He pulled on the control cords to depress the nose of the wing. And he was descending in a fast glide. Or, to put it another way, he was falling relatively slowly.
Where was Anana? For a minute or so, she seemed to be lost in the reddish sky. Then he located a minute object, but he couldn't be sure whether it was she or a lone bird. It was below him to his left. He banked, and he glided towards her or it. An immeasurable time passed. Then the dot became larger and after a while it shaped itself into the top of a parawing.
Using the control shrouds to slip air out of the wing, he fell faster and presently was at the same level as Anana. When she saw him she banked. After some jockeying around, they were within twenty feet of each other.
He yelled, "You O.K.?"
She shouted, "Yes!"
"Did you see McKay?"
She shook her head.
Two hours later, he spotted a large bird-shaped object at an estimated two thousand feet below him. Either it was McKay or a roc. But a long squinting at it convinced him that it must be a bird. In any event, it was descending rapidly, and if it continued its angle, it would reach the ground far away from them.
If it was McKay, he would just have to take care of himself. Neither he, Kickaha, nor Anana owed him anything.
A few seconds later he forgot about McKay. The first of a mass migration from the moon passed him. These were large geese-type birds which must have numbered in the millions. After a while they became mixed with other birds, large and small. The air around him was dark with bodies, and the beat of wings, honks, caws, trills, and whistles was clamorous.
Their wings shot through a craggle of cranes which split, one body flapping to the right, one to the left. Kickaha supposed that they'd been frightened by the machines, but a moment later he wasn't sure. Perhaps it was the appearance of an armada of rocs which had scared them.
These airplane-sized avians now accompanied them as if they were a flying escort. The nearest to Anana veered over and glared at her with one cold yellow eye. When it got too close, she screamed at it and gestured with her knife. Whether or not she had frightened it, it pulled away. Kickaha sighed with relief. If one of those giants attacked, its victim would be helpless.
However, the huge birds must have had other things on their minds. They maintained the same altitude while the parawings continued descending. After a while the birds were only specks far above and ahead.
Anana had told him that this would not be the longest trip he'd ever taken, but it would be the most painful. And it would seem to be the longest. She'd detailed what would happen to them and what they must do. He'd listened, and he'd not liked what he heard. But his imagination fallen short of the reality by a mile.
When used as a glider, the parawing had a sinking speed of an estimated four feet a second. Which meant that, if they glided, it would take them twenty hours to reach the ground. By then, or before that, gangrene would have set into their legs.
But if the wing was used as a parachute, it would sink at twenty feet per second. The descent would be cut to a mere six hours, roughly estimated.
Thus, after locating each other, the two had pulled out some panels, and from then on they were travelling a la parachute. Kickaha worked his legs and arms to increase the circulation, and sometimes he would spill a little air out of the side of the wing to fall even faster. This procedure could only be done at short intervals, however. To go down too fast might jerk the shrouds loose when the wing slowed down again.
By the time they were at an estimated ten thousand feet from the earth, he felt as if his arms and legs had gone off flying back to the moon. He hung like a dummy except when he turned his head to see Anana. She would have been above him because, being lighter, she would not have fallen so fast. That is, she would not have if she had not arranged for her rip-panels to be somewhat larger than his. She, too, hung like a piece of dead meat.
One of the things that had worried him was that they might encounter a strong updraft which would delay their landing even more. But they had continued to fall at an even pace.
Below them were mountains and some small plains. But by the time they'd reached four thousand feet, they were approaching a large body of water. It was one of the many great hollows temporarily filled with rainwater. At the moment the bottom of the depression was tilting. The water was draining out of one end through a pass between two mountains. The animals on land near the lower end were running to avoid being overtaken by the rising water. What seemed like a million amphibians were scrambling ashore or waddling as fast as they could go towards higher ground.
Kickaha wondered why the amphibians were in such a hurry to leave the lake. Then he saw several hundred or so immense animals, crocodilian in shape, thrashing through the water. They were scooping up the fleeting prey.
He yelled at Anana and pointed at the monsters. She shouted back that they should slip out some air from the wings. They didn't want to land anywhere near those beasts.
With a great effort, he pulled on the shrouds. He fell ten seconds later into the water near the shore with Anana two seconds behind him. He had cut the shrouds just in time to slip out of the harness. The water closed over him, he sank, then his feet touched bottom, and he tried to push upwards with them.
They failed to obey him.
His head broke surface as he propelled himself with his fatigue-soaked arms. Anana was already swimming towards the shore, which was about thirty feet away. Her legs were not moving.
They dragged themselves onto the grass like merpeople, their legs trailing. After that was a long period of intense pain as the circulation slowly returned. When they were able, they rose and tottered towards the high ground. Long four-legged and finned creatures, their bodies covered with slime, passed them. Some snapped at them but did not try to bite. The heavier gravity, after their many months of lightness on the moon, pressed upon them. But they had to keep going. The hippopotamus-sized crocodiles were on land now.
They didn't think they could make it over the shoulder of a mountain. But they did, and then they lay down. After they'd quit panting, they closed their eyes and slept. It was too much of an effort to be concerned about crocodiles, lions, dogs, or anything that might be interested in eating them. For all they cared, the moon could fall on them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
KICKAHA AND ANANA ran at a pace that they could maintain for miles and yet not be worn out. They were as naked as the day they came into the world except for the belts holding their knives and the Horn and the device strapped to her wrist. They were sweating and breathing heavily, but they knew that this time they could catch the palace-if nothing interfered.
Another person was also in pursuit of the colossus. He was riding a moosoid. Though he was a half a mile away, his tallness and red-bronze hair identified him. He had to be Red Ore.
Kickaha used some of his valuable breath. "I don't know how he got here, and I don't know what he expects to do when he catches up with the palace. He doesn't know the codewords."
"No," Anana gasped. "But maybe that man we saw will open a door for him."
So far, Ore had not looked back. This was fortunate, because, ten minutes later, a window. French door rather, swung open for him. He grabbed its sill and was helped within by two arms. The moosoid immediately stopped galloping and headed for a grove of moving plants. The door shut.