Yet amid the hoarse exclamations and angry cries of the spacemen the song of Alayna still persisted, urging them forward in the face of that radiant wall.
For it was a wall, Roal saw behind the shield of his arm. It was close to them. Alayna was standing before it as he came up to her.
"This is the doorway leading into the chamber. Beyond is the assembly of the Thousand Minds. Blast through the door and kill!"
Roal found the edge of the door and the handle. He placed the flame lance against it and as he pressed the trigger the door handle suddenly became a living, writhing snake in his grasp. An involuntary exclamation escaped his lips as he dropped the snake and released the trigger of the lance.
He tried again and found he had the point of the lance pressed against the back of Alayna as she stood flattened against the door.
"Press the trigger, quickly," her voice said. "It's only a trick of the Thousand Minds."
His head whirled. There was Alayna standing beside him. "I'm real," she said. She touched his arm to prove it.
He pressed the trigger against the image before him. Slowly the stuff of the door melted away in a mass that dropped to the floor and became great, writhing snakes. Each drop split into a thousand droplets and each became a thousand tiny snakes that writhed and swelled. They flowed back towards the crowd of spacemen in a streaming mass. Flame lances turned upon them to burn them down. Flames that made no impression upon the flood of serpents—but which found their marks in other spacemen. A dozen men went down before Alayna's voice reached them.
"Don't shoot! It's a Martian trick. These aren't real. You'll only kill each other. Now—look! The door is opening. There are our enemies. The Thousand Minds. Kill them all! Let none escape!"