He hopped over it and took a stride toward the next ring. Far down at the black end of the tunnel there was a flicker: a new ring inside the others. Thorinn stared at it. Something was wrong. He turned, counting the bright rings, and there were still twenty.
He began to hop in long floating strides down the middle of the tunnel. Each time he soared over one of the rings, a new one appeared ahead; the eye of blackness at the end of the tunnel remained always the same. He thought of the pictures in the box, and of the egg-shaped things that darted along the tunnels, up and down the giant shafts. And did the lights follow them wherever they went, so that where they were, there was light, and when they had passed, the tunnel waited in darkness?
He began to move faster, in order to see the bright rings run on ahead. A kind of exhilaration took him, and he ran faster and faster, as if he could catch the fleeing rings of light. The tunnel slipped by him in deathly silence, and again he began to feel that he was not moving at all, but posturing motionless in the air while the illusory tunnel flowed past him, out of one nothingness into another. Without warning, the black eye at the end of the tunnel flared bright. Thorinn stumbled to a halt. What had been a black disk an instant ago was now a globe of light, striped with faint dark lines as if it were a spinning top, and for a moment the illusion was so strong that he almost turned to flee, certain that the monstrous globe, which filled the tunnel, was whirling down upon him. Then he saw that it was not bulging, but hollow: he was looking through the end of the tunnel into some vast lighted space beyond. As he approached, the last ring of the tunnel grew enormous around him, and he saw that the space beyond was a great shaft, striped with horizontal rings of light. Here, if anywhere, the geas would make itself felt again. He set down his bundle, opened his wallet, and drew out the wrapped parcel of figurine, sticks, gray powder. He set the figurine upright on the floor, in the glow of the ring. Around it he made a circle of crossed sticks, and inside the circle poured the gray powder. He took tinder and shavings from his wallet, dropped them along the circle of sticks. He drew out his fire stick, loaded it with more tinder, drove the plunger home. A feeling of tension gathered inside him. He dropped the burning tinder on the pile, breathed it into flame, chanted, "Die, Goryat! Die, Goryat, die!" The sticks kindled, the flame ran around the circle, the gray powder flared up with a whoosh. The figurine was obscured for a moment; when the smoke cleared, its face was blackened. The tension was gone; there was an emptiness in its place. Thorinn hopped forward. Where the tunnel met the shaft, it flared out smoothly above and below; the floor dropped away with a deceptive gentleness, like water pouring over the lip of a chasm, and the light-rings became ovals instead of circles. To either side, the upright rings gave way to the horizontal rings of the shaft. He had only to descend to the lowest ring in the flared mouth of the tunnel, then step onto the nearest horizontal ring and begin to climb.
Thorinn hoisted his bundle to his shoulders again, climbed down the slope onto the first horizontal ring. The dark upper surface of the ring was flat and level, and two spans wide; he was able to hop upon it with ease, knowing that if he stumbled he could reach up to catch himself against the lighted surface of the ring. He was aware of the gulf beside him, but did not think of it. Above, the shaft was lighted for sixty ells, then vanished into darkness.
He began to climb: one hand on the curving under-surface of the ledge above, a hop, the other hand on the top of the ledge; then both hands on top, pulling himself up; one knee over, a twist, and he was sitting on the ledge. Up to his feet, reaching for the ledge above, a hop, a twist, over and over. As he climbed, he thought of Goryat: had he really killed the old man? He was sure not. But what a shock it must have given him!
Pausing to rest, he glanced down into the great pit and thought he saw a movement, a flicker of wings. Now he was sure. The dark shape drifted nearer, growing as it came. Now he could see the cruel head tilted up, the yellow eyes staring. It was a great gray bird with pinions of polished metal. The beak opened, the great wings beat the air. Thorinn turned, drawing his sword, but all his movements were sluggish, benumbed. The bird was on him, blotting out the light; the wings buffeted his face. The ledge tilted away, gone; he was twisting in the air.
Go down, said the voice triumphantly.
6
How Thorinn fell five hundred leagues in a day and a night.
3215 a. d.
... For these and other weighty reasons, as, to permit an equal and governable expansion of the matter at the centre of our globe, which, being confin'd, must else burst forth in earth quake and volcano when as the burden above it shall be abated; to advantage ourselves of the aforesaid pressure and heat for the driving of our engines; as well as to increase fourfold the extent of our lands upon the surface by the removal of the oceans to the chamber below: it is our intention to drill three shafts to the centre of the Earth, taking matter for conversion from these shafts alone, until what time they shall be complete and the central chamber hollow'd out. The energy soobtain'd, by all our calculations, will satisfy our wants during the next twenty centuries...
Thorinn was falling. The lighted ledges flashed by as swift as eyeblinks, flick, flick, an ell out of reach. The wind of his passage had grown so strong that he could open his eyes only an instant before they filled with tears. As he turned, it whipped his back, his legs, then belly and face again. The sound of it filled his skull, like a gale sweeping across the bowl of Hovenskar. It had been steady, but now it began to buffet him, turning him this way and that, so that he spun now head down, now flat in the air like a falling leaf. The ledges of the great shaft around him blurred steadily upward.
The buffeting died away, and an instant later he felt a slight jar, as if he had passed through some flimsy barrier; then the buffeting came back. A short time later the same thing happened again, and, after an equal interval, still again. His mind took up the rhythm and he knew to the instant when the next check would come. After each one he felt a dull pain in his ears. His stomach knotted and he began to vomit. Long after his stomach was empty, he continued to retch feebly.
Time passed. The wind burned his face, and whipped his garments against his body until he was sore. Weariness overcame him. He had been falling for hours, and still there was no end. His eyes were streaming tears, the lids now so swollen that he could hardly open them. He held up one arm to shield his eyes; then, that failing, fumbled at the shoulder loops of his pack. He managed to slip one arm out, then the other. The wind fought him for the pack, but he pulled it around in front of his body, picked at it with numb fingers. When he had loosened the last knot, the wind instantly unrolled the cloth, scattering the contents, and turned it into a frantically flapping rag. He clutched it with knees and elbows; little by little he succeeded in drawing it tighter from head to crotch, and at last tied the ends together. The cloth shielded his face somewhat from the wind. At intervals, looking sideward, he could catch glimpses of the streaming wall of the shaft. Closer at hand, other things were falling. He recognized the talking box, and another box with its lid burst open and a cloud of little figurines around it. They were tumbling, shifting like midges; then they streamed upward and were gone, though the box continued to fall beside him. Under the constant buffeting of the wind Thorinn grew dizzy and numb. His eyes closed more and more frequently. He roused once, with a start, to realize that he had been asleep. Nothing had changed. His eyes closed again, and presently he dreamed that he was falling down the long slope of the hillside in Hovenskar, under the half-dark, half-bright sky; the horses stood gazing in wonder as he drifted above the grass-tops toward the little hut which remained as distant as ever, no matter how long he fell. Then his dreams grew confused, and he thought he was wandering under the earth, in a tunnel that opened from the bottom of the dry well in Hovenskar; he discovered a treasure house, and robbed it of jewels, and marvelous engines, and a magic box that spoke to him in a human voice; but the box spoke nonsense. Then he had fallen down the well again, and the well had no bottom, but went down endlessly into the center of the earth.