Syme shot him carefully in the chest.
He dropped like a rag doll, but Syme's aim had been bad. He wasn't dead yet. He rolled his eyes up, like a child. His lips moved. In spite of himself, Syme bent forward to listen.
"You'll be—sorry," Tate said, and died.
Air was sighing out through the widening hole in the screen. Syme straightened and smiled tolerantly. For a moment, he had been unreasonably afraid of what Tate was about to say. Some detail he had forgotten, perhaps, something that would trap him now that Tate, the man who knew the answers, was dead. But—he'd be sorry!
For what? Another dead fool?
He gathered up the delicate mechanism in one arm, and, filling his deep lungs, stepped forward through the opening.
The towers of dead Kal-Jmar loomed over him in the dusk as he strode like a conqueror down the long-deserted avenue. The city was full of the whisperings of Kal-Jmar's ancient wraiths, but they touched only a corner of his mind. He was filled to overflowing with the bright, glowing joy of conquest. The city was his!
His boots trod an avenue where no foot had fallen these untold eons, yet there was no dust. The city was bright and furbished waiting for him. He was intoxicated. The city was his!
There was a gentle ramp leading upward, and Syme followed it, breathing in the manufactured air of his pressure suit like wine. All around him, the city blazed with treasures beyond price.