When they got to the burning wavering expanding-contracting gateway, The Shemibob hesitated only a second. With a scream that was intended to help her overcome her fear, she disappeared through the brightness.
Sloosh, his leaves shaking, followed her.
The humans and the Yawtl were frozen. While they were trying to pump up their courage, and not sure they could do it, the stone-metal creature rolled on through. It had never said anything about the effect of the gateway on it. Perhaps it did not share its companions' terror and nausea. Whatever its reaction, it went on as if it lacked any emotion whatsoever.
Down the hall behind them something crashed. Ahead and underfoot was a quaking. It was then that
Deyv realized that the entire castle might be squeezed, ground into powder, and sucked through the gateway. If they were to keep ahead of the many tons of ground material, they had to get through at once. He also noticed that the air was getting very hot. The machine that sent excess heat through the gateway could no longer cope with the burden. The friction of compression would soon make the air so hot that they'd bum up in it. And the great heat would undoubtedly fry them.
Vana shouted, "Deyvl Hoozisst! Help me get Aejip through! She won't go by herself!"
That was far easier ordered than carried out. The cat was crouched, teeth bared, claws out, snarling, almost out of her mind with fear. When Vana approached her, holding her hand out, trying to speak soothingly, she had to leap back to avoid the cat's fangs.
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, stunned. Another blow, lighter than the first, knocked her out completely. He hoisted the limp body up by the front. Vana grabbed the rear legs.
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 tunnel cut through solid gray-red rock. The floor was covered with a foot of water, some severed wooden poles were floating on its surface, and it was rising perceptibly.
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 tunnel. This was due not just to the hot air coming in from the squeezed castle. The stone being cut by the creature was also giving off heat,
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 tunnel began to curve. Though the heat and dust were still strong, the fragments ceased to stab him.
Who had made this tunnel? Or was it natural? He'd questioned The Shemibob about the coincidence of a tunnel being just in the right place for entry. If the gateway had been a little to one side either way, there would have been only solid rock beyond it.