The door! He had to make it to the door! Stumbling to his feet, he propelled himself on unsteady legs to the entrance, hurtled through it and down the temple steps, where he collapsed in a quivering, gasping heap on the rocky valley floor.
Another narrow escape! He could not guess the nature or effect of the lights, but undoubtedly they had been meant to dispose of him in some hellish fashion. Apparently he had sustained no injury, though his head did feel peculiarly light.
Shaking his head dizzily, Farr arose and felt in his pocket. The cylindrical container was still there, and he breathed a rasping sigh of relief. All that remained now was to return to his ship and rocket Earthward, where his plans for the life secret would immediately be put into effect.
The Mumums brought up the rear now, apparently resigned to the fact that their puny efforts to prevent the theft of the secret had failed. Knowing that he would no longer be confronted by their unwinking gaze was a comfort to Farr, and he moved quickly across the sweltering valley.
Moving rapidly as he was, he had no time to avoid crashing into the towering wall of rock that loomed suddenly in his path. Strangely he felt no pain as he clambered erect, but the very unexpectedness of the collision stunned him, confusing his befuddled mind even more.
There should be no wall here, yet here it was. Farr could not deny that, though he could have sworn it had not been here when he entered the canyon. There was nothing to do but walk around it.
The cliff stretched a hundred yards to either side of him. He began moving along it, a fierce anxiety to escape this infernal place beating in his brain. The inscrutable Mumums followed, pattering along on bare feet.
He had covered what seemed like forty yards, when he stopped and stared in puzzlement at the craggy precipice. He looked back along the wall, then ahead, peered up at its dizzy heights, then down at its smooth base. Color drained from his face and his shoulders slumped in defeat.
He was beaten. Farr knew it. Knew too why that other adventurer had never left the valley, why his brain was spinning and whirling like a mad dervish. The ray in the temple—he could easily guess now what it had done to him. For stone does not move of its own power, and the cliff had moved. Its terminations still reared a hundred yards in either direction from him!
It was an illusion, that wall, an illusion conjured by his own ray-impregnated mind. But for him it was real. He could spend eternity walking along its face, yet never would he reach the end of the barrier.