Or were they? An instant before he stretched out his hand to one of the passing figures, he noticed the teeth.

The teeth! Long, stained with brownish red.

These were not humans at all, but vampires.

«Help!» they howled, grinning, leering, mocking.

Illusion! Yet here between one space-time continuum and another, could illusions kill? Perhaps, if you believed in them.

I must not believe. I must not sleep.

Sleep!

At the thought he became suddenly weary, suddenly like an old man who can go no further, who must lie down and rest even if he never gets up again.

The light grew dimmer, redder. The headlong rush of the vampires slowed. Were they watching him with their glowing red eyes? Were they waiting for him to sleep?

I don't care. If only I can get a little rest.

Consciousness was fading. Time itself seemed to be coming to a stop.

Richard shook himself awake.

No! It's illusion! All illusion!

The vampires drew back, hissing with fury. There were so many of them! Thousands. Millions!

As Richard drifted through space, the vampires spread their wings and began wheeling about him in great flocks, great batlike clouds. The light was almost gone. Richard could not see them, only hear their immense and infinite flapping, their birdlike cries of hunger. One flew so close its wing brushed his arm.

Light returned, slowly, this time a soft amber glow. The swirling cloud of vampires retreated, gathered together, formed into the shape of a giant looming head. The head leaned toward him. Its eyes opened.

His nostrils were filled with a familiar perfume. The face was familiar too, a face he had never hoped to see again though he sometimes dreamed of it. And the soft soothing womanly voice was familiar: «Hush, Dickie baby. Don't be afraid.»

«Mama. «

«Everything's all right. Go to sleep, darling.»

Something within him wanted to believe, did believe. Sleep. Yes. Why not? But then his conscious mind jerked him awake.

He shouted, «Illusion! Illusion! You're nothing but an illusion!»

With an expression of infinite sadness, the face began to fade.

Chapter 15

Richard Blade materialized in the air and dropped to the floor of the vast egg-shaped room. He staggered, almost fell, then stood swaying as the intense pain in his head gradually subsided. He was in a fighting crouch, but he knew he could not fight, at least not yet. He thought, Where is the Ngaa?

He recognized the room he was in, though when he had been here last he had seen it through a veil of hypnotic illusion. The illusions had never been perfect. He had always been aware, in some part of his mind, of the reality that lay hidden behind each mirage, and now the sight of this room brought back to him the pattern of impressions he had gathered on his first visit. Most importantly, he knew where the Ngaa was, and what it was.

Ahead of him gaped a circular doorway and beyond that a long, dimly lit corridor. At the end of that corridor, in the exact center of this alien city, was a high-ceilinged inner chamber, bathed in a shimmering shadowless blue light. In the center of this chamber towered a delicate structure of colored glass, complex as a nautilus, ten times as tall as a man, glowing and pulsating, feeding off the limitless energies of the matter-antimatter engines beneath the floor.

This was the mind of the Ngaa, or minds, since it contained in electronically encoded form the united consciousness of all the creatures who lived on the Ngaa's planet when, eons ago, the sun was bright and the forests green. This mind, like a coral reef, was neither dead nor alive, but inhabited a shadow realm between life and death. It was conscious, yet at the same time only a kind of machine, a machine so much more complex than any machine man had yet built-more complex even than KALI-that it transcended the usual limitations of a machine and, in its way, thought and had something we might call a personality.

Blade remembered…

Blade remembered the gleaming, everchanging haze that drifted around this tower of glass, the haze that was an electromagnetic field, an almost-living cloud of energy. This cloud could move far from the brain, but could not exist without it. This cloud could shape itself into the semblance of anything, even a human being. This cloud could manifest itself in the world of mankind wherever it could find a human brain stimulated enough to serve as a gateway. The rituals of ancient half-forgotten religions could open a gateway, the fear and tension of war could open a gateway, the anger of a rejected child could open a gateway, but nothing could open a gateway as wide as KALI.

Blade remembered…

Blade remembered blank-eyed humans, the sons and daughters of those who had been snatched here by the Ngaa to serve as hypnotic slaves. He remembered the children of Ambrose Bierce and Amelia Earhart, born in the subbasements of the city, doomed to spend their entire lives there laboring for the Ngaa, hypnotic slaves who would never know normal consciousness. Were they still human? Or were they zombies who, never having developed minds of their own, would die without the Ngaa to tell them to eat and sleep and breathe?

Blade turned to the right, to the left, crouching, growing stronger, recovering from the shock of transition from one universe to another, his headache almost gone.

He thought, Why doesn't the Ngaa attack?

He glanced behind him.

There was nothing there but an immense window running from the floor to the peak of the dome. Beyond the window hung the dull red oval of the sun in a sky of dim violet, pink and dirty orange. Far below lay the black bulk of the planet. Between stretched the bright dust of an unfamiliar spiral nebula seen almost edge on. Through the soles of his bare feet Richard could detect the throbbing of the mighty force fields that kept this flying city suspended above the planet's surface. The faint rumble of these force fields was the only sound, except for his tense breathing.

His glance traveled swiftly around the room, but found no sign of his enemy. The huge circular doorway continued to yawn open, unprotected. He wondered if he had, by some miracle, caught the Ngaa by surprise.

He took a step forward.

The floor was not pleasant to walk upon, being composed of living bone covered with a thin layer of flesh, but the expected attack still did not come. Though it was cool in the room, Blade began to sweat. Then, abruptly, his nostrils detected a trace of the sharp smell of ozone.

He ventured yet another step, and another. The smell grew stronger.

The salt taste of his own sweat was on his lips.

Another step he took.

Then it came, the whispering voice that was many voices in one, the voice he heard not with his ears but with his mind.

«Richard Blade!» said the Ngaa, and there was amusement in its silent voices.

«Yes,» Blade responded softly.

«We see in your mind that you come not as our friend, but as our assassin.»

«Obviously I cannot conceal that from you.»

«You can conceal nothing from us. Whatever you plan we will know, and we will stop you. Cease your futile struggle. We have already won! Your planet is ours.»

«Not yet!» Richard's shout echoed in the vastness of the room.

«Don't you understand? You are here because we lured you here. We will keep you here until KALI transports you home, then we will accompany you, but in greater force than ever before, and take control of your computer installation. We will enslave those of your friends whose wills can be bent, and kill the others. We will meld ourselves to your KALI, make ourselves at one with her, for in spite of superficial differences, KALI is much like us. With the aid of KALI and you we will transfer our innermost mind to your world and make our home there, ruling humanity from the secret and secure citadel you have provided us under the Tower of London. Can't you see that you have lost the game, Richard Blade, and that the prize is as good as ours?»