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© Copyright by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

The King sat naked. Like a foolish pauper on the street, he sat leaning
against a cold wall, drawing in his blue, goose-bumped legs. He shivered,
with his eyes closed, he listened, but everything was quiet.
He awoke at midnight from a nightmare and immediatelly understood that
he was finished. Some one weezed and writhed by the door of the bedroom
suite, he heard footsteps, metalic jingling and drunken mummbling of His
Highness, Uncle Buht: "Let me through... Let me.. Break it down, hell with
it..." Wet with icy sweat, he slintly rolled off his bed, ducked into a
secter closet, and loosing himself he ran down the underground passage.
Something sqelched under his bare feet, the startled rats dashed away, but
he did not notice anything, just now, sitting next to a wall he remembered
everything; the darkness, the slippery walls, and the pain from a blow on
the head against the shakled door to the temple, and his own unberable high
yelp.
They shall not enter here, he thought. No one shall enter here. Only if
the King order's so. But the King shall not order... He snickered
hysterically. Oh no, the King will not order! He carefully un screwed up his
eyes and saw his blue, hairless legs with scraped knees. Still alive, he
thought. I will live, because they shall not enter here.