It was like turning on a light in a tomb that had been sealed for centuries. Certainly this tomb had been sealed, to all except the Digesters and the servo-robot attendants. The vault was at least two hundred feet high. Walther could only guess at the other dimensions, and the extent of the corridors that fanned out like the spokes of a wheel. Sculptured figures from all the ages of Earth loomed out of the shadows with a quality of arrested life that might at any moment move again. The figures of the Pharaohs were here, the chiseled perfection of Athens and Rome, the genius of the Renaissance and the primitive gods of the Aztecs. The armless Venus gazed down dispassionately on the bowed back of the Discus Thrower, while Rodin's Thinker stared in eternal contemplation at the belly of Buddha. And then Walther looked upward. High overhead, reassembled on a great oblong span of artificial ceiling suspended from the top of the vault, were the nine immortal panels from the Sistine Chapel. Tracing his beam of light through scene by scene of Michaelangelo's creation of the world, lingering among the connective figures of the prophets and sibyls, the lunettes and triangles, Walther lost all sense of time. When his back and neck muscles could stand the strain no longer, he wandered deeper into the dim recesses of the vault, following corridor after corridor, entranced. He was like a condemned man watching his last sunrise and trying to absorb it all, knowing he would not come this way again. Walther did not realize how far he had wandered until he came at last to the end of a corridor and glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock! He'd been gone from the group for nearly three hours, and the entire raid had been timed for two hours. He started running for the elevator. Corridor led into corridor, gallery into gallery. It took him twenty minutes to find his way back to the main vault, another five minutes to locate the right elevator. He pressed the button and listened. There was no sound within the shaft. He shouted, and there was only the echo of his own voice reverberating through the ages around him. * * * * * Fighting down a flutter of panic, Walther turned off his light and leaned against the elevator door to organize his thoughts. He was sure the others had left on time to make shipment schedules at the Uniport landing. They might have delayed long enough to make a cursory search for him, but his safety was no part of their commitment. They had successfully raided the vaults, which was all they had contracted to do. Before morning, most of them undoubtedly would have embarked on inter-planetary cruises. Walther's first decision was to try the other elevators on the off-chance that one had been left in operating gear. None had.