The girl was busy with something, but with his eyes riveted on the door, Torry could not spare her any attention. He imagined she might be trying to hide the contents of the boxes.
"They'll be through in a minute," she whispered.
Torry nodded. Drops of water splashed down suddenly. Torry felt it on hands and face, glanced upward. Rain, inside a building in a domed city! He must be crazy. But it was real. Drops became a deluge, slashing down in increasing torrents. Water sizzled on the incandescent door, and clouds of steam burst upward, obscuring everything. Pools formed, joined. In moments the floor was inches deep in water.
"Automatic sprinklers," said the girl. "Set for any upward shift of temperature."
Steam clouds cleared. A needle of light burned through. In rifts, Torry saw the door dissolve, slide suddenly into a bubbling, spitting mass that spread in fiery rush across the floor. In wild rush came dark figures, dancing gingerly to avoid tongues of hot metal. Torry fired carefully. He kept finger on stud until the blaster charge was used up. He flung the useless weapon. But the dark figures were gone. The doorway, with sagging leaves of soft metal, was empty.
"That's all, sister," he said, turning.
She was gone. Something like a blue flash whisked out of vision. There was only the metal framework supporting a cylinder of the woven quicksilver. And, as he watched, it vanished.
More dark figures blocked the doorway. They came at him in a surge of reckless violence. He stood up and met them with empty hands. Then darkness struck through his brain.
III