"Well, that’s one less problem anyway," Jerry said, as he watched a police car cruise by in the opposite direction.
"Now what?" asked Bal-Simba, who was hunched down on the passenger’s side. Jerry glanced at the time display in front of a bank. "It’s too late to do much tonight. We’ll have to get some sleep and try again in the morning."
"At least this place has many inns," Bal-Simba said as he looked at the row of neon signs stretching away before them.
"Forget it. You can’t get a hotel room in this town this week for love or money." He paused. "Well, maybe for love, but you’ve got to rent it by the hour and, come to think of it, that’s for money too."
Bal-Simba looked at him. "I take it that is not practical"
"Most working girls don’t like threesomes and if we try to bring a dragon into the scene-well, yeah it’s not practical"
The watch commander for the police department was having a hard night as well. Except he knew where he was going to be spending most of it.
Take over," he said to his sergeant as he picked up his hat. "I’m going to the scene."
"What do you want me to do about this thing in the meantime?" his sergeant asked.
"Nothing. We’re not doing anything until I debrief those officers and find out just exactly what the hell we’re dealing with here."
The watch commander knew his men and he trusted them-within broad limits. However, whatever this was pretty clearly went beyond those limits. Obviously something had happened at that mini-market, but equally obviously there was some sort of failure of communication. He was not about to put out an APB for a mythical creature until he’d had a good long talk with the officers and the witnesses.
In the event that proved more difficult than he had anticipated. No one in the crowd would admit to seeing anything, the clerk in the mini-mart could suddenly only communicate in an obscure dialect of Farsi and the tourists in the Mini-Winnie were still hysterical. The physical evidence was impressive enough, what with the burned-out police car and the scorched and dented motorhome, not to mention the scrapes and bruises on the officers who had been knocked around. The testimony of the officers was more equivocal. None of them really liked the idea of what they had seen, or thought they had seen, so they were very careful in their descriptions. The watch commander collected numerous statements about the poor light in the parking lot, the stress of the encounter, the lack of a good view and such. But of the nine officers present not one of them used the word "dragon."
It was nearly dawn when the watch commander decided that the official story was going to be that someone had a large alligator that was causing trouble. That’s the way it went down on the blotter and incident report where the media would see it. Privately and unofficially he passed the word to the next watch commander and left it to him to pass the word privately and unofficially to his officers. It wasn’t the first time that the official version and the truth had differed significantly in this town.
Jerry, Bal-Simba and Moira spent a miserable night parked in a patch of desert a few miles out of town. Moira slept in the back of the truck, Jerry curled up in some old moving pads underneath and Bal-Simba tried to sleep in the cab. Moira was too sick to sleep well and the others were too uncomfortable. The November desert at night is bone-chillingly cold and Jerry kept thinking about scorpions. Wiz and the other humans awoke that morning stiff and sore from another night sleeping on the rocks. At least the humans awoke stiff and sore. Glandurg seemed as relaxed and fresh as ever.
Fresh was definitely something the rest of the party wasn’t. Wiz wondered why dungeon-delving games never said anything about what the participants smelled like after a couple of days of hard work and no baths.
After a quick breakfast of vegetable porridge everyone crowded around Wiz while he checked the locator crystal
"It says we go off this way," Wiz told the others.
"How close are we?" Malkin asked.
Wiz looked back down at the crystal and frowned. "Still a ways to go." Danny looked down at the glowing object in Wiz’s hand "It doesn’t seem any brighter than it was when we started. Shouldn’t it get brighter as we get closer?"
"We still have some distance to cover. These caverns are big."
"Are you sure this thing knows where it’s going?" Danny grumbled.
"It’s set to home in on Moira," Wiz replied with more confidence than he felt. He was developing a nagging suspicion about where the magical compass was leading them. Either these caverns were much bigger than he remembered them or they were being taken on the scenic route. Considering all the stuff they’d run into so far that was a distinct possibility.
Or maybe there’s just a lot more stuff down here, he thought as the party moved along a tunnel as wide as a four-lane highway. I wonder how you estimate the monsters per square kilometer in a dungeon. Or should that be per cubic kilometer because the place has so many levels it’s really three dimensional? The air was getting more humid as they went along. At first there was a nasty, cold clamminess that seemed to ding to them. Then it got warmer until all the humans were sticky with sweat Finally, after two more turnings into smaller tunnels they were surrounded by a thick, warm mist.
"I hear water up ahead," Malkin said softly. Wiz nodded and took a better grasp on his staff.
Suddenly the tunnel opened out into a cavern. The far wall and the ceiling alike were lost in billows of mist. The sound of trickling, splashing water was loud before them.
They paused while Danny surveyed the area with his magic detector.
"No sign of anything," he said at last. "Whatever’s up ahead of us is natural, not magic."
"Natural hot springs," Wiz said. With a gesture he increased the intensity of the light from the magical globe and the party stepped into the cave. They looked around and gasped.
Brightly colored flowstone had congealed like melted candle wax in opalescent patterns. The fog and mist made the place look like a Hollywood soundstage.
"It’s beautiful," Danny said softly. June said nothing, but clung open-mouthed to Danny’s arm, staring wide-eyed like a child on Christmas morning.
"Quite something," Malkin said. Wiz looked back and saw her standing arms akimbo and feet spread. She was also eyeing the scene as if she was trying to figure out how to take the place home with her. Wiz decided that where Malkin was concerned, larceny was the sincerest form of flattery.
"Stay close people," Wiz admonished. "Just because there’s no magic in here doesn’t mean there’s nothing dangerous."
The room was not as big as it had seemed, being much longer than it was wide. The tunnel they had entered from angled in on the long side and in perhaps fifty paces they were across the room.
"Here’s your hot spring," Malkin said, gesturing at a place where the water trickled out of the rock wall. From there it ran along the floor of the cavern and gathered in a series of pools before disappearing through a crack in the floor.