twenty guards. They have arms and we have none. It is certain death.»

Blade laughed at him. «It is certain death if we stay, for me, at least, and certainly either death or the pits for you. Do you think, Sart, that even if Jantor believes your lie that he will spare you? Think again, man! You are long overdue in the pits. Only the fact that I took you for slave saved you. Can you remember that far back?»

Sart let out a bubbling moan. «Not the five mile pits, master. I beg you kill me here and now. With blows or strangle me, anything, but I cannot go to the pits»

Blade smiled cruelly. «Yes. You would like me to kill you, and you would gain by it. But I would lose. I would then face Jantor alone. Who knows what he would believe? And I need you. You are going to fight for your life, Sart, as I must fight for mine. If you do not, if you fail me, then I will kill you.»

Blade watched Sart's face, saw the small intelligence at work, waited patiently while the slave figured it out. At last he saw submission and resignation. Blade nodded. From now on Sart was only an extension of Blade and, out of fear and hope, would do as he was told.

«But how?» Sart asked again. «If I had a spear bar-«

«You will get one,» said Blade grimly, «as I must, from the guards. Now listen well to me. You will approach them first, for you are a Gnoman and they will not be so suspicious….»

CHAPTER 10

Sybelline moved the mirror in her chamber and stepped into a narrow passage behind it. She readjusted the mirror and began to follow the passage on an upward slope. After a time she climbed a circular iron stair, removing a small iron lid, similar to a manhole cover in Home Dimension, and emerged in the basement of an upper-world apartment building. She paid no attention to the maintenance sleepers scattered about in their quasi-death. She had seen them a thousand times.

The service elevator, crammed with dustbins and a sweeping sleeper, was stalled between floors. Sybelline climbed six flights of stairs and let herself into a large, well-furnished apartment. She took a deep breath and sighed. This was her rightful place, here in Morphi luxury with fine clothes, servants, jewels and all the handsome men she wanted. Here she belonged.

She went to a window and stood looking out over the endless city. The silence hung like a pall; only her own movement disturbed it. She stood there for a long time gazing out at the pallid light, at the twilight world, at the sleepers and their plastic city. She had hated the Morphi all her life and still hated them. They had condemned her to the sewers because her mother had been raped by a Gnoman. How sweet it would be to repower them and then to rule them with an iron hand, to use them, to condemn some of them to the sewers and the five mile pits. It might be done. It could be done. But not yet. The Selenes, the orbfolk, were her masters. First that yoke must be broken. The man Blade might help her in that when the time was ripe.

She went to a closet and wheeled out a machine that much resembled a television set, but it had no wiring connections. She put it in the middle of the room. Next she found a long metal pole and joined it in telescopic sections. To the end of this, she attached a small mirror. She thrust the mirror end of the pole out of the window into a beam of light from the Moon and snapped the other end of the pole into a slot on the machine. She pressed a button; a needle-thin antenna rose from the machine. On its end was a ball mike. She watched the plastic screen of the machine. Nothing.

Sybelline twisted the mirror end of the pole, adjusting it until the screen began to glow. The Selenes used their powerful searchlights for messages as well as for illumination. She stood close to the screen and the ball microphone.

The face of Onta appeared. He was a bearded, placid-looking man with a high forehead, curly gray hair and narrow eyes. Like all Selenes, his head was much too big for his body and his neck accordingly thick to support it. His voice was gruff, fiat and toneless, though this was probably due to the machine. She had never seen Onta in the flesh, nor any of the Selenes.

«Reverse,» said Onta.

Sybelline pressed a button. Now the machine was picking up her image and transmitting it along the light waves to the Moon.

«What of the stranger?» Onta stared at her from the screen.

Sybelline was most careful. Onta could read facial expressions as easily as she read Morphi script.

«I know little of him,» she said. «I have sent Norn to him to spy and sound him out, and I think I can control him when the time comes. But in the meantime Jantor has him captive and he is hard at work making babies.»

Onta stared at her. «That does not suit our purpose. We wish the Gnomen race to die out. If this stranger is fertile and produces children, he will set our planning back many years. Even worse if he makes intelligent children. How is he called, this one?»