The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

with her companions. Now there was triumph in her singing and Ross found himself echoing her, “Walk this road!” as a demand.
    It was still there, all of it, the crushing weight of the past, and that which brooded within that past, which had reached out for them, to possess or to alter. Only they were free of that reaching now. And they could see too! The fuzzy darkness was lighter and there were normal walls about them. Ross put out his free hand and rubbed finger tips along rough stone.
    Once more their senses were assaulted by a stealthy attack from beyond the bounds of space and time as the walls fell away and they came out into a wide space whose boundaries they could not see. Here that which brooded was strong, a mighty weight poised aloft to strike them down.
    “Come down, awake, stir.…” Karara’s pleading sank again to a whisper, her voice sounded hoarse as if her mouth were dry, her words formed by a shrunken tongue, issued from a parched throat.
    Light spreading in channels along the floor, making a fiery pattern—patterns within patterns, intricate designs within designs. Ross jerked his eyes away from those patterns. To study them was danger, he knew without being warned. Karara’s nails bit into his flesh and he welcomed that pain; it kept him alert, conscious of what was Ross Murdock, holding him safely apart from something greater than he, but entirely alien.
    The designs and patterns were lines on a pavement. And now the three Foanna, swaying as if yielding to unseen winds, began to follow those patterns with small dancing steps. But the Terrans remained where they were, holding to one another for the sustaining strength their contact offered.
    Back, forth, the Foanna danced—and once more their cloaks vanished or were discarded, so their silver-bright figures advanced, retreated, weaving a way from one arabesque to another. First about the outer rim and then in, by spirals and circles. No light except the crimson glowing rivulets on the floor, the silver bodies of the Foanna moving back and forth, in and out.
    Then, suddenly, the three dancers halted, huddled together in an open space between the designs. And Ross was startled by the impression of confusion, doubt, almost despair wafted from them to the Terrans. Back across the patterned floor they came, their hands clasped even as the Terrans stood together, and now they fronted the three out of time.
    “Too few…we are too few.…” she who was the mid one of the trio said. “We can not open the Great Door.”
    “How many do you need?” Karara’s voice was no longer parched, frightened. She might have traveled through fear to a new serenity.
    Why did he think that, Ross wondered fleetingly. Was it because he, too, had had the same release?
    The Polynesian girl loosed her grip on her companions’ hands, taking a step closer to the Foanna.
    “Three can be four—”
    “Or five.” Ashe moved up beside her. “If we suit your purpose.”
    Was Gordon Ashe crazy? Or had he fallen victim to whatever filled this place? Yet it was Ashe’s voice, sane, serene, as Ross had always heard it. The younger Agent wet his lips; it was his turn to have a dry mouth. This was not his game; it could not be. Yet he summoned voice enough to add in turn:
    “Six—”
    When it came the Foanna answer was a warning:
    “To aid us you must cast aside your shields, allow your identities to become one with our forces. Having done so, it may be that you shall never be as you are now but changed.”
    “Changed.…”
    The word echoed, perhaps not in the place where they stood, but in Ross’s head. This was a risk such as he had never taken before. His chances in the past had been matters of action where his own strength and wits were matched against the problem. Here, he would open a door to forces he and his kind should not meet—expose himself to danger such as did not exist on the plane where weapons and strength of arm could decide victory or defeat.
    And this was not really his fight at all. What did it matter to Terrans ten thousand years or so in the future what happened to Hawaikans in this past? He was a fool; they were all fools to become embroiled in this. The Baldies and their stellar empire—if that ever had existed as the Terrans surmised—was long gone before his breed entered space.
    “If you accomplish this with our aid,” said Ashe, “will you be able to defeat the invaders?”
    Again a lengthening moment of silence before the