This time it worked. The top of the dome that entrapped him suddenly opened, and the sides slid back. Burl replaced his glove on his hand and dashed outside to the freedom of the frigid surface of Triton.
Then he was among the Neptunian stick-men, and they were actually patting him on the back, waving toward the building, hurrying him on.
They were prepared to die in one last desperate assault on the foe. Could Burl do less?
Chapter 19.
The Museum of Galactic Life
There were a number of structures laid out on the plain under the blue glow of Neptune. Burl saw that only one of them was a true building in the design he had come to know was that of an ancient Plutonian temple except that it was far, far larger than any of the ruined shells he had seen on Pluto.
The other structures turned out to be walls and pillars arranged around the central building, evidently in relation to their religious significance. This main building, ornately decorated, was windowless, and the several closed doors represented metallic and forbidding barriers. It must have covered thirty acres, rising about thirty feet from the ground.
As Burl frantically examined it, the leaders of the Neptunians moved discreetly with him. They gestured at the doors, indicating their own inability to open them. Apparently they thought that Burl might succeed where they had failed.
Burl wasn't sure he could. He supposed there might be controls similar to those that released him from the dome, but he thought first he had better determine a plan of action. Somewhere within, Russ was sealed up—an exhibit among the living dead of many planets.
He managed to convey this thought to the three stick-men. There was an unmistakable nod of assent from one of them, and a twiglike arm indicated that Burl should follow him. They rapidly crossed the area to the outlying fringes of a frigi-plasmic forest.