Destroyer of Worlds by E. C. Tubb Page A

races which used doors and a means to lock them would follow a basic pattern. And unless there were stringent precautions against the practice, it might have been as common for them as it was for those of his own kind to make a note of the combination somewhere close.
    He found it seven feet from the edge of the door, three symbols which matched those found in the array around the knurled wheel. It moved beneath his gloved hands, turning, a nub halting at each of the symbols in turn. A guess — and West glowed to his success.
    ‘You’ve done it!’ Martyn stepped forward as the door swung open. ‘Skipper, let’s look inside!’
    They stepped into a mausoleum.
    West halted, Martyn at his side, head and back tilted so as to look up and around. From the high, domed roof hung a mass of delicate, lace-like web, sheets of fine gossamer glowing with refracted colour, hues which faded to burn again only to fade as they shifted the beams of their helmet-lights. Hanging in the webs, folded in it, were tall, fragile shapes with long, pointed skulls and narrow shoulders. The faces were peaked, the eyes enormous beneath protruding brows, the hands long-fingered with nails of pearl. Each hand held seven fingers and each finger was jointed in four places.
    ‘Dead!’ whispered Martyn. ‘They’re all dead.’
    They had been dead for eons. Even as they watched a body fell from where it hung suspended in the web which had served as a shroud, bones shattering to add their substance to the pile below, a heap of greyish dust which rose beneath the impact to settle in a slightly wider pattern.
    The floor was covered with the dust, the accumulated debris of ages.
    ‘Webs.’ Martyn moved, guiding his light, the circle of brilliance probing the rear of the cavern. ‘Spiders, maybe?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Look at the bodies. None touched or eaten. Those webs weren’t spun by spiders.’
    Not unless the bodies now suspended had stemmed from an arachnid ancestry, the extra limbs absorbed as mankind had absorbed the gills it had once known, shed the tail it no longer needed. And who could tell of the customs and ways of an alien race? They had lived and built and tried to survive with tunnels and sealed chambers and, perhaps, mystic signs scratched on the adamantine walls of their defences. They had failed and had withdrawn to spend the last moments of their lives in communion with each other, gathering to fashion their webs, to hang in them, to die in them.
    Their equivalent of beds, perhaps, of couches.
    Of tombs.
    West moved a little, looking at a pathetic tableau; two adult shapes together with two smaller ones of unequal size. A family group gathered together for mutual comfort? The hands were interlocked, the huge eyes open, pale and desiccated orbs which one, perhaps, had known the bitterness of tears.
    ‘Skipper?’ Martyn was uneasy. ‘This place is giving me the creeps. How about getting the hell out of here?’
    Another body fell as he spoke, landing close by to dissolve into dust, adding more bulk to the powder which littered the floor. Another, two at a time, a sudden fall of withered figures like a ghastly rain.
    ‘The floor! It’s moving!’ West turned towards the entrance. ‘The door! It’s closed!’
    More than the floor had moved. The slight tremor had swung the door on its gimbals, sending it to fit snugly into the opening.
    Even before he reached it West knew that, somehow, it had locked itself.
    That he and Martyn were sealed in with the alien dead.

CHAPTER 8
    Alan Guthrie lurched and almost fell, regaining his balance with a tremendous effort, uneasily aware of the danger of smashing his face, the danger of smashing his face-plate, of dying in the airless void.
    ‘Alan?’ Lang Ki’s voice, concerned as it came from the radio. ‘You alright?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘Sure I’m sure!’ Anger edged his reply. Why the hell couldn’t Ki mind his own business? The day he needed mothering