"None—none! We are here—all!"
Garth nearly shouted with relief. There were almost two thousand Zarno in the cavern, he judged, all genuflecting before the dais. And that meant that the city was unguarded—that Doc Willard could lead the others to the antigravity hangar.
If he could hold the Zarno here!
Garth shook his head, feeling oddly dizzy. He tried to concentrate. At his mental order, the giant robot lifted its arms in symbolic, ritualistic gestures he remembered from the tripod-recorder.
But the dizziness persisted. Garth realized that his lungs were hurting. He found it difficult to draw a deep breath.
Air—he needed fresh air! The inhuman lungs of the Ancients probably were able to endure lack of oxygen far better than the human organism. In any case—Garth realized that the air was getting stale.
He investigated the vision-slit. It was barred by a glassy, transparent pane that seemed as hard as steel. Well, it would be necessary to open the panel behind him—a few inches, anyway. Garth's hand sought for the spring. It was in plain sight; there was no need to conceal it within the throne's compartment.
He pressed it. There was a low grinding that stopped almost immediately. Garth tried again.
Useless. The mechanism, somehow, was jammed. Probably its mechanism had failed when the huge robot had crashed down on the throne.
That meant—