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More blocks tore loose from the cement that had held them firm for countless generations of humankind.
The stone floor was buckling, and a blast of hot air ripped the sweat from their skins. Dust blew in, choking them, making their eyes smart
Hoozisst screamed even louder than The Shemibob had. His arm over his eyes, he leaped through the shining.
Deyv cursed him for being a coward. Now only he and Vana were left to handle the cat. He stopped and picked up Jum's struggling, howling 165 pounds and hurled the dog through the gateway. Then he picked up his tomahawk from the floor, where he'd dropped it, and he ran at the cat.
Aejip reared up, claws flashing out at him. Deyv struck her hard alongside the head with the flat of his weapon. He suffered deep gashes along his left arm, but the cat dropped, stu
Deyv said, "One, two, three," and at the third swing, they tossed Aejip through.
A huge block of stone crashed twenty feet away. Deyv picked up his tomahawk and leaped through the abomination. He was so scared of being smashed that he felt no terror or sickness. He landed in a place lit up by a ray from Phemropit Before he could recover, he was knocked sprawling by Vana.
When he got up, he began slapping Aejip on the face to make her recover her wits. This was not a remedy recommended to anyone, sane or insane, but he was past caring about consequences. After a few hard blows with the palm of his hand, the cat opened her green eyes. Deyv backed away. She rose unsteadily to her paws. Instead of attacking him, she crouched as if she were withdrawing into herself, occupied with mysterious feline thoughts.
Deyv looked around. They were in a tu
Ahead was the narrowing, not wide enough for tie giant members of the group. The Shemibob and
Sloosh, though they'd entered first, were now behind Phemropit. Evidently, they'd climbed back over
Phermopit, squeezing between it and the ceiling.
Phemropit was now shooting its most powerful ray, cutting along the walls. When it sliced off a section, it swiveled slightly to one side and cut off another section. The slices fell down, forming a growing barrier. How was Phemropit to get over that? There was no way that the others could pick up and toss the pieces over behind it.
It was hot in the tu
Phemropit rumbled ahead, its nose pointing up as it climbed up the pile of thin rock sheets. Its ray shot out, and as it moved on and up, the ceiling scraping its back, it removed more stone from above. It backed up, and then it charged ahead, its ray cutting through the rubble. It was in its native element now, mining, enlarging a shaft. It needed no instructions.
Dust poured through the gateway. Deyv turned to look behind him, expecting to be hit with terror and nausea again. But this side of the gateway was dark. If it hadn't been expanding and contracting, he might have thought it was just a round discoloration on the wall.
Vana had her arms around Aejip's neck and was talking to her in a low voice. Jum looked as dazed as the cat, but he was standing up beside the wall. Deyv went forward. He yelled to make himself heard above the roar coming through the gateway.
"We can't stay here longl Either the heat or the dust will get us soon!"
"Obviously," the Archkerri said.
He was doing the only thing that he could be doing. Standing, waiting for Phemropit to complete its work, conserving his energy. The Shemibob turned the upper half of her body around and gave Deyv a smile she must have thought encouraging. The sharp white teeth, however, made her look as if she'd like to bite someone. Deyv shouted, "I could get by and go ahead. I could see what's ahead of us."
The Shemibob screamed, "Nol Phemropit would have to stop cutting. We can't spare a second!"
She held in her hand a cylinder which could project pulses of light. This artifact was to be used to communicate with Phemropit. She'd given others to the whole party, but all had forgotten to bring theirs along. Sloosh had neglected also to bring his cage of fireflies. The Shemibob was the only one who could signal Phemropit
The heat and deafening noise increased. Those behind the stone-metal thing crowded closer behind it
The dust was so thick that they could scarcely see a foot around them. All began coughing, Sloosh's huge mouth under the leaves making noises like a lion with a sore throat
Suddenly, Phemropit backed up. Its companions had to retreat hurriedly to keep from being run over.
The air from behind Deyv felt as if it were giving him a first-degree burn. The dust poured over him like the spray from a waterfall. The only one he could see, Jum, looked like a gray statue.
Then a great half-leaved hand reached out, groping, felt his face, lowered, traced his neck, shoulder, and arm. It closed around his hand and pulled him forward. Deyv turned and felt behind him, and he had
Vana's hand.
In a loud voice interrupted by racking coughs, he asked her where Aejip was.
"She's with me!" Vana shouted, and she went into a frenzy of coughing.
They moved rapidly after that, The Shemibob with her hand on Phemropit's rear, Sloosh behind her, all in a chain held together by touch. Deyv hoped they would come to no more narrowings, but he didn't have much confidence. He had never felt such a sense of inevitable doom, not even when he had been tied to the post to question Phemropit.
They were moving swiftly forward now, but the heat and the dust were not lessening. The ground-up castle was shooting through the gateway; little pieces of stone spattered on Deyv's back. Now and then he jumped with pain as a larger piece struck him. Then the tu
Who had made this tu
She had replied that she couldn't calculate the mathematics of interuniversal physics. She didn't have the data needed for that But she speculated that gateways, for some reason, tended to locate in "weak" spots.
By this she meant that there were places in both universes where air or water existed on each side of the
"walls" of the contiguous universes. It was here that the gateways were attracted.
But she could be wrong.
"It's a good thing that the entrances don't exist above the atmosphere," she'd said. "Otherwise, the side of the gateway that impinges on a planet with air might suck this air out into the cold empty space of the other world.
"This might eventually happen. There's no telling when the ever-increasing density of matter might shift the gateways to such a location. In which case life on Earth will die even more quickly than I've thought."
Deyv had thought that she was less comforting than Sloosh, and that took some doing.
Suddenly, the dust cloud thi
They went ahead over the irregular floor, changing direction once to avoid an abyss. The water on the floor was still about six inches deep. They splashed it on themselves to wash off the dust, and they drank deeply to quench a thirst they'd been too occupied to notice until then.