The Man In The Maze

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Muller knew the maze quite well by this time. He understood its snares and its delusions, its pitfalls, its deadly traps. He had lived within it for nine years. That was long enough to come to terms with the maze, if not with the situation that had driven him to take refuge within it.

He still moved warily. Three or four times already he had learned that his knowledge of the maze, although adequate and workable, was not wholly complete. At least once he had come right to the edge of destruction, pulling back only by some improbable bit of luck just before the unexpected fountaining of an energy flare sent a stream of raw power boiling across his path. Muller had charted that flare, and fifty others; but as he moved through the city-sized labyrinth he knew there was no guarantee that he would not meet an uncharted one.

Overhead the sky was darkening; the deep, rich green of late afternoon was giving way to the black of night. Muller paused a moment in his hunting to look up at the pattern of the stars. Even that was becoming familiar now. He had chosen his own constellations on this desolate world, searching the heavens for arrangements of brightness that suited his peculiarly harsh and bitter taste. Now they appeared: the Dagger, the Back, the Shaft, the Ape, the Toad. In the forehead of the Ape flickered the small grubby star that Muller believed was the sun of Earth. He was not sure, because he had destroyed his chart tank after landing here somehow, though, he felt that that minor fireball must be Sol. The same dim star formed the left eye of the Toad. There were times when Muller told himself that Sol would not be visible in the sky of this world ninety light-years from Earth, but at other times he was quite convinced.

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