They burst up into the cold stone antechamber. Amalfi’s flash roved over the floor, found the jutting pyramid; Amalfi kicked it. With a prolonged groan, the tilted slab settled down over the flight of steps and became just another block in the floor. There was certainly some way to raise it again from below, but Heldon would hesitate before he used it; the slab was noisy in motion, noisy enough to tell Amalfi that he was being followed. At the first such squawk, Amalfi would lay a black egg, and Heldon knew it.
“I want you to get out of the city, and take every serf that you can find with you,” Amalfi said. “But it’s going to take timing. Somebody’s got to pull that switch down below that I asked you to memorize, and 1 can’t do it; I’ve got to get into Star Chamber. Heldon will guess that I’m going up there, and he’ll follow me. After he’s gone by, Karst, you have to go down there and open that switch.”
Here was the low door through which Heldon had first admitted them to the Temple. More stairs ran up from it. Strong daylight poured under it.
Amalfi inched the old door open and peered out. Despite the brightness of the afternoon, the close-set, chunky buildings of IMT turned the alleyway outside into a confusing multitude of colored shadows. Half a dozen leaden-eyed serfs were going by, with a Proctor walking behind them, half asleep.
“Can you find your way back into that crypt?” Amalfi whispered.
“There’s only one way to go.”
“Good. Go back then. Dump the pack outside the door here; we don’t need it any more. As soon as Heldon’s crew goes on up these stairs, get back down there and pull that switch. Then get out of the city; you’ll have about four minutes of accumulated warm-up time from all those tube stages; don’t waste a second of it. Got it?”
“Yes. But—”
Something went over the Temple like an avalanche of gravel and dwindled into some distance. Amalfi closed one eye and screwed the other one skyward. “Rockets,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know why I insisted on a planet as primitive as this. But maybe I’ll learn to love it. Good luck, Karst.”
He turned toward the stairs.