He began walking again, wondering if he wouldn’t be better off going immediately to the surface and searching for a more direct route. Then he came to yet another intersection and found that the right-hand tunnel glowed a rich red, as opposed to the usual blue. He entered it without hesitation.

It twisted to his right, then straightened out for a few hundred feet, and finally seemed to make a sweeping semicircle to the left, never once intersecting with any other corridor. Finally it broadened out, the walls gradually forming artificially perfect right angles with the floor and ceiling, and he noticed that the illumination was considerably brighter.

Suddenly the corridor came to an abrupt end, and he found himself standing in a small vestibule that led to a large, well-lit chamber. He started to enter it, then jumped back as he discovered that his way was blocked by an electronic force field.

He approached the entrance more cautiously and looked into the chamber. It was perhaps sixty feet on a side, and its smooth stone walls sparkled like polished prisms in the artificial light. He had no idea how high the ceiling was, because the room faded into darkness some thirty feet above the floor. Lining two of the walls, to a height of perhaps eight feet, were enormous water tanks filled with alien aquatic life-forms and contained not by glass walls but by translucent energy screens.

In the very center of the room was a desk with a computer console and five small screens; one of them displayed some type of readout, and the other four seemed to show various areas of the labyrinth. Just to the left of the desk were two couches. One was empty, and on the other reclined a breath-takingly beautiful woman. Her features were human, but they were so exotic that they seemed somehow alien. Her skin was chalk white, her hair was long and black, her large eyes were almost too blue beneath her oddly arched eyebrows. Her facial features, from her full lips and delicate nose to her not-quite-pointed ears, were exquisitely chiseled. Her single garment, which was draped around her supple body like a corkscrew and exposed far more than it concealed, was made of some metallic fabric that seemed to change colors every time she breathed or moved.

“Welcome, Sebastian Cain,” she said in a lilting, singsong voice. “I have been watching you work your way through my labyrinth.”

“You’re Altair of Altair?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve come a long way to talk to you,” he said.

“I will enjoy talking to you. We have many things in common.” She paused. “That is why I allowed you to find me. You are only the third person ever to enter this chamber.”

“I haven’t entered it yet,” he noted.

“I must protect myself,” she said apologetically. “After all, I have a price on my head, and you are a bounty hunter.”