"It spit you out?" repeated Dante.
"Come to Nandi," said Blue Peter. "It'll make more sense once you see it."
Two days later the Bandit's ship touched down at the Nandi spaceport. He and Dante passed through customs—both used false IDs and passports—and took a room in a run-down hotel that was 50 yards from the entrance to the Maze.
Blue Peter was waiting for them.
"I'm glad you got here," he said. "Who knows what they're doing to him?"
"Whatever they're doing, he's probably so grogged up on bad booze and worse drugs that he's totally unaware of it," said the Bandit.
"Shouldn't we go get him?" asked Blue Peter as the Bandit walked into the hotel's restaurant.
"First we'll eat dinner," answered the Bandit. "We'll leave our gear here, get a good night's sleep, and go after him in the morning." He paused. "And tonight, before we're through eating, you'll tell us what you know about the Blixtor Maze."
"Nothing," said the alien. "Well, almost nothing."
"How could it spit you out?" asked Dante.
"That might be the wrong term," admitted Blue Peter. "I hid in this warehouse right across street from the jail where they were holding Virgil. I planned to wait until it was dark and then see if I could break him out." He paused. "When the sun set, I waited an hour and then I stepped out, ready to cross the street—and somehow I wasn't facing the jail. In fact, I wasn't even in the Maze. I was standing on the road that borders the north side of the Maze. I looked for the door I'd come through, but there was nothing but a solid wall for hundreds of yards." He smiled an odd alien smile. "The Maze didn't want me. That's when I knew I'd have to contact you if he was ever to get out of there."
"I can see the entrance to the Maze from the front of the hotel," said the Bandit. "Can you find him if we go through it?"
"Yes," said Blue Peter. Then, "No." Finally, "Maybe."
"Explain."
"It's never the same twice," said the blue alien. "If it's the way it was the last time Virgil and I entered it, and nothing inside the Maze has changed, I can find it—but the odds against that are thousands to one. I've been in the Maze a dozen times, and it's never been the same twice. I've talked to people who live in the Maze, who have been there for years, and they never know what they'll see when they walk out their front door."
"How do they keep finding their front door when it's time to go home?" asked Dante.
"Oh, if the Maze wants you to find something, you will," Blue Peter assured him. "It might even move things around just to accommodate you."
"You make it sound sentient."
"It's not sentient—I mean, how could it be?—but it's tricky as hell."
The Bandit stared at him for a moment, then walked to a table and called up the menu. The other two joined him, and they ate the meal in total silence.
"I'll see you in the morning," said the Bandit when he was through. He got to his feet. "Sunrise, right here."
He left and headed toward the airlift as Dante turned to Blue Peter.
"Just what the hell was Virgil doing that got him incarcerated?" asked the poet. "From what I know of this world, I'd have thought nothing was illegal. Certainly it couldn't just have been drugs."
"It wasn't."
"Well, then?"
The alien looked at him for a long moment. "I don't think I'm going to tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because you will want to work with him again, and if I told you, you might leave him here forever."
"It was that bad?"
"Let us say that it was that unusual."
"Were you involved?"
"I think I've told you everything that I'm going to tell you," said Blue Peter. "Goodnight, Rhymer. I'll see you in the morning."
"What's your room number?"
"This hotel is for humans only," said the alien with no sign of bitterness. "I am staying a few blocks away."
"See you in the morning, then," said Dante as Blue Peter left the restaurant and walked out the front door of the hotel. He spent a few minutes sitting at the table, staring at his empty wine glass and trying to imagine what new perversion Virgil had discovered. Finally he got up and went off to his room.
His bed woke him gently just before sunrise, as he had instructed it to do, and he showered and dressed quickly, then went down to the restaurant. He decided he couldn't stand the smell of food that early in the day, so he sat in the lobby and waited for the Bandit to finish. Blue Peter joined him a moment later, and the two of them sat, half asleep, until the Bandit emerged from the restaurant.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go get him."
The three of them went out into the cool dry air of Nandi III, turned right, and rode the slidewalk past a row of low angular buildings to the entrance to the Maze.
"This is it?" asked the Bandit.
"That's right," said Blue Peter.
"If everything moves around, how are we going to find him?" asked the Bandit.
"We'll hire a guide."
"A guide? You mean someone knows his way around the Maze?"
"It's not that simple," began Blue Peter.
"Somehow it never is," interjected Dante dryly.
"There is a alien race, almost extinct now, that can usually find what you're looking for. Not always, but usually. Rumor has it that they were imported to Nandi III centuries ago to help build it. These are their descendants. No one knows what world they originally came from."
"Can they find their way back out?" asked the Bandit.
"Frequently."
"How do we make contact with one?"
"We'll just enter the Maze," answered the alien. "They'll start contacting us."
"What do they look like?"
"They're humanoid," said Blue Peter. "Perhaps four feet tall. Covered with fur. Their colors differ markedly from one to the next."
"Has the race got a name?"
"Probably," said Blue Peter. "I mean, all races have names, don't they? Inside the Maze, though, we call them Lab Rats, since they're the only ones who can find their way around with any degree of accuracy."
"Lab Rats?" said Dante with a smile.
"Your face just lit up," said Blue Peter. "You're going to use them in your poem, aren't you?"
"How could I not write about a race known as the Lab Rats?" responded Dante.
The Bandit stared at the entrance, which was a broad archway.
"We just walk in, right?" he asked.
"That's right."
"Okay, let's get on with it."
He strode forward, and Dante and the alien fell into step behind him. Ten feet into the Maze he stopped and looked behind him.
"The entrance is still there," he noted.
"Yes, it is," agreed Blue Peter.
"Maybe you were exaggerating a little bit?"
"I wasn't," said the alien adamantly.
They followed the street for fifty yards, until it dead-ended against a large modular triangular building built of imported alien alloys.
"Let's try the left," said the Bandit, walking off in a new direction.
They followed him. The street narrowed until the buildings were so close together that he couldn't fit through the opening.