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Still, Feersh would have been told of the light. She might decide to have someone investigate when she got near this room. He turned and pressed the others into a room on the other side of the corridor. He got down on all fours and stuck his head around the corner of the doorway. They'd been just in time. Here came a slave ru
The man in the lead raced ahead of the others until he came to the room containing the torches. He looked through the doorway and then sped back to report. Deyv couldn't hear what he said, but evidently
Feersh wasn't alarmed. She said something, and the two slaves maneuvered the plank through the door of a room about twenty feet beyond the hiders.
Deyv had to withdraw his head. When the light from the group had dimmed somewhat, he looked again.
Nobody was in the corridor.
He waited, then sped silently down the corridor. Hoping that they would be intent on their business, he dared a glimpse into the room. All were watching the two slaves put the plank across the gap.
When he'd told the others what he'd seen, Vana said, "Sloosh will surely see them."
"I don't know. They didn't see him. Maybe he went back to the top deck. But he must've decided to pull the plank back through the window. Otherwise, they'd have seen it."
"In which case," Vana said, "he's still at the window. He'd have to stay there so we could get back if we had to run."
"Not so," Hoozisst said, and he groaned. "You never know what he's thinking. If he happened to recall some philosophical question he'd not solved, he might be digging through it."
After telling Vana to post herself by the doorway, Deyv went back to the room he'd first entered. He didn't think that anybody would come out from the other room. They had no reason to fear attack from behind.
When in the room, he cautiously looked out the window from a distance and at an angle. They couldn't see him, but he could see them. Two big male slaves in Indian file were carefully walking over the board, their hands out to balance themselves, the right hands grasping spears. They were spaced so that their weight didn't bend the plank too much at one point. One went through the window; in a few seconds the other was in. Then a female, carrying a torch, followed them.
Deyv watched more go across, including the witch's two surviving sons. Feersh was preceded by a female also carrying a torch. Feersh had her hand upon her shoulder. They went across more swiftly than the others had, the witch urging the obviously frightened woman ahead with low but fierce words.
Seven were left to cross. Deyv ran back to the room where Vana and Hoozisst were and told them what to do. They followed him, and when they got to the room only five were in it. Jowanarr and Seelgee, the daughters, were on the plank. Jowanarr seemed to be suffering yet from the blow to her head. Her sister was behind her, her hands on Jowanarr's shoulders to steady her.
A woman slave was standing by the window, a torch upheld to help light the two daughters' path.
Another woman was in the window of the tharakorm opposite, also with a torch.
Deyv gave the word to attack. Aejip bounded in, yowling, and hurled herself at the nearest man. Jum launched himself at a man's throat. Deyv came next, and his sword cut into another slave's neck. The
Yawtl stuck the point of his sword into the belly of the fourth man. The woman, screaming, dropped her torch and got onto the plank. Deyv kicked her hard, and she went off the side of the plank.
While the animals were still struggling, quite successfully, with their victims, Deyv and Hoozisst grabbed the end of the plank. They heaved up on it. Jowanarr fell through the window headfirst, but her sister, shrieking, toppled off it.
That left Feersh, her two sons, a daughter, and the slaves in the other ship-creature. Sloosh, if he was still in the room and not on the top deck, must have seen the situation. He'd be hurrying down now to bar their exit from the door. That is, unless he was putting the plank back so that Deyv's group could get over it and help him.
Deyv stuck his head out of the window. The plank was already bridging the gap. He turned and told the others they had to get going. By then the animals had finished off the two male slaves. Deyv ran down the corridor, dark by now, his fingers groping the wall to count the doorways. When he got to the fourth, he stopped and entered. Somebody bumped into him from behind. He stumbled forward under the impact, swore, grabbed the window edge, and halted himself. He made sure that the plank extended far enough into the room to be safe. He climbed onto the board and, his fear of being too late overcoming his fear of the abyss, ran across.
Sloosh was gone. Evidently he'd put the plank across and then hurried toward the room where Feersh was. Or where she had been.
He rounded the comer. Down the corridor light shone from a doorway. Sloosh was illumined in it, one hand holding up the great war axe, the other holding his club. When he got to the doorway, Deyv found
Feersh railing at her children and slaves. It was no use. They feared her, but they feared the invaders more.
22
GREEDY Hoozisst had taken the Emerald and hung it from his neck, and then the captives' hands and feet had been tied. All but one had been put in a room whose open exit was a window to the outside.
Hoozisst had told Sloosh how to control those chambers which had sliding doors. They used the little animal on the wall of Feersh's quarters to close the room in which the bound prisoners were kept. To make sure that the witch couldn't kill herself by getting out through a window, they enclosed her in a room without one. Since she would soon have died of oxygen-starvation, Sloosh punched a hole in the hull.
All of Deyv's party except the Archkerri wanted to puncture the gas cells immediately. Sloosh, however, said that it would be too dangerous at this time. To convince them, he took them back up to the top deck.
"Look at that peak on the horizon," he said. "Notice how fast it's going by, yet it must be a long way off.
We must be traveling at least a hundred miles an ukhromikhthanshukh."
"What's that?" Deyv asked.
Sloosh had given the particular groups of buzzes corresponding to certain sounds in Vana's language.
But the word was unknown to her.
The Archkerri explained that the Earth rotated on its axis about once every 142.8 hours. An hour, that is, an ukhromikhthanshukh, was a unit of time. There were about thirteen of these between sleep-time and sleep-time, though that was not by any means exact. At one time the Earth had rotated on its axis once every twenty-four hours. At other times, it had not rotated at all, but this state had not lasted long, since the ancients of that time had set it back to spi
The others still didn't at all understand what the word meant.
"That is because you have a very feeble idea of time. You can't be blamed for that, since your technology and science are undeveloped."
Stung, Deyv said, "You have much less sense of time than we do!"
"Not true. What I have is a lesser sense of urgency. Though it's much more developed now because of my association with you people. My people would be appalled if they knew how strong it was. Perhaps it would be better if all the Archkerri had this, however. A lack of that sense may explain, in part, why we are so few and you other sapients are, in comparison, so many."
He closed his eyes, then opened them.
"Let me put it this way. You remember when we crash-landed in that other tharakorm? We were going only about fifty miles an hour. We're going twice as fast now. If we land now, we'll be killed. The tharakorm probably wouldn't be damaged, but we'd be smashed to pulp. So, landing now is out."