rectangle of earth, went around the primary five times, and then lowered until it became part of the mother world again.
Only those animals that happened to be on the upper part had a chance to live through the impact. Those on the undersurface would be ground into bits and their pieces burned. And those living in the area of the primary onto which the satellite fell would also be killed.
Urthona had, however, given some a chance to get out and from under. He'd given them an instinctive mechanism which made them flee at their fastest speed from any area over which the satellite came close. It had a set orbital path prior to landing, and as it swung lower every day, the animals "knew" that they had to leave the area. Unfortunately, only those on the outer limits of the impact had time to escape.
The plants were too slow to get out in time, but their instincts made them release their floating seeds.
All of this interested Kickaha. His chief concern, however, was to determine which side of the moon the three would be on when the change from a globe to a rectangle was made. That is, whether they would be on the upper side, that opposite the planet, or on the underside.
"There isn't any way of finding out," Anana said. "We'll just have to trust to luck."
"I've depended on that in the past," he said. "But I don't want to now. You only use luck when there's nothing else left."
He did much thinking about their situation in the days and nights that slid by. The moon rotated slowly, taking about thirty days to complete a single spin. The colossal body of the planet hanging in the sky revealed the healing of the great wound made by the withdrawal of the splitoff. The only thing for which they had gratitude for being on the secondary was that they weren't in the area of greatest shape-change, that near the opening of the hole, which extended to the center of the planet. They saw, when the clouds were missing, the sides fall in, avalanches of an unimaginable but visible magnitude. And the mass shrank before their eyes as adjustments were made all over the planet. Even the sea-lands must be undergoing shakings of terrifying strength, enough to make the minds and souls of the inhabitants reel with the terrain.
"Urthona must have enjoyed the spectacle when he was riding around in his palace," Kickaha said. "Sometimes I wish you hadn't killed him, Anana. He'd be down there now, finding out what a horror he'd subjected his creations to."
One morning Kickaha told his companions about a dream he'd had. It had begun with him enthusiastically telling them about his plan to get them off the moon. They'd thought it was wonderful, and all three had started at once on the project. First, they'd walked to a mountain the top of which was a sleeping place for the giant birds, which they called rocs. They'd climbed to the top and found that it contained a depression in which the rocs rested during the day.
The three had slid down the slope of the hollow, and each had sneaked up on a sleeping roc. Then each had killed his or her bird by driving the knives and a pointed stick through the bird's eye into its brain. Then they'd hidden under a wing of the dead bird until the others had awakened and flown off. After which they'd cut off the wings and tail feathers and carried them back to their camp.
"Why did we do this?" Anana said.
"So we could use the wings and tails to make gliders. We attached them to fuselages of wood, and ..."
"Excuse me," Anana said, smiling. "You've never mentioned having any glider experience."
"That's because I haven't. But I've read about gliders, and I did take a few hours' private instruction in a Piper Cub, just enough to solo. But I had to quit because I ran out of money."
"I haven't been up in a glider for about thirty years," Anana said. "But I've built many, and I've three thousand hours flight time in them."
"Great! Then you can teach Mac and me how to glide. Anyway, in this dream we attached the wings to the fuselage and, to keep the wings from flexing, we tied wood bars to the wing bones, and we used rawhide strips instead of wires ..."
Anana interrupted again. "How did you control this makeshift glider?"
"By shifting our weight. That's how John Montgomery and Percy Pilcher and Otto and Gustave Lilienthal did it. They hung under or between the wings, suspended in straps or on a seat, and they did all right. Uh ... until John and Otto and Percy were killed, that is."
McKay said, "I'm glad this was just a dream."
"Yeah? Dreams are springboards into reality."
McKay groaned, and he said, "I just knew you was in earnest."
Anana, looking as if she was about to break into laughter, said, "Well, we could make gliders out of wood and antelope hide, I suppose. They wouldn't work once we got into the primary's gravity field, though, even if they would work here. So there's no use being serious about this.
"Anyway, even if we could glide down a mountain slope here and catch an updraft, we couldn't go very high. The moon's surface has no variety of terrain to make termals, no plowed fields, no paved roads, and so on."
"What's the use even talking about this?" McKay said.
"It helps pass the time," she said. "So, Kick-aha, how did you plan to get the gliders high enough to get out of the moon's gravity?"
Kickaha said, "Look, if we shoot up, from our viewpoint, we're actually shooting downward from the viewpoint of people on the surface of the primary. All we have to do is get into the field of the primary's gravity, and we'll fall."
McKay, looking alarmed, said, "What do you mean-shoot?"
He had good reason to be disturbed. The redhead had gotten him into a number of dangerous situations because of his willingness to take chances.
"Here's how it was in the dream. We located a battery of cannonlabra, killed four of them, and carried them to our camp. We cut off their branches and eyestalks to streamline their bodies. Then ..."
"Wait a minute," Anana said. "I think I see where you're going. You mean that you converted those cannon-creatures into rockets? And tied the gliders to them and then launched the rockets and after the rockets were high up cut the gliders loose?"
Kickaha nodded. Anana laughed loudly and long.
McKay said, "It's only a dream, ain't it?"
Kickaha, his face red, said, "Listen, I worked it all out. It could be done. What I did ..."
"It would work in a dream," she said. "But in reality, there'd be no way to control the burning of the gunpowder. To get high enough, you'd have to stuff the barrel with powder to the muzzle. But when the fuel exploded, and it would, all of it at once, the sudden acceleration would tear the glider from the rocket, completely wreck the structure and wings of the glider, and also kill you."
"Look, Anana," Kickaha said, his face even redder, "isn't there some way we could figure out to get controlled explosions?"
"Not with the materials we have available. No, forget it. It was a nice dream, but... oh, hah, hah, hah!"
"I'm glad your woman's got some sense," McKay said. "How'd you ever manage to live so long?"
"I guess because I haven't followed through with all my wild ideas. I'm only half-crazy, not completely nuts. But we've got to get off of here. If we end up on the under side when it changes shape, we're done for. It's the big kissoff for us."
There was a very long silence. Finally, Anana said, "You're right. We have to do something. We must look for materials to make gliders that could operate in the primary's field. But getting free of the moon's gravity is something else. I don't see how ..."
"A hot-air balloon!" Kickaha cried. "It could take us and the gliders up and away and out!"
Kickaha thought that, if the proper materials could be found to make a balloon and gliders, the liftoff should take place after the moon changed its