The Ladder in the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

guess not,” Kazan said stonily. He glanced down towards the lakeside, and stiffened, everything else forgotten. There went the first stage of his plan.
    His?
    He choked the thought back, concentrating on the details of what must be happening. Lately, they told him, Prince Luth’s captors had decided that there was now small chance of his followers trying to rescue him, and reduced their guards somewhat, so that the lakeside patrol now consisted of a mere four men—or rather, twenty in all. But at any time only four were actually patrolling; the remainder were in four watch-houses. Four men would search their quarter of the shore, then relieve the men in the watch-house they came to and send them off in turn.
    Then, Kazan had said, send four men down a few minutes before the patrol is expected. Let them go to the watch-house as though they were the patrol, overcome the men inside, and then overcome the real patrol when it arrived. Let them make any necessary report by phone to the next watch-house, and it would be an hour or so before suspicions were aroused.
    He waited tensely. From here he should be able to catch any slight sounds of scuffling. Yes, and there was something which fell dry upon the ear—feet on solid earth, not the noise of a thing out in the lake.
    “Hear that?” he whispered to Yarco.
    “I hear nothing,” Yarco returned curtly.
    A few minutes later, the shadows slipped down the hillside to where he was waiting. One of them, he thought, was Bryda, but it was hard to tell, for they were all draped in the necessary radiation deflectors.
    “It’s done,” a harsh whisper informed him. “Move now!”
    Kazan chuckled and rose lazily to his feet. The cream of the jest, he thought, was that none of them knew what he was going to do. And the cream of the cream—which Yarco, he thought, might suspect—was that he knew no more than they did. He was merely utterly confident that he would know.
    He walked down to the edge of the water and looked about him. The pallid gray beach was partly mud, partly rock, partly sand; where he had come was sandy. A dozen paces distant something cast up out of the sluggish waves squirmed and writhed. Even in the darkness it seemed incomplete—a torn-off limb continuing to move blindly by itself.
    The others who had come down clustered around him, impatient but not daring to cross Kazan. He savored the sensation for a moment. Then he went to the very edge of the water and bent down, feeling in the air. It did not seem that he was doing anything else.
    At a level slightly higher, he did the same. And then a foot higher still.
    He turned and walked back to the others, leaving nothing behind that could be seen. With ironical grace he bowed to the shape of darkness that he took to be Bryda.
    “Will it please the Lady Bryda to come with me?” he said.
    She hesitated. After a moment he put his hand out and seized hers, drawing her down after him to the same spot on the beach where he had been a moment ago.
    “There!” he said. “There, in front of you! The window of Prince Luth’s apartment! Are you not going to it?”
    Alarmed that he spoke aloud, the others hurried forward. Just before they came up with him, he seemed to lose patience. Catching Bryda around the waist, he whirled her off her feet into mid-air.
    And stood her there.
    Time hesitated for a moment. A little murmer of disbelief welled from the people on the beach. As for Bryda, she swayed, standing on the air, and gave a soft moan. But in a few seconds she had recovered herself.
    “Will it go so all the way?” she said. Her voice shook.
    “Of course,” Kazan said.
    “It’s a miracle,” someone said flatly. “I don’t like it at all.”
    “A serviceable miracle is better than nothing,” someone else cut in. “I’ll pray only that I keep my footing.”
    “None of you need go,” Kazan said. “None but myself, and the lady here. One to guide the prince, one to be an earnest that this is no