Doorway to Kal-Jmar By Stuart Fleming Two men had died before Syme Rector's guns to give him the key to the ancient city of Kal-Jmar--a city of untold wealth, and of robots that made desires instant commands. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The tall man loitered a moment before a garish window display, his eyes impassive in his space-burned face, as the Lillis patrolman passed. Then he turned, burying his long chin in the folds of his sand cape, and took up the pursuit of the dark figure ahead once more. Above, the city's multicolored lights were reflected from the translucent Dome--a distant, subtly distorted Lillis, through which the stars shone dimly. Getting through that dome had been his first urgent problem, but now he had another, and a more pressing one. It had been simple enough to pass himself off as an itinerant prospector and gain entrance to the city, after his ship had crashed in the Mare Cimmerium. But the rest would not be so simple. He had to acquire a spaceman's identity card, and he had to do it fast. It was only a matter of time until the Triplanet Patrol gave up the misleading trail he had made into the hill country, and concluded that he must have reached Lillis. After that, his only safety lay in shipping out on a freighter as soon as possible. He had to get off Mars, because his trail was warm, and the Patrol thorough. They knew, of course, that he was an outlaw--the very fact of the crashed, illegally-armed ship would have told them that. But they didn't know that he was Syme Rector, the most-wanted and most-feared raider in the System. In that was his only advantage. He walked a little faster, as his quarry turned up a side street and then boarded a moving ramp to an upper level. He watched until the short, wide-shouldered figure in spaceman's harness disappeared over the top of the ramp, and then followed. The man was waiting for him at the mouth of the ascending tunnel. Syme looked at him casually, without a flicker of expression, and started to walk on, but the other stepped into his path. He was quite young, Syme saw, with a fighter's shoulders under the white leather, and a hard, determined thrust to his firm jaw. "All right," the boy said quietly. "What is it?" "I don't understand," Syme said. "The game, the angle. You've been following me. Do you want trouble?" "Why, no," Syme told him bewilderedly. "I haven't been following you. I--" The boy knuckled his chin reflectively. "You could be lying," he said finally. "But maybe I've made a mistake." Then--"Okay, citizen, you can clear--but don't let me catch you on my tail again."