But they had reached the altar; the two Hirlaji there moved to block them, but they were unarmed and Rynason dropped them with the stunner.  He pushed Mara past them and around to the side of the altar, seeking cover from the disintegrators.

Behind the altar, there was a space just large enough for them to squeeze through.  Rynason’s heart leaped; he pointed quickly to it and turned to fire again as Mara pushed her way into the narrow aperture.  A disintegrator beam hissed over his head; another tore into the wall two feet away from him.  The Hirlaji were trying to keep their fire away from the altar itself.

Rynason turned and squeezed behind the altar as soon as Mara was clear.  It was tight, but he made it, and once through the narrow opening they found more room in the darkness.  They could hear noise outside as the Hirlaji moved toward the altar, but it sounded far away and dim.  Mara moved back into the darkness, and he followed.

They moved perhaps twenty feet into the wall behind the altar before they were brought to a halt.  The passage ended.  Well, no matter; if it was not an escape route, at least it would afford cover from the weapons of the Hirlaji.  Rynason dropped to the floor and rested.

Mara sat beside him.  “Lee, you shouldn’t have tried it,” she said anxiously.  “Now we’re trapped.”  He felt her hand touch his face in the darkness.

“Maybe,” he said.  “But we may be able to catch them off their guard again, and if so we may be able to get out.”

She was silent.  He felt her lean against his shoulder wearily, her hair soft against his neck.  Then he remembered that she had been hurt.

“What happened to your arm?  And you were bleeding.”

“I think it’s broken.  The bleeding was nothing, though:  you should see yourself.  You were so tattered and bloody when you came in that I hardly knew you.  Knights should come in more properly shining armor.”

He grinned wearily.  “Wait till next time.”

“Lee, where are we?” she said abruptly.  Their eyes were becoming adjusted to the darkness, and they could see rising around them a complexity of machine relays, connectives, and pieces which did not seem to make sense.

Rynason looked more closely at the complex.  It was definitely Outsiders work, but what was it?  Part of the Altar of Kor, obviously, but the Outsiders telecommunicators had never used such extensive machinery.  Yet it did look familiar.  He tried to remember the different types of Outsiders machinery which had been found and partially reconstructed by the advancing Earthmen in the centuries past.  There weren’t many....

Then, suddenly, he had it, and it was so simple that he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before.

“This is Kor,” he said.  “It’s not a communicator—­it’s a computer.  An Outsiders computer.”

NINE