Free The Deadly Sky by Doris Piserchia Page A

walk on. Still my feet moved until I stepped onto a narrow girder of light. Ahead of me stretched the grid which I had seen so often since I joined Mills Suttler and his army. Huge and wispy, rugged and yet tenuous, it hovered in space like a many-tiered scaffold. It took up half an acre and through a portion of it ran a thin blue line. I was face to face with the enemy weapon.
    There was a quietness here that had no counterpart anywhere I knew, a savage silence that stalked my psyche like a stealthy predator. My inclination was to turn and run, bellowing in horror. I wanted to grasp the nearest girder in a tight grip while I sought safety behind it. Or to one side of it. Or the other side. The danger was everywhere, close by or afar, through the misty layers of the thing constructed by inhuman persons. I had made a mistake. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now that I had successfully made the transfer from one plane of reality to another. Plainly Sargoth hadn’t expected me to go any farther than the entrance. How could I when I had no instructions?
    The blue line wasn’t wide enough and I kept slipping off it onto perilous ground. Though I felt impelled to assist myself along by taking support from the girders, I kept my arms tightly to my sides as I slowly moved forward. Not for a moment did I delude myself into thinking that I was being innovative. A man didn’t lightly relinquish his body parts. He would utilize his every faculty to prevent being maimed. Not just one man had gone along this same path but many men; all the drells I had seen heretofore; all the one-armed or one-legged men and women in Emera must have taken a shot at this scaffold.
    Thinking of hangman’s nooses and guillotines, I passed the first row of girders and stayed on the blue line. No wind came to cool my face or try to knock me off my perch. There was nothing on the weapon but its many mechanical parts and myself. I tried to see through the mist but there were only the high girders, swirling fog and flickering images from my memory. For a few minutes I seemed to be ascending the basement stairs in my home. Immediately I came to a halt. As soon as my vision cleared I quickly moved forward along the line. This was known territory and I was wasting time. Why not get it over with?
    The line finally stopped short in the midst of vapor and smoke, rearing tiers and dead silence. Though I perspired I didn’t breath. Unnerved by the realization, I stood with my head down while I assessed the situation. No longer on the home-world, I didn’t seem to require oxygen, or I was getting it through my pores, or perhaps an invisible tube tapped into my veins. Since I didn’t trust what I saw or felt, I couldn’t be sure.
    Wondering what it was that Sargoth intended to do with this unholy weapon, I moved a foot beyond the line. Then another step. Straight ahead I went toward a curious red light. Stopping short of it, I tried to measure it. All I could say was that it was dense and malevolent. As I paused there speculating, something dropped past my cheek, something so vile and deadly that I was too shocked to move. If I hadn’t known better I would have said a blade had fallen from a height to zip close to me. Only I didn’t know better and it had been an actual blade. Nothing but the angle of my stance had saved me from mutilation. Of course it had been a blade, razor-sharp, no doubt, designed to slice an intruder in half, or to relieve him of some body protrusion. If I had been standing a bit more to the left, my shoulder would have been taken away along with half my side.
    Now I knew that not everyone who came here ended up in a glass body. Some never made it out at all. Carefully, with ice in my mind and in my veins, I turned in as small a space as possible and retraced my steps along the blue line. It had extended with me as I moved so that I had no difficulty locating it.
    I wasn’t conscious of the dividing area between the enemy zone and