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Vana entered, holding the baby to her breast Evidently, she had been unable to wait until after Keem was fed. Deyv told her just what they could do. He did not try to make it seem that they had much chance to get out alive. He wouldn't have fooled her if he had.
"Oh, if only you still had your bag of treasures, your powers," she said to The Shemibob.
"That's itl" Deyv shouted as he sprang up from the floor. "Power! Power!"
The Shemibob blinked and said, "What do you mean? What power? I don't have any."
"You don't!" he cried. "But the vessel does!"
She and Sloosh looked at each other. The plant-man said, "We don't know how to operate it. We could kill ourselves. But we'll die anyway."
"Better that than to choke to death or be run through with spears," The Shemibob said. "We'll at least be trying."
"There might be enough fuel left to get us a short way into the air and a longer way horizontally. It might be enough to give us a chance to outdistance them. Or they might be so scared they'll not dare chase us. But the impact when we come down ... most desperate, most desperate."
"Come with me," The Shemibob said. "We'll see if we can make even more sense of the circuits. We don't have much time."
The two hurried out They would be careful to stay in the central portion so that their weight on the upper level wouldn't roll the craft over. Vana came to Deyv and said, "Hold us."
He embraced her. The baby started crying again. Deyv stepped back and said, "She's afraid I'll take her from you. I wish that was all she had to fear."
Time passed. Deyv went up the stairs in the middle and sat down on the corridor floor. He could see The
Shemibob and Sloosh working in the control room. Presently, she looked up and saw him.
"We're almost ready," she called out.
The chairs had not been unfolded, since neither of the two could sit on them. The panel had been moved down at a 45-degree angle to the floor. Lights twinkled on them. On the panel were a large dial and a slim stick.
Suddenly, the floor began to tilt upward.
Deyv cried out
Sloosh buzzed, "No! We haven't started it! The tribesman are starting to carry us to the holel"
Vana's voice came to him from below. "What is it?"
Deyv could see the section of wall in front of the two operators become silvery. Then it cleared, and he was looking at the slope of the hill and the village on it.
"We've got it!" The Shemibob said.
The back end began to tilt. Shortly, the floor was level.
Sloosh turned and said, "You and Vana get into a room and put your backs against the rear wall. We don't know if we can control the acceleration!"
Deyv hastened to obey. As soon as they were settled, The Shemibob's voice came faintly through the door. "They're carrying us to the hole! Hang on!"
Deyv didn't know what to expect, a mighty roar, a surge that would throw them into the wall, or what
They fell hard, and then they felt a bumping.
The people had dropped the vessel. It was moving slowly up the hill.
He could imagine those outside, screaming, ru
The front end rose high, then flopped down. It bumped a little more. It stopped.
The Shemibob's face was in the doorway. She looked serious but undisturbed.
"It just doesn't have enough energy left to get us off the ground. We're inside the village walls now. We went through the entrance. You two get out and bar the gate."
She withdrew. Deyv and Vana opened the door and stepped out. Vana followed him a moment after, having placed the baby on the floor first. She was screaming as if she were trying to vomit her lungs.
Together, they ran to the gateway. The tribes were standing in the swamp near the trees and looking up at them. Their voices, shrill and quavery, floated up faintly.
Though it was a task for six men, Deyv and "Vana managed to shoot the massive wooden bar. He stepped back, panting but gri
They returned to the vessel, noting on the way that it had knocked over the statues of the ancestors and the tables in front of them. The nose of the vessel was almost touching the opposite wall. Sloosh and The
Shemibob were outside now, pushing it away from the wall. Before Deyv got to them, they had turned the vessel around to face the gate. From within the opened door came the baby's crying.
Vana hastened inside to take care of her. Deyv asked, "Why didn't you steer it into the swamp?"
"Because my cabbage-head friend suggested that we could still get the tribes to follow us through the gateway."
"Why is it that when someone thinks of something that another should have thought of, the first person is subjected to insults by the second?" Sloosh asked.
The Shemibob laughed and said, "His idea puts us in more jeopardy. But it might work."
She told Deyv what it was. They got busy then, carrying the wooden statues into the vessel. It was he who suggested that they could strengthen the plan by picking off the eggs from the soul-egg tree. The
Shemibob replied that that would take more time, which they might not have.
Deyv climbed the ladder to the walk behind the wall and looked the situation over. By then most of the people had come out from the swamp and were massed along the bottom of the hill. The six shamans were sitting in a circle, with the Chaufi'ng apparently doing most of the talking. At least, his hands were flying more and faster than the others'.
Many of the people were staggering or lying on their backs. Sloosh had been right when he'd said that they'd drugged themselves to gain courage.
Deyv climbed back down and reported.
"I think we've got enough time."
The Shemibob sent Vana to watch the tribes. Then the three worked swiftly, knocking off the ripe soul eggs with a pole or breaking off the others with clubs. When they had piled all the eggs in a back room on the lowest level, they sat down to rest awhile.
Presently, Vana called out that the warriors were gathering at the foot of the path. Deyv ran to help her observe. He had been with her for only a moment when the men, waving their spears, yelling, hopping, whirling, came slowly up toward them. He helped her get down with the baby, and they sped back to the vessel.
"They're going to attack."
"Are the shamans leading them?" Sloosh said.
"No. They're watching from the bottom."
"I thought not."
They got into the craft. The Shemibob and Sloosh went up into the pilot room. Deyv wanted to go with them, but she said that he might tip the vessel over. As it was, the two controllers had to be very careful about shifting their weight.
"There has to be some way this vessel maintained its stability, but we've not been able to locate the controls. You stay below with Vana."
The vessel moved again across the earth of the enclosure, tipped down, and began bumping along. Deyv hoped that it had enough energy to carry them far past the tradespeople. If the power failed while they were still on the hill or only a little ways past it, they'd be in a bad way again.
They were, he could tell, going down the slope. Then the floor became level, though there was some bobbings, due to their disturbance of the water. A little time passed, far too little, he thought. And there was a cessation of movement.