Under his, her lips grew cold. She was dead.
§400
13
Downriver: once more it tapered into a slender, hard-running chute, and the walls on either side closed in until there was little more than a narrow tunnel. But the walk-way continued just above the level of the water, wide enough for men to travel single-file.
Bossman led the way, alert for the markers of the man who had scouted and not returned. “If this gets much tighter,” he said, “we’ll have to swim for it.”
No one commented. A swim in that water could be dangerous. Any mistake in judgment would send the bodies helplessly down its current, through possible rapids, and into the jaws of river predators, or whatever else stood ready to defend the reputation of the Hard Trek. On foot, they felt at least a partial security, and every bend that brought a continuance of the path into view was greeted with an easing of tension.
The passage held, high enough for a tall man to stand upright, but narrow. The walkway took up a quarter of the base, the swift river the rest, and the wall threatened to nudge the unwary traveler into the water. It continued, mile after mile, a hallway leading—down.
Aton had returned, reluctantly, to make his report: there was no exit above, only an impassable waterfall. He had not told them of the other tunnel, beyond the falls. He had peered down it, heard the distant beating, and sensed a menace than no man could face. How he knew, he could not say; but he was certain.
Few believed that the chances downriver were good—but Bossman allowed them their hysterical hope. There might be an intersection with another stream, one whose channel could be traced to the surface. After all, the pit creatures must have entered somewhere… and Bedside had escaped. Where else could he have passed, but here? If only he had left a sign.
Miraculously, it ended. A final stricture, an almost perfect doorway, followed by release. They filed into a beautiful dome-shaped cavern with a large pool in the middle.
The pool was about a hundred feet across, and the dome arched to an apex fifty feet above it. The mysterious path circled the edge, a ledge eighteen inches deep and three feet above the waterline. The walls above and below that ledge were vertical or slanting inward; no pocks marred them, no crevices. A naked man could not climb away from the path. On the side of the pool opposite the entrance, the ledge dropped gradually down almost to the water level, where the top of a hole less than two feet in diameter could be seen. The water sucked greedily through this hole.
The pool itself was deep. The green luminescence came through for several feet, but was finally lost in the black reaches. The water was cool; the lots would determine the first volunteers for washing and swimming.
The entire party managed to fit around the pool. Bossman posted a guard at the entrance and allowed the others to relax. Men and women sat like children around the edge, dangling their feet and joking. The atmosphere, for the first time on the Trek, was carefree. The lots proved to be unnecessary, as people who had almost forgotten what it was like to swim disported themselves with open glee.
But Aton was uneasy. He sensed, as the others did not, the massive danger behind them. It had emerged from its tunnel behind the falls and sent its heartbeat after him, following Aton down the river. His mind somehow felt its hunger, its huge appetite, not entirely for food. It moved slowly, miles behind, but it was coming. It was coming.
Where was the exit? This cavern must have been formed by some enormous rising gas bubble, back during the molten days of Chthon’s being, caught here by the gradual cooling and hardening of the surrounding rock. Then the river had found it and cut through, filling it and carving its own exit. That meant that there could be no passage deep beneath the water, or the cavern would not have filled. And the flow through the visible hole seemed to match that entering exactly.
It would be a risky thing to plunge through the outlet. Here there would be no question of mastering the swirling current. A man would be helpless—as the advance scout must have been, since he had disappeared entirely.
Perhaps a length of their rope, salvaged from the entrance to the upper caverns, so long ago, could be dangled in the water, and held while a man climbed along it—if such a man were able to breathe at all, down there. And on the other side: how could they be certain that there was air, beyond the seal that the water made?
Yet the hours passed, and if any others shared Aton’s doubts, they did not show it. Even Bossman camped with over-all serenity, watching Garnet as she swam. Men dived deep into the water, searching for fish or other marine life, and coming up empty-handed. Some slept, propped against the wall; now and then a neighbor would playfully hoist a sleeper into the drink for a rude surprise.
This dome, it appeared, was as close as Chthon could come to a natural paradise.
Aton did not believe in paradise. He plunged down, ten feet, twenty, as deep as he could go, but found no bottom. He cut to the side as he came up, and was taken and spun about by an eddy in the water. In a moment he was out of it, unharmed, but it bothered him. The sense of impending menace was stronger. Was there after all a drainage from below?
He swam to the opposite shore, keeping clear of the turbulence near the visible exit. Here the little current was repeated. There was an undertow around the entire circumference of the pool. This was sinister: why should there be such an effect in still water?
Unless something massive were rising from below, sucking water in around the sides.
Bossman was watching him. Aton pointed to the edge and the man nodded. He had noticed.
Nothing was said to the others. There was no point in giving alarm until the danger was known—if there really were danger. But immediate steps should be taken to investigate the exit. It might be needed in a hurry.
There was a cry from the guard at the gate. Something was attacking!
So it was not my imagination, Aton thought. My mind was not losing touch with reality.
A scuffle, a hoarse scream; then two bodies tumbled into the pool. One was the guard; unhurt, he swam to the edge and mounted the path again. The other was one of the scaled stone-eaters, wounded and dying.
These creatures were not carnivorous, as far as he could tell. Too slow to be the chimera, they had never advanced on man, and were easy prey to him. What had affected this one?
Another animal came, and a third. Soon the pool was littered with corpses, as the clumsy creatures charged upon the men’s stone knives. What was driving them?
Bossman joined Aton near the entrance. “Listen,” he said.
There was a new noise in the distance, far up the tunnel—one unlike anything heard in the caverns before. It was the sound of marching—of many feet tramping in unison.
They looked at each other, and a general hush fell upon the group. A disciplined army—here? It made no sense at all. The upper caverns would not have organized any search party, and could not have kept one supplied this far. If the exit to the long trek were near, there might be human beings, and they might indeed march, but not from the direction the prison party had come.
The sound persisted, coming down the tunnel toward their dome, a measured beat increasing in volume. This, whatever it might be, was the thing that had driven the other animals before it.
Everyone in the dome heard it now. Sleeping people were nudged awake, to listen apprehensively for a sound they could not understand.
“Great Chthon!” the guard exclaimed, drawing back in terror. The marching beat loudened. The source had rounded the last bend, though it was not yet in sight of the people in the dome.