Cheered by this information, I explained that I was there only to help them restore the flow of the waters. They bought this, tentatively, and we all heaved out of the tub and trickled muddy paths across the floor. There was a bolted and guarded door that led into the pyramid proper. While it was being opened, the First Lizard turned to me.
"Undoubtedly you know of the rule," he said. "Because the old priests did pry and peer, it was ordered henceforth that only the blind could enter the Holy of Holies." I would swear he was smiling; if thirty teeth peeking out of what looked like a crack in an old suitcase can be called smiling.
He was also signaling over an underpriest who carried a brazier of charcoal, complete with red-hot irons. All I could do was stand and watch as he stirred up the coals, pulled out the ruddiest iron and turned toward me. He was just drawing a bead on my right eyeball when my brain got back in gear.
"Of course," I said. "Blinding is only right. But in my case you will have to blind me later, before I leave the Holy of Holies, not now. I need my eyes to see and mend the Fount of Holy Waters. Once the waters flow again, I will laugh as I hurl myself on the burning iron."
He took a good thirty seconds to think it over and in the end had to agree with me. The local torturer sniffled a bit and threw a little more charcoal on the fire. The gate crashed open and I stalked through; then it banged to behind me and I was alone in the dark.
But not for long — there was a shuffling nearby and I took a chance and turned on my flash. Three priests were groping toward me, their eye sockets red pits of burned flesh. They knew what I wanted and led the way without a word.
A crumbling and cracked stone stairway brought us up by a solid metal doorway labeled in archaic script mark III beacon — ENTRANCE TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The overly trusting builders had counted on the sign to do the whole job, for there wasn't a trace of a lock on the door. One lizard merely turned the handle and we were inside the beacon.
I unzipped the front of my camouflage suit and pulled out the blueprints. With the faithful priests stumbling after me I approached the antique machinery. There was a residue of charge in the emergency batteries, just enough to give a dim light. The meters and indicators looked to be in good shape; if anything, unexpectedly bright from constant polishing. I checked the readings carefully and found just what I had suspected. One of the eager lizards had managed to open a circuit box and had polished the switches inside. While doing this, he had thrown one of the switches and that had caused the trouble.
Rather, that had started the trouble. It wasn't going to be ended by just reversing the water-valve switch. This valve was supposed to be used only for repairs, and then only after the atomic pile had been damped. When the water was cut off with the pile in operation, it had started to overheat and the automatic safeties had dumped the whole works down into the pit.
I could start the water again easily enough, but there was no fuel left in the reactor.
But I wasn't going to play with the fuel problem at all. It would be far easier for me to install a new power plant. I had one in the ship that was about a tenth of the size of the ancient bucket of bolts. Before I sent for it, I checked over the rest of the beacon. In two thousand years there should be some signs of wear, tear, and fatigue.
The old boys had built well, I'll give them credit for that. Ninety percent of the machinery had no moving parts and had suffered no wear whatever. Other parts they beefed up figuring they would wear, but slowly. The water-feed pipe from the roof, for example. The pipe walls were at least three meters thick — and the pipe opening itself no bigger than my head. There were some things I could do, though, and I made a list of parts.
The parts, the new power plant, and a few other odds and ends were sorted into a neat pile on the ship. I checked all the parts by screen before they were loaded into a small metal crate. In the darkest hour before dawn, the heavy-duty Eye dropped the crate outside the temple and darted away without being seen.
I watched the priests through the Pryeye while they tried to open it. When they had given up, I boomed orders at them through a speaker in the crate. They spent most of the day sweating the heavy box up through the narrow temple stairs, and I enjoyed a good sleep. It was resting inside the beacon door when I woke up.
The repair didn't take long, though there was plenty of groaning from the blind lizards when they heard me ripping the wall open to get to the power leads. I even hooked a gadget to the water pipe so their Holy Waters would have the usual refreshing radioactivity when they started flowing again. The moment this was all finished, I did the job they waited for.
I threw the switch that started the water flowing again.
