They had waded for hours. Then ahead of them they saw Degg pause. The
river here plunged straight down into a black abyss. To the left a
passageway turned upward. It was some ten feet high and two or three
times as wide. It went up at an incline into the green, luminous
darkness. They followed Degg. A mile perhaps, steadily climbing. Martt
calculated. They had already walked possibly fifteen miles--and they
were more than eight times the normal size of Zee's world. That was
more than a hundred and twenty miles underground--most of it downward.
Martt realized that he was tired. And hungry. Before leaving Reaf he
had thought of food necessary for this trip. Degg had a concentrated
food--a dull brown powder. Martt promptly had appropriated it--had
tested it to make sure it was not a size-drug. . . .
The passageway abruptly opened into black, empty space. A rocky slope
rolling gently upward, strewn with huge black boulders. It extended as
far as Martt could see, upward into a luminous darkness. Overhead was a
black sky--murky with distance.