"Not Solcom?"
"Not Solcom."
"Then let us view the gallery."
"Yes."
Frost widened the doorway of the building and passed within. It had been hermetically sealed until Mordel forced his entrance.
Frost viewed the objects displayed about him. He activated his new sensory apparatus before the paintings and statues. He analyzed colors, forms, brushwork, the nature of the materials used.
"Anything?" asked Mordel.
"No," said Frost. "No, there is nothing there but shapes and pigments. There is nothing else there."
Frost moved about the gallery, recording everything, analyzing the components of each piece, recording the dimensions, the type of stone used in every statue.
Then there came a sound, a rapid, clicking sound, repeated over and over, growing louder, coming nearer.
"They are coming," said Mordel, from beside the entranceway, "the mechanical spiders. They are all around us."
Frost moved back to the widened opening.
Hundreds of them, about half the size of Mordel, had surrounded the gallery and were advancing; and more were coming from every direction.
"Get back," Frost ordered. "I am Controller of the North, and I bid you withdraw."
They continued to advance.
"This is the South," said the Beta-Machine, "and I am in command."
"Then command them to half," said Frost.
"I take orders only from Solcom."
Frost emerged from the gallery and rose into the air. He opened the compartment and extended a runway.
"Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart."
Webs began to fall: Clinging, metallic webs, cast from the top of the building.
They came down upon Frost, and the spiders came to anchor them. Frost blasted them with jets of air, like hammers, and tore at the nets; he extruded sharpened appendages with which he slashed.
Mordel had retreated back to the entranceway. He emitted a long, shrill sound - undulant, piercing.
Then a darkness came upon Bright Defile, and all the spiders halted in their spinning.
Frost freed himself and Mordel rushed to join him.
"Quickly now, let us depart, mighty Frost," he said.
"What has happened?"
Mordel entered the compartment.
"I called upon Divcom, who laid down a field of forces upon this place, cutting off the power broadcast to these machines. Since our power is self-contained, we are not affected. But let us hurry to depart, for even now the Beta-Machine must be struggling against this."
Frost rose high into the air, soaring above Man's last city with its webs and spiders of steel. When he left the zone of darkness, he sped northward.
As he moved, Solcom spoke to him:
"Frost, why did you enter the southern hemisphere, which is not your domain?"
"Because I wished to visit Bright Defile," Frost replied.
"And why did you defy the Beta-Machine my appointed agent of the South?"
"Because I take my orders only from you yourself."
"You do not make sufficient answer," said Solcom.
"You have defied the decress of order - and in pursuit of what?"
"I came seeking knowledge of Man," said Frost. "Nothing I have done was forbidden me by you."
"You have broken the traditions of order."
"I ahve violated no directive."
"Yet logic must have shown you that what you did was not a part of my plan."
"It did not. I have not acted against your plan."
"Your logic has become tainted, like that of your new associate, the Alternate."
"I have done nothing which was forbidden."
"The forbidden is implied in the imperative."
"It is not stated."
"Hear me, Frost. You are not a builder or a maintainer, but a Power. Among all my minions you are the most nearly irreplaceable. Return to your hemisphere and your duties, but know that I am mightily displeased."
"I hear you, Solcom."
"...And go not again to the South."