'What on earth d'you mean, Seward, old man? Now, I wonder if you'll accompany Brother Sebastian here. I have an awful lot of work to catch up on.'
'All right,' Seward said. 'All right; I.will.' Perhaps on the, way to wherever the monk was going, he would find an opportunity to escape, The monk turned and Seward followed him. He did not look at the Man Without A Navel as he passed his ridiculous dais, with its ridiculous leather armchair.
They passed through a narrow doorway behind a curtain and were once again in the complex series of passages. The tall monk-now he was close to him, Seward estimated his height at about six feet, seven inches-seemed to flow along in front of him. He began to dawdle. The monk didn't look back. Seward increased the distance between, them.. Still, the monk didn't appear to notice.
Seward turned and ran.
They had met nobody on their journey through the corridors.
He hoped he could find a door leading out of the fortress before someone spotted him. There was no cry from behind him.
But as he ran, the passages got darker and darker until he was careering through pitch blackness, sweating, panting and beginning to panic. He kept blundering into damp walls and running on.
It was only much later that he began to realize he was running in a circle that was getting tighter and tighter until he was doing little more than spin round, like a top. He stopped, then.
These people evidently had more powers than he had suspected. Possibly they had some means of shifting the position of the corridor walls, following his movements by means of hidden TV cameras or something like them. Simply because there were, no visible signs of an advanced technology didn't mean that they did not possess one. They obviously did. How else could they have got him from his own world to this? He took a pace forward. Did he sense the walls drawing back? He wasn't sure. The whole thing reminded him vaguely of The Pit and The Pendulum, He strode forward a number of paces and saw a light ahead of him. He walked towards it, turned into a dimly-lit corridor.
The monk was waiting for him.
'We missed each other, Professor Seward. I see you managed to precede me.' The monk's face was still invisible, secret in its cowl. As secret as his cold mocking, malevolent voice.' We are almost there, now,' said the monk.
Seward stepped towards him, hoping to see his face, but it was impossible. The monk glided past him. 'Follow me, please.'
For the moment, until he could work out how the fortress worked, Seward decided to accompany the monk.
They came to a heavy, iron-studded door-quite unlike any of the other doors.
They walked into a low-ceilinged chamber. It was very hot.
Smoke hung in the still air of the room. It poured from a glowing brazier at the extreme end. Two men stood by the brazier.
One of than was a thin man with a huge, bulging stomach over which his long, narrow hands were folded. He had a shaggy mane of dirty white hair, his cheeks were sunken and his nose extremely long and extremely pointed. He seemed toothless and his puckered lips were shaped in a senseless smile -like the smile of a madman Seward had once had to experiment on. He wore a stained white jacket buttoned over his grotesque paunch.
On his legs were loose khaki trousers.
His companion was also thin, though lacking the stomach. He was taller and had the face of a mournful bloodhound, with sparse, highly-greased, black hair that covered his bony head like a skull-cap. He stared into the brazier, not looking up as Brother Sebastian led Seward into the room and closed the door.
The thin man with the stomach, however, pranced forward, his hands still clasped on his paunch, and bowed to them both.
'Work for us, Brother Sebastian?' he said, nodding at Seward.
'We require a straightforward "Yes,"' Brother Sebastian said. 'You have merely to ask the question "Will You?" If he replies " No," you are to continue. If he replies " Yes," you are to cease and inform me immediately." 'Very well, Brother. Rely on us.'
'I hope I can.' The monk chuckled again. ' You are now in the charge of these men, professor. If you decide you want to help us, after all, you have only to say " Yes." Is that clear?'
Seward began to tremble with horror. He had suddenly realized what this place was.
'Now look here,' he said.' You can't… '
He walked towards the monk who had turned and was opening the door. He grasped the man's shoulder. His hand seemed to clutch a delicate, bird-like structure. ' Key! I don't think you're a man at all. What are you?'
'A man or a mouse,' chuckled the monk as the two grotesque creatures leapt forward suddenly and twisted Seward's arms behind him. Seward kicked back at them with his heels, squirmed in their grasp, but he might have been held by steel bands. He shouted incoherently at the monk as he shut the door behind him with a whisk of his habit.
The pair flung him on to the damp, hot stones of the floor, It smelt awful. He rolled over and sat up. They stood over him. The hound-faced man had his arms folded. The thin man with the stomach had his long hands on his paunch again. They seemed to rest there whenever he was not actually using them.
It was the latter who smiled with his twisting, puckered lips, cocking his head to one side.
'What do you think, Mr Morl?' he asked his companion.
'I don't know, Mr Hand. After you.' The hound-faced man spoke in a melancholy whisper.
'I would suggest Treatment H. Simple to operate, less work for us, a tried and trusty operation which works with most and will probably work with this gentleman.'
Seward scrambled up and tried to push past them, making for the door. Again they seized him expertly and dragged him back, He felt the rough touch of rope on his wrists and the pain as a knot was tightened. He shouted, more in anger than agony, more in terror than either.
They were going to torture him. He knew it.
When they had tied his hands, they took the rope and tied his ankles. They twisted the rope up around his calves and under his legs. They made a halter of the rest arid looped it over his neck so that he had to bend almost double if he was not to strangle.
Then they sat him on a chair.
Mr Hand removed his hands from his paunch, reached up above Seward's head and turned on the tap.
The first drop of water fell directly on the centre of his head some five minutes later.
Twenty-seven drops of water later, Seward was raving and screaming. Yet every time he tried to jerk his head away, the halter threatened to strangle him and the jolly Mr Hand and the mournful Mr Morl were there to straighten him up again.
Thirty drops of water after that, Seward's brain began to throb and he opened his eyes to see that the chamber had vanished.
In its place was a huge comet, a fireball dominating the sky, rushing directly towards him. He backed away from it and there were no more ropes on his hands or feet. He was free.
He began to run. He leapt into the air and stayed there. He was swimming through the air.
Ecstasy ran up his spine like a flickering fire, touched his back-brain, touched Ms mid-brain, touched his fore-brain.
EXPLOSION ALL CENTRES!
He was standing one flower among many, in a bed of tall lupins and roses which waved in a gentle wind. He pulled his roots free and began to walk.
He walked into the Lab Control Room.
Everything was normal except that gravity seemed a little heavy. Everything was as he'd left it.
He saw that he had left the Towers rotating. He went into the room he used as a bedroom and workroom. He parted the. blind and looked out into the night. There was a big, full moon hanging in the deep, blue sky over the ruins of Hampton. He saw its light reflected in the far-away sea. A few bodies still lay prone near the lab. He went back into the Control Room and switched off the towers.