"I can't."

I said, "Half a turn more, and something snaps. You won't like it."

"I—can't."

"Why can't you?"

"Because—the Kel—won't let me."

"They won't let you?" I paused in my twisting to make a slow, elaborate survey of the distorted room. "You know, for a second I almost thought you said the Kel wouldn't let you take me out."

"They—won't. Try—to leave. You'll—see—"

There was something in her voice that rasped my nerve-ends. Cat-footed, I spun about, looking this way and that.

Still nothing. Nothing but a strange, misshapen room and twisted, nonrepresentational statuary.

Wordless, I shoved Celeste Stelpa towards the door.

Like an echo, something seized me by the ankle.

It was a tentacle—a tentacle attached to a weird, pseudopodic body that hadn't been there brief moments before.

Frantically, I tried to jerk free.

Lightning-fast, off to one side, a distorted lump of sculpture changed shape ... hurtled at me.

Floundering and flailing, I went down....

CHAPTER IV

THE KINDLY KILLERS

"Sometimes you just don't know." Celeste's voice was strangely flat and lifeless in the black. "Sometimes there's nothing you can do but hope and try."

I didn't answer.

Celeste again: "What would you have had me do, Mark? Let them kill you? That was their first thought, you know; you really did upset them with those things you said about me on the voco. They were afraid you knew so much more than you do."

 Prev. P 24/55 next