"Why not?" Falken scowled at him, puzzled. "Stay here, if you prefer.
Sheila?"
"I'm coming with you."
"All right," whispered Avery. "I'll come." His amber eyes were
momentarily those of a lion caught in a pit. Afraid, and dangerous.
Dangerous? Falken shook his head irritably. He drove his alpenstock
into a crack and made the rope fast.
"Hang onto it," he said. "We'll float like balloons, but be careful.
I'll go first. If there's anything wrong down there, chuck off your
other boot and climb up fast."
They went down, floating endlessly on the weighted rope. Little
glints of light fled through the night-dark walls. It grew hot. Then
Falken struck a jog in the cleft wall and felt himself sliding down a
forty-five-degree offset. Abruptly, there was light.
Falken yelled, in sharp, wild warning.
The thing was almost on him. A colossus with burning eyes set on
foot-long stalks, with fanged jaws agape and muscles straining.
Falken grabbed for his blaster. The quick motion overbalanced him.
Sheila slid down on him and they fell slowly together, staring
helplessly at destruction, charging at them through a rainbow swirl of
light.
The creature rushed by, in utter silence.
Paul Avery landed, his blaster ready. Falken and Sheila scrambled up,
cold with the sweat of terror.
"What was it?" gasped Sheila.
Falken said shakily, "God knows!" He turned to look at their
surroundings.
And swept the others back into the shadow of the cleft.
Riders hunted the colossus. Riders of a shape so mad that even in
madness no human could have conceived them. Riders on steeds like the
arrowing tails of comets, hallooing on behind a pack of nightmare
hounds....
Cold sweat drenched him. "How can they live without air?" he whispered.
"And why didn't they see us?"
There was no answer. But they were safe, for the moment. The light, a
shifting web of prismatic colors, showed nothing moving.
They stood on a floor of the glassy black rock. Above and on both sides
walls curved away into the wild light--sunlight, apparently, splintered
by the shell of the planet. Ahead there was a ebon plain, curving to
match the curve of the vault.
Falken stared at it bitterly. There was no haven here. No life as he
knew it could survive in this pit. Yet there was life, of some mad
sort. Another time, they might not escape.
"Better go back," he said wearily, and turned to catch the rope.
The cleft was gone.
Smooth and unbroken, the black wall mocked him. Yet he hadn't moved
more than two paces. He smothered a swift stab of fear.
"Look for it," he snapped. "It must be here."
But it wasn't. They searched, and came again together, to stare at each
other with eyes already a little mad.
Paul Avery laughed sharply. "There's something here," he said.
"Something alive."