The Quest of the Professor, Part 12

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tall, lithe young woman in a pale blue, snap front smock whispers to her companion, “I don’t get it. One minute we are standing there facing 3 charging Rock Men without anything and suddenly he’s got that blaster thing and a sword!  Where did they come from?”
         “Vix, I have no answers,” a short, stout man wearing a pale green, snap front smock whispers back. He has Doctor Orderly, MD written across the back of his shoulders on his smock.
         Vix turns to look back where they’d come from and the words Miss Vixen Mia Fixins is written across the shoulders in white lettering on her smock.
         Ahead of them is a tall, robust man with a mane of white hair.  He is wearing a black, snap front smock with the words Professor Van Der Built across his shoulders in white letters.  He has a long sword in one hand and a bulbous pistol in the other.  He is the only one armed in the small group.
         “Are you really a doctor?” Vix whispers.
         “No.  A test engineer; got laid off a couple months back,”  he whispers.  “You?”
         “Bookkeeper, working on my CPA.  Downsized two weeks ago,” she whispers tersely.
         “OK. This is it, Dr. Orderly and Miss Fixins.  Beyond this door is the last barrier between us and the evil Emperor Mingingless,”  the Professor says over his shoulder.
         In front of them is an arched door that is 9 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and made of oak planks bound by black iron hinges.  There is a latch on the left side.  No one moves for several minutes before Dr. Orderly speaks up, “Do you want me to open the door?”
         “Yes! Yes, that would work.”
         It takes some maneuvering for Orderly to get in front of the Professor.  He shakes his head, pulls open the door, and backs into the Professor.
         “Look, Professor, to get this door open you are going to have to back up to Vix … Miss Fixins.  I promise I won’t get in your way once it is open.”
         Reluctantly, the Professor backs up.  The door swings open revealing a well lit tiled room with a visible door across from them.  In the center of the room is a dry fountain with a statue it in.
         As the others pass him, Orderly looks down and see something shiny in the dirt on the floor of the hallway.  It is a ceramic piece with part of a picture on one side and a short number sequence on the other.  He picks it up, drops it in a pocket on his smock and takes one last look around the hallway.  He spies a small pipe suck in one of the support beams.  He tugs it loose and drops it in his other pocket.
         Entering the room he sees that it actually has four doors.  Each door has a symbol above it and two others on the molding on each side.  To Orderly’s right, on the wall is a valve with a big red wheel on it.  On the ground, is a pipe that should connect the fountain to a valve on the wall.  It has a piece missing.
         The Professor walks around the room peering at each door.  Vix is standing at the fountain looking at the statue.  Orderly joins her.
         “It’s missing a piece.” Vix says pointing at the statue of a young woman holding a pitcher.  The pitcher is missing a piece.  Vix pulls something from her smock pocket, steps into the fountain base and up to the statue.  The object in her hand fits it into the broken pitcher completing it.  There is a loud bong sound as it settles into place.
         The Professor scurries back to Orderly asking “What’s she done?”
         “Just fixed the pitcher.”
         “One of the Rock men you slew dropped it,” Miss Fixins says after rejoining them.
         “Oh. Good. That’s really good. So … uhm.”
         Orderly pulls the tile piece out of this pocket, holds it out to the professor saying “We, probably, need to find a home for this.”
         The Professor takes the piece from Orderly and examining it closely.  After a minute or so he looks up and walks around the room to a mosaic on the wall between two doors.  He fiddles with the piece for a moment and then presses it into the mosaic.  Another bong sounds and the sound of running water can be heard briefly.
         The Professor returns to the others and Orderly pulls out the pipe and hands it to him.  He fits it into the place it should go and another bong sounds. They stand for a few minutes until Orderly nudges the Professor nodding toward the valve on the wall.  The Professor steps over and turns the valve.  Water flows through the fountain, out the pitcher and fills the basin around it.
         All the closed doors open.  Out of the door on the right, a creature with four eyes on stalks, 5 tentacles, and two wings steps out.  It is looking at a tablet is is carrying and stops just inside the door, looks at them, gives out a high pitched “Meep”, drops the tablet and flees back through the door.
         “Well, that kind of simplifies which doorway we need to go through,” Vix says then asks.  “Any idea what the hell that was?”
         “No idea,” Orderly replies.  “After the Giant Black Urchins and the Rock Men, I am prepared to believe anything.”
         “That was his evil majesty himself,” Professor Van Der’ Built says. He has the sword and blaster in his hands again.
         “How did … where???” Miss Fixins tries to ask.
         “No time, no time. We must be after that fiend before he can lay any more traps,”  The Professor leaps to the doorway the weird creature fled through.  The other two follow; Vix pausing to pick up the dropped tablet as they enter yet another doorway ...