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Hindarf drove a pickup truck which was several times in waterhigher thanthe wheels. At Sunset and Beverly Drive, he pulled to the curb. Asemi with a big van came along five minutes later and stopped with a hissing ofair brakes. They got down out of the pickup and waded through water halfway uptheir thighsto the van. They had to hold on to each other to keep from beingswept off theirfeet by the current. A piece of timber, which looked as if it hadbeen a postfor a billboard, swept by them. If it had struck a leg, it would havecracked the bone.
There were twenty others in the van. The back doors were closed, and the truck pulled away. With its high body and its power, it should getthrough waterwhich would drown out an automobile.
On the way, Hindarf gave them instructions. Apparently, everybodyexceptForry had heard these before, but he was making sure that theyunderstood them. The instructions took about fifteen minutes, and the putting on ofthe divingsuits, flippers, tanks and goggles about ten. Forry objected that hehad never been scuba diving but was told that he would be underwater for only aminute. The main reason they were wearing the suits was to keep from gettingcold while they went through the water.
The truck stopped on a steep slope. The doors were opened and asmall ladder let down for Forry while the others leaped out onto the road. Theywere parkedon Topanga Canyon just outside the entrance to the road that ran upto the house of the Ogs. The brown flood ru
"Sure you can," Hindarf said. "Put on the goggles and startbreathingthrough the mouthpiece."
"Now?" Forry said. "Now." Forry did so, and at the first breath he felt more energetic than
at anytime in his life since she had been a child. The air filled his whole body witha strength and a joie de vivre that made him want to sing. This wasimpossible, of course, with the piece in his mouth.
Hindarf said, "We may have a hard fight ahead. The vaporized drugin the breathing system will charge our bodies. The effect is intense butshort-lived."
They walked up the road, their flippers slop-slopping. Theylooked like Venusians, Forry thought, what with the frog feet, the slick blackskins of the suits, the humped air tanks, the goggles, and the big mouthpieces. Some even carried tridents or fishing spears. The rain fell heavily on them, and everything was dark and wet, as if they were under the clouds on thenightsideof the second planet from the sun.
Before they came to the turn of the road that would have placedthem in view of those in the house, they started to climb the hillside. This wassteep andmuddy, and they could only get up by grabbing bushes and pullingthemselves up. He appreciated the suit now, since it kept him from getting wet andmuddy. Theweight of the tank seemed negligible, so strong did he feel. Hisheart was chugging along at its accustomed pace, which meant that the extrademand for energy was being taken care of by the drug in the air system.
After slipping and sliding and hanging on to the bushes, theycrawled out onto the top of the hill. Another hill to their right hid them fromview of those in the house, although Forry did not understand how they couldbe seen in the dark.
Hindarf led them around the larger hill and up to a high brickwall. This was topped by a barbed wire fence about three feet high. Several Tocsunfolded a ladder, a stile, really, and put it over the wall and the wire fence. Hindarf cautioned everybody not to touch the wires, which were charged withhighvoltage. One by one, they crawled up the stile and over the wall anddown to the other side.
They were in an orchard which seemed to run several hundreds ofyards northand south from where they stood and an indeterminate distance west. The stile was taken down, telescoped, and placed under some bushes. Hindarf ledthem through the trees until they came to another slope. This rose steeplyto a low brick wall. There was a flight of steps made of some stone whichglowed red andblack in the light that Hindarf and others flashed on it.
Forry had been upset by their careless use of this light, butHindarf assured him that it was a form, of black light. Forry could see itsimplybecause his goggles had a specially prepared glass. Hindarf doubtedthat the Ogshad anything which could detect this form of illumination.
When they got to the top of the steps, they could see the blackbulk of the house about fifty yards away. It was dark except for a slit of light. They wenton and then were at the end of a long swimming pool. This wasbrimming over, flooding the cement walks, the patio, the yard, and ru
Hindarf gave Forry his instructions again and then went down intothe poolvia the, steel ladder. The man assigned to watch Forry led him intothe pool. For a moment, everything was black, and he had no idea which was upor down, north or south. Then a light flooded the area around him, and hecould see his guide just ahead of him, holding the lamp. Hindarf's flippers werevisible justahead of the globe of illumination.
They swam the 100-feet-long pool underwater as near the floor asthey couldget. Forry caught glimpses of strange figures painted on the cementfloor. Griffins, werewolves metamorphosing from men to beasts, a leglessdragon, apenis-beaked flipper-winged rooster, a devilfish with a shaven cuntfor a mouth, a malignant-faced crab being ridden by a nude woman with fish headsfor breasts, and something huge and shadowy and all the more sinister for being soamorphous.
Then they were at the deep end of the pool, and Hindarf and hisguide were removing a plate from the wall. It looked like any other section ofthe wall, but it was thin and wide and its removal exposed a large dark hole. Hindarf swam into it, the guide followed, and Forry, after a moment's hesitation, and knowingthat the honor of Earth depended upon him, swam through the hole. Thetu
It was possible, however, that this tu
He did not know how long they swam through the tu
His second speculation was correct. This had been made by the Ogsfor escape. But then, wouldn't they have set up guards or alarms?
Hindarf explained that they could go no farther in thatdirection. The door in the end of the chamber was locked and triggered to alarms. So, they would gothrough another tu
They dived again and Forry plunged to the bottom of the tu
He came up in another chamber, much smaller than the first. Therewas a raft made of wood and inflatable pontoons. It was near the wall, whichheld a ladder that ran to the ceiling, twelve feet up.