Simultaneous with that parabolite wall shutting in my face, three disturbing thoughts occurred to me: One, Baxter didn't have the Amnesty; Snow did! Probably in that catch-all handbag of hers. Two, if the Ancients could float me and Snow and the Space Scouts about like so much helium, why the hell didn't they just de-localize Baxter into a snake pit or something? And three, if physical contact was impossible between the races, how in heaven's name did they gimmick the Brain back on Earth? Which was also, come to think of it, moving awfully fast in relation to their liaison-point with the geocentric point of the universe!

A very baffled man, I began feeling my way down the tunnel toward that mighty roar of underground waters. The light paled and grew gray as I moved away from the parabolite wall. Then I was in darkness, feeling the bare stone with my fingers as I stepped carefully toward the increasing volume of ragged sound.

Then the wall curved away from my outstretched fingertips, and I knew I stood at the brink of that precarious arch of rock. There was nothing but blackness there, now.

"Clatclit!" I hollered over the boom of the river waters. "Clatclit, it's me, Jery!"

The rush of the boiling rapids was too great, however. It thundered by and swept the faint vibration of my voice along with it into that enormous well to my right.

Then I remembered Clatclit's manner of instruction to that hay-bale beast, what seemed like ages ago, out on the craggy Martian hillside. I put hooked thumb and forefinger into my mouth, and let off a piercing whistle.

Ahead of me in the darkness there was a glimmering of visibility, and then a feeble pink taillight waggled slowly up and down, far back beyond the other end of the bridge. Clatclit wasn't chancing moving as close to the death-dealing spray as before.

However, though a more powerful beam had been necessary to see by when I'd been moving into darkness, the pale glow was sufficient for the return trip. All I needed was a beacon, something to sight upon, so I wouldn't go astray in my slow crawl across that slippery curve of rock. Yes, crawl. This trip, I negotiated the arch on hands and knees.

And then I was across and hurrying down the corridor to the bend around which Clatclit shivered and waited. He stood up from his slouch against the wall, from which weary stance he'd been waving me onward with his taillight.

"Wow!" I said, catching dim sight of him in the weak glow of his water-pitted trylon. The sharp ruby glint was missing from his erstwhile pyramidic facets; now they looked dull crimson, and ropy, like taffy that has congealed after boiling over and dribbling down the side of the saucepan. "Does it hurt?" I asked, feeling partially responsible.

Side-to-side motion.

"It bothers you in some way, though, is that it?"

Nod.

"How?" I asked, unable to think of a yes-no question.

Clatclit pointed to my wrist, shook his head, pointed to my wrist again, and gestured upward, then nodded.

"Time. No ... other time. Uh ... Earth?"

Headshake. He rose on tiptoe and pointed up again.

"Beyond Earth. The sun!"

Nod.

"You mean that at this time, it doesn't bother you. But it will later, when you need the scales for absorbing sunlight?"

A very weary nod.

"Damn, that's rough. Will they grow back again?"

Pause. Nod. Tiptoe point. Three taps on wrist. Shrug.

"Yes. When the sun makes three times—In three days' time?"

Nod. Wrist-tap. Hands clasped to belly. Disgusted shrug.

"But in the meantime, you go hungry, sort of?"

Nod. Then, the social amenities taken care of, Clatclit pointed to me, to the ground, and looked questioningly.

"The Ancients have decided I'm to bump off Baxter," I said. "Then they'll release Snow and the boys. Not before."

Clatclit stared at me a moment, placed a hand on my shoulder, and shook his head, like a sympathetic friend. Then he took his claws and made a tugging, struggling motion with them, as though trying to tear something which wouldn't give. He followed it up with an incongruously comic coin-flipping motion to the back of his hand. It was his devious way of expressing the slang phrase, "Tough luck."

"You said it," I muttered. "Come on, though. The less time I leave Snow with the blob of black sparklers, the better. I've got to get to the spaceport."

Clatclit nodded and began his lumbering waddle off into the labyrinth. The Ancients probably expected me to book passage on the next Earth flight, to assassinate Baxter. They didn't know he was sitting right in their laps, in the Security sector of the field. It was just as well. I didn't relish the possibility of my elimination if they knew he was right where a sugarfoot could blast him as well as anybody.

As I trailed Clatclit up the wearisome slope that was taking us to the surface, I did some heavy thinking. The Ancients, before Earthmen first landed on Mars, probably had wandered about the planet freely, on the surface, living in their dwellings of parabolite, using their artifacts of the same impervious mineral. Then Earth, that paradoxically peace-loving and war-making planet, lands colonists. The Ancients, just from plain discretion, hide themselves and observe these unwelcome newcomers. Once it becomes clear to them that there is a potential menace from Baxter—who is no young chicken, having been in power before the first landing—they stay hidden, and start scheming to get rid of this guy who can jolt them out of their liaison.

I pondered over that bit. The Ancient had said that Baxter intended doing it by detonating a portion of their contact-material. Hell, they must mean parabolite! What other substance in the solar system was so alien to—

And with that thought, I suddenly knew the secret of that apparently impervious mineral's strength. No wonder it could not be destroyed! It was only in existence in our skimpy three dimensions in a fractional way. One-fourth of it was always present in the Ancients' world, since it couldn't fit into our universe in its entirety. And that meant not only one-fourth of its apparent mass, but one-fourth of even its atomic structure!

Even the collapsers, working on subatomic particles, were at a disadvantage. You can't nudge an electron out of orbit if it isn't actually fixed in that orbit. Three-quarters of those four-dimensional electrons were always cushioned by that elusive final segment that lay outside our universe. So trying to destroy parabolite by force was in the same class as trying to shatter a rubber ball with a hammer; a rubber ball which was hanging from an elastic cord, in fact! It just gave into the other dimension and rebounded frisky as ever.

"Boy," I thought, "this is going to put the skids under that scientific theory about parabolite's imperviousness. Parabolic molecules, ha! Well, it was a good theory while it lasted; it fit the known facts, at least. Hell, the stuff even has the wrong name! It ought to be called Elasto-plast, or some such euphonic label."

Clatclit paused in his climb up the tunnel slope, and turned a querying stare on me.

"Was I talking aloud?" I asked.

Curious nod.

"Sorry, it's nothing," I said, indicating that he should proceed with our journey. "Just the salesman in me coming to life. You can't have public interest without catchy trade-names. Once an ad man, always an ad man."

Clatclit looked positively bewildered.

"Sorry. Business talk," I explained.

He shrugged and continued his upward climb, with me tagging after the bobbing pink taillight.

---

As secure as the maximum-security Security prison was supposed to be, we got in with no trouble. The planet must be a regular yarn-ball of those rocky tubes. If you know the layout, you can apparently get anywhere from anywhere.

Our only excursion from the steady upward climb had been a brief stop-off in one of those fungus-lighted rooms. Clatclit picked up my collapser and returned it to me.

I felt infinitely more confidant of success with its thick golden handle jutting out of my holster once more. Perhaps I could just find Baxter, sneak a bolt into his face, and scurry off into the labyrinth on Clatclit's heels.

I knew, even as I thought it, that I wouldn't be able to just blast him like that. I'd probably have to face up to him, pull an "All right, pardner—draw!" sort of sentence on him, and then pray that I was faster. It was unthinkable for me to act in any other manner. The give-a-guy-a-chance instinct was part of our national heritage, something called the code of the West, handed down to us by pioneer forefathers.

The method of ingress to the building was simplicity itself. The tunnel we'd been negotiating came to an abrupt end at a wall of granite slabs such as had buttressed my prison cell. I reached for the collapser, but Clatclit laid a restraining claw on my hand.

I watched, curious, as he put his left ear-orifice to the wall and listened intently. Then, seeming satisfied, he put his hands on the biggest slab of granite and pushed.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then the slab began to pivot about some central axis, and a one-foot gap was exposed on either side of its bulk. Beyond the open spaces, bright fluorescent tubing lighted a grim prison corridor.

"Isn't there an easier way to the spaceport?" I said.

A prison meant guards, and guards meant collapsers, and collapsers meant, possibly, good-by Jery Delvin.

But Clatclit shrugged, pointed into the tunnel, and made zig-zag motions with both hands, all the while shaking his head in weary disgust.

"There is, but it'd take forever to get there, huh?" I interpreted. He nodded. Oh well.

Clatclit leading the way, we sidled through the right-hand gap, then he pressed the mammoth stone back into place.

"You're coming with me all the way?" I asked, surprised. Somehow, I'd thought his guideship ended at the same place the tunnel did.

Clatclit nodded vigorously.

"Is it that the Ancients don't trust me?"

Headshake.

"You have nothing better to do?"

Negative.

"Okay, I'll bite. Why?"

Clatclit stepped toward me, placed a hand on my shoulder, then placed his free hand over my heart, moved it over his own, held up two fingers and crossed them.

"Because we're friends," I said softly.

Clatclit nodded.

It took us an hour to locate Baxter. Clatclit showed no signs of surprise when I did not go to the ticket office and book a passage for Earth. Apparently, not being in on the finer points of the Ancients' scheme, he found no wild incongruity in my being brought all the way from Earth to obliterate a man who could just as easily have been dispatched by a sugarfoot. Or else, through some extrasensory awareness, something born of our friendship, he knew that imparting the location of Baxter to the Ancients might well mean my death.

Whatever his reasons, Clatclit simply followed me in my progress through the prison dungeon which, thanks to its completely escape-proof stone-corked cells, was left without guards. We went up into the more well-appointed section of the building, the warmly plastic-decorated halls that were open to the public who passed through the Security inspection when entering or leaving the planet. It was good business to hide the grimmer realities from colonists or casual tourists.

And those who learned about the dungeons were never in a position to pass the word around. Your first view of a Security dungeon was usually your last view of anything.

The public part of the building had too many people in it to suit me. Even if I could get by the flight officials and robo-scanners unchallenged, Clatclit couldn't. The building was rigidly off-limits to extraterrestrials.

So we went up the outside.

Built against, and a good ways into, the high hills that surrounded the town, the building was easy prey for anyone who cared to clamber up the rocky slopes from which it jutted and climb through a window. These slopes were lighted, but not patrolled. After all, under ordinary circumstances, no one in his right mind would try sneaking into an IS stronghold!

Baxter, as it turned out, was seated at a desk not unlike his own back on Earth, in the very office where I'd been last interrogated by the team of Charlie and Foster. He was staring into space, and smoking a cigar, the solitary incandescent lamp on his desk making his ice-white mane of hair a sort of angelic aurora about that pleasantly rubicund face. It was like seeing Satan sporting a good-conduct medal.

Clatclit and I were crouched outside the window, on a narrow ledge we'd reached from the slope. To my intense interest, lying before Baxter, in the glaring circle of lamplight, was the black shirt I'd been wearing when I was rescued by Clatclit, the shirt which had been towed off by that hay-bale to obviate Baxter's being able to track the route of my flight.

I was about to whisper a question about the shirt to Clatclit, when Baxter turned partway about in his chair, and started to stub out the cigar in a black onyx ashtray. The question stuck in my throat, as I caught sight of Baxter's breast.

On a silver chain about his throat, he wore the Amnesty!

---