The Time Trap Read Online Free Page A

silence.
    Two robots, side by side, emerged from a tunnel mouth beyond the dais. At their heels came rolling something like a great metal sphere, with the top sliced off—a huge hollow cup. Over its edge Mason saw a swollen, blue-veined bald head, bulbous and hideous—a monstrously bloated caricature of a human skull. Two sharp, beady eyes peered out intently from beneath that tremendous brain case.
    Mason cast a sidelong glance at the Sumerian. Erech’s eyes were cynical—yet they were troubled, too. Mason realized that the warrior’s half-contempt for the Master had been not quite real—that it masked an uneasy, reluctant fear of Greddar Klon. To Erech the Master must appear like some monstrous baroque, for he did not realize or understand, as did Mason, that with the passing of hundreds of thousands of years the human race would evolve into beings like the strange man on the dais.
    Slowly the car rolled on behind the robots. A pale, slender hand, with elongated, tentacular fingers, writhed into view above the edge of the cup. The robots paused on the dais, and the car wheeled between them to face the audience, among which, Mason saw, other robots stood like guards. A murmur went up from the throng.
    “The Master!”
    Mason lifted a quizzical eyebrow. He could understand now how Greddar Klon maintained his rule over the superstitious natives of Al Bekr, playing on their fear of the unknown. The entire auditorium, he saw suddenly, was like a huge theatre, cunningly arranged to impress the beholder with its mystery, its strangeness. Mason might find danger in the formidable science of Greddar Klon—but this mummery he could recognize and discount. Somehow he did not feel so utterly lost and helpless now.
    The Master lifted a slender hand, and the throngs knelt. Mason found a position behind a fat, shaven-headed man in a woolen cloak.
    From the black disk dangling overhead came a flat, metallic voice. Mason glanced up cautiously. The apparatus—a radio amplifier, probably—must be strange indeed to Erech and the others.
    “I have imprisoned Alasa, your queen,” the voice said emotionessly. “For a long time she has been my hostage, ever since I learned she was plotting to revolt against me. I have warned you, people of Al Bekr, that at the first sign of another revolt she would die. Well—there has been no such attempt. That I grant.”
    The Master’s inscrutable eyes roved over the kneeling throng. Mason looked down quickly as the probing glance moved toward him. Again the toneless voice sounded.
    “The prison of Alasa has been in plain view, as a warning. Yet it was forbidden to touch it. That command has not been obeyed.”
    Greddar Klon’s head bent for a moment. A robot appeared in the tunnel mouth behind the dais, a tentacle-arm curled about the neck of a girl who walked beside it—a girl of perhaps twenty, her dark eyes distended, her hair matted with dried blood. She wore a plain white robe, torn and stained.
    The metallic ovoid that hung above the dais dropped lower. The silvery sheen changed. Over its surface a shimmering play of color crawled. It became transparent as glass.
    Within it was a girl.
    Mason felt the Sumerian nudge him. “Alasa—our ruler,” Erech whispered.
    She lay within the transparent coffin, eyes closed, her dark hair falling in ringlets about an ivory, piquant face, and there was a strangely elfin beauty about her, enhanced by the close-fitting green garment she wore. Mason caught his breath, staring with his eyes. A scarcely noticeable movement went through the throng.
    “It is death to touch Alasa’s prison,” the disk said coldly. “Let no one turn away his eyes.”
    Robots held the white-robed girl firmly. Others brought forward a curious appliance. Swiftly they ripped away the single garment, baring the captive’s slim body in utter nudity. She cried out, fought vainly to escape.
    But the robots were too strong. Dozens of circular disks, transparent as glass, were