The Dark Symphony

rules. Sound control was easy, almost within the powers of an idiot. Pandora's Box was the answer. If he destroyed the dragon's carcass, the Pandora's Box would be smashed to splinters. He had ignored the corpse in his wariness of active adversaries. Now he saw that the dragon was the source. He could afford to ignore all else and destroy the dragon.
    The snake focused phosphorescent green saucer eyes on him…
    Wearily, he raised his rifle.
    Raised it up and up and up…
    Coil after coil unwound as the snake reared above the dead dragon, weaving and bobbling, coming out of it like a slow jack-in-the-box, out of it and out of it and out of it!
    He sighted on the dragon's body, ignoring the menacing snake that was only a secondary adversary.
    The
snake was fifty feet above the dragon's body now, great fangs bared and dripping.
    He destroyed the dragon.
    The snake crashed onto the floor like a lump rope, now only half a beast. The part that had still been coiled in the dragon had not survived, and only fifty feet of the monster now writhed in the arena. Kicking without legs, screaming without a voice, it wriggled in its death struggle toward him. The giant jaws opened. He saw small, sinister forms within the throat, grublike things that were rolling toward the mouth in an attempt to fall out and take over where the snake had failed. The test masters were clever—and mad. Without hesitation, he destroyed the snake with a prolonged bolt from the sound rifle, thus demolishing the test, dissolving the slugs and whatever else had been in that throat.
    The Great Hall was quiet The arena floor was empty —save for him.
    Suddenly the crowd bellowed like a mighty animal, applauded, shouted, jumped up and down. The cheer, like a mighty wave, swept into the arena and bore him toward the Bench…
    FIRST:
    Loper stopped a few feet from the elevator, holding the child he had kidnapped, watching the three approaching Musicians and wondering, desperately, what he could do. A fat Musician on the end of the trio saw Loper first, and he shouted, started running. Loper looked for doors. At the farthermost end of the corridor, away from the Musicians, four huge, milky glass panels waited like cataracted eyes.
    The Musician reached him, his arms extended as if he would grope for the child. Loper swung his dagger, plunged it through the man's neck, ripped it loose. The Musician wobbled sideways, his eyes suddenly very large, and collapsed to the shiny floor, leaking all over the beautiful tile.
    One of the others reached for his sound-sedative whistle.
    "No whistles!" Loper shouted, holding the baby above his head with one hand, showing his intent to loll at the drone of the sound-sedative.
    The Musicians stopped, faces suddenly milky white like the doors, threatening to dissolve here and reappear on some oddity shelf as porcelain figures of rare perfection.
    Slowly, Loper backed away. A dozen yards later, he turned and ran, his wide, six-toed feet slapping loudly against the tile. His leg muscles snaked under his skin like steel cables, thrusting him on. He burst through the doors, smashing one outward against a pillar, shattering it. It hummed in fragments, then disappeared. By the time he had reached the bottom of the steps and was in the neon stone gardens, the sirens were wailing and outraged shouting had erupted behind.
    The baby was awake and screaming. He held it against his chest to dull its outcries.
    Neon stones glowed on all sides, casting up auroras that nearly blinded him when he strayed from the regular pathways between them.
    Bursting blue ashimme?: a sea afire…
    Red, red, crimson, rouge, cinnabar: blood .
. .
    He raced from the gardens, stopped to look back. A sound rifle beam sang into a tree next to him, puffed a huge limb out of existence. Then a Musician shouted an order not to shoot for fear of harming the child. Loper turned and—loped.
    When he reached the Popular Sector, he discovered he was still not safe, for the Musicians snapped on their brilliant amber sound shields and came on. He turned into a litter-strewn alleyway, turned again and again. Suddenly, panic-stricken, he realized he had made a crucial blunder. He should have sprinted directly into the ruins where reinforcements lay; he should not have tried to lose them. Here in the alley-maze, they could divide to surround and finally corner him. That was something he could not allow to happen, especially since he had the child and it had been to steal a