Blade was almost tempted to leave well enough alone, but there was one more thing he felt he had to know. Even more slowly than before he drew his sword. He held it out in front of him and moved toward the Watcher one step at a time. It showed no more response to him than if he'd been ten miles away. He stepped up to it, raised the sword, and laid the edge against the metal body. Nothing happened-nothing at all.

Blade virtually held his breath as he slipped around the robot, sword still held ready to strike. If something did go wrong now, he was fairly sure he could drive the point into the robot's head, taking out its eyes and weapons before it could strike him down.

At last he was past the Watcher and into a stretch of corridor with four doors opening off it, three on the right and one on the left. According to the map, the middle door on the right was Twana's room.

A moment later the map was confirmed. With a shriek that mixed surprise, fear, and delight, Twana burst out of the room into the corridor. She was bare to the waist, and her hair was a tangled mess.

Behind Blade, the Watcher hooted sharply, and a shrill whine filled the corridor as its fan started up. Blade froze and shouted to Twana.

«Stop! Don't move!»

The sheer volume of his voice caught Twana and held her. Behind Blade the whine and hooting of the approaching Watcher grew deafening. He forced himself to take one slow step at a time, as he moved out of the robot's path. If his guess about its programming were correct ….

He'd guessed right. The Watcher was already slowing down by the time it passed Blade. Its head was turned toward him, and the arms on one side swept within inches of his face. The Watcher glided slowly up to Twana, looped a tentacle gently over one bare shoulder, then cut off its fan, and settled to the floor with a thud. Twana's eyes were enormous, but she was standing totally motionless. Blade could only hope she wouldn't faint right in front of the Watcher.

She didn't. She stood not even breathing deeply, until the Watcher drew back its tentacle. Then it glided off the way it had come, to take up its guard post again. Before Twana could faint, Blade scooped her up in his arms and carried her into her room, out of the Watcher's sight. They fell down together on the bed, with Twana's hands pulling at Blade's hair and his lips on her breasts. Somehow they found themselves naked, then locked together in a furious, exuberant joining that held more sheer relief than real desire.

At last they lay together on the bed, catching their breath. Twana raised her bead from Blade's chest and drew back her hand from his cheek.

«Blade-what were you doing-out there, when you told me to stop? The Watcher could have killed us!»

Blade ran a hand lightly down her back. «You just demonstrated what I think is going to be our best way of getting out of here. I think the Watchers only attack people who are moving fast. You remember that when you stopped, the Watcher slowed down. When you let it touch you without trying to run, it lost interest in you. It didn't think you were dangerous.»

«Then-we can go back over the Wall?»

«Perhaps.» He didn't want to arouse hopes that might be disappointed, not when there was so much more he needed to find out here. «Certainly we know how to be safe from the Watchers as long as we are here. Meanwhile, we have food, we have water, we have comfortable places to sleep. Are you in such a hurry to leave?»

Twana giggled. «No, I will be happy to stay here for many days.» Her lips moved down his body.

After the next day, Blade knew that he was absolutely right about the Watchers. As long as he moved no faster than a slow walk and made no other quick movements, they would ignore him as if he were no more than a buzzing insect. It would be slow and tedious exploring the whole land here behind the Wall at a snail's pace. It would have been much worse to be trapped in his room by the Watchers until Lord Leighton's computer drew him back to Home Dimension. As long as he moved slowly enough not to alert the Watchers, Blade could go anywhere he pleased. The other robots ignored him completely, no matter how he moved or what he did.

There were several kinds of unarmed work robots. There were the box-like ones that served the meals and did the cleaning. Blade called them Housemaids. There were the Mechanics-the cone-shaped ones he'd seen in the bathroom, who seemed to make all the major repairs. Finally, there were the Gardeners-Mechanics equipped with three extra-long telescoping arms that worked in the gardens spreading all around the building where Blade and Twana were staying.

The building itself was a perfect cube of the same blue-gray material as the Wall, two hundred feet on a side. From the roof Blade could get a tantalizing view of the land beyond the Wall.

The land rose gently upward for three miles toward the east, to the Wall itself. Most of the distance between the building and the Wall was heavily forested. The trees seemed to form a belt along the Wall, reaching as far as Blade could see. Around the building itself was a stretch of formal gardens, an intricate patchwork of hedges, flowerbeds, gravel paths, streams, and ornamental bridges. Miles away in either direction, Blade could see other cubical buildings, apparently identical to the one he was in.

Toward the west lay more gardens, less carefully tended. In places the grass of the lawns rose knee-high. In other places fallen trees drifted about in the ponds. Blade found only a handful of robots at work here, and those Gardeners were more battered and much slower in their movements than the work robots elsewhere.

So far away to the west that it was visible only from the top of the building lay what looked like a city. By straining his eyes at sunset, Blade could make out the dim silhouettes of high towers. Occasionally he would catch a flash of color, fleeting and mysterious like the flashes of the Watchers on the Wall.

This Dimension seemed to be piling one mystery on top of another, and being beyond the Wall only seemed to be making things worse. There were a hundred and one questions to answer, starting with: Where were the people? Blade could spend half an hour listing them.

One thing seemed reasonably certain. This was a land fast declining. There was an air of shabbiness, neglect, and decay about everything Blade could see. The work robots might be fighting a valiant rearguard action against the ravages of time and weather and plant life, but they were losing.

The best place to start looking for answers seemed to be that city to the west-if it were a city. If it weren't, he could look elsewhere. The only alternative seemed to be wandering aimlessly about in endless miles of forest and garden and perhaps running into defenses that weren't so easily fooled as the Watchers.

Now all that remained was to pick a time and a route for their escape. The Watchers seemed to ignore him no matter how much he was carrying, as long as he moved slowly. If they went on doing this, the escape should be easy.

The escape was even easier than Blade would have dared hope, thanks to the weather.

Whatever forces strengthened the Wall and raised the blindness field did nothing to fend off the weather. Blade awoke one night with a chill breeze blowing through the room from the small window that pierced the outer wall. Blade unwound himself from the sleeping Twana and went to the window. As he reached it, the darkness outside exploded in a raw, white glaze of lightning. Thunder cracked, making the whole building jump; then as the rumbling died away, Blade heard the swelling hiss of wind-driven rain. He sprang back into the room as the first cold drops whipped in through the window.