The echoes died; Thrush continued to yell. Vana petted him and said soothing words and finally got him to drink again. Shortly after the silence came again, it was shattered by another metallic roar.
The Shemibob said, "I counted twenty-one seconds between the sounds."
The Yawtl said, "So what?" But when the fourth bellow was followed by the fifth, he said, "You're right."
There was, by unanimous agreement, no use in going toward The House while the terrible noise continued. They expanded the cube and all but the plant-man and the snake-centaur got inside and closed the door. These two said they would stand guard until they could stand the noise no longer. Those inside could hear nothing with the door shut, so they managed after a long while to get to sleep. Deyv did awake a number of times, startled by that brazen thunder. But he had only dreamed it.
He was awakened after a too-short sleep when the door was opened. Sloosh stuck his head in and said,
"The noise has stopped."
Deyv asked, "Are you sure?"
Sloosh said, "What?"
He was deaf, and so was The Shemibob. But their loss of hearing was only temporary, and it had not been complete. They had been able to detect all vibrations, though they'd been very feeble at the end.
"But if they'd gone on much longer, we'd have had a permanent injury," The Shemibob said. "I counted one thousand and fifty strokes with twenty-one seconds between each."
There was no use asking the meaning of this. Perhaps there was none. They wouldn't know until they got to The House, and probably not even then. All Deyv was sure of was that he was very uneasy in this place, where it was either too silent or too noisy.
The baby was fussy and didn't want his milk. Vana said that she'd been so upset that her milk had probably soured. The Shemibob took a bottle from her bag and from it produced a tiny pill. She told
Vana that she should get the baby to swallow it. He would then calm down, probably sleep much, but the drug wouldn't harm him. After some hesitation, Vana took the pill. Thrush spit it out several times before accepting it. Vana then asked if she could have one. The Shemibob refused, saying that Vana wasn't an infant, though she sometimes acted like one. This made Vana so angry that she lost her tiredness and regained her courage.
The vessel was folded up and tied onto Sloosh's back. They ate a little—no one felt hungry—and they started across the dark hushed valley. Phemropit's fanlight lit their way; the only sound was the striking of its treads against the loose rocks. The House loomed larger and larger, and after a while they had descended into the small valley and were beside it Phemropit stopped. Before them was a window three times as tall as Deyv and ten times as wide. The walls disappeared on both sides of the window into the darkness.
The Shemibob took a cylinder from her bag. Its end shot out a bright light through the transparent material of the window. They pressed close to it to look within. But all they could see was a floor many inches thick with dust.
The window was smooth and cool, and so was The House around it. The material of which both were made was very hard. After some discussion they agreed that they might as well test the material. If they made so much noise that they attracted the tenant of The House—if there was one—they were not necessarily making a mistake. He or she or it—Deyv hated the ominous sound of that it—probably knew they were here. If it didn't, it would find out sooner or later, so why not sooner?
Deyv thought of several reasons why, but he knew they wouldn't dissuade The Shemibob and Sloosh.
Sloosh hammered on the window and the wall with the great metal axe. He made neither dent nor scratch.
The Shemibob said, "We can look for a door or we can try Phemropit's cutting ray. It might be more polite, and politic, if we try a door."
They agreed that that would be best. First, though, Vana insisted that the vessel be expanded and attached to Phemropit's back. She would put the baby in it and thus be unhampered by him if fast action was needed. The baby would be safer there, too.
They did that, and then they started around The House. This took a very long time, during which they counted one thousand and fifty windows before they got to the one from which they'd started. Sloosh had made a small cairn of rocks to mark this.
"The same number of windows as the number of strokes," Deyv said.
Sloosh's reply to this was inevitable. "Must you always point out the obvious?"
Deyv forbore to mention that they'd found no doors. Or, at least, anything that looked like one.
None of the windows showed anything but darkness and dust. If there were walls beyond, they were too far for The Shemibob's or Phemropit's lights to penetrate.
They went into the vessel to eat. It seemed very cozy there, warm and well lighted, a place to stay for a long time. The baby had awakened and was making small whimperings. Vana nursed him while they talked about what to do next The Yawtl and the humans, except for Feersh, were all for giving up and getting out of this dreary spooky land at once. The witch was logical about the situation, saying that there was no sense in coming this far just to give up.
The three dissenters looked at each other, their thoughts evident. Logic might get them killed; emotion was rational in this situation.
"This House has been here for a long time," The Shemibob said. "It was here when I came to Earth.
Sloosh, do you know when it was built?"
"No. But I do know when it emerged from the ground. At least, I presume it did. That would be when
The Dead Place first came into existence."
"Why didn't you say something about this before?"
"You didn't ask me, and I never-thought the time was relevant for bringing the subject up. Now it is."
The Shemibob was more than irritated. Deyv had to grin. So, it wasn't only lowly humans who found the
Archkerri maddening.
"Well, when was it?" The Shemibob asked. Under her silvery skin was a bright pink glow.
"You understand that the plants from which I get my data have no sense of time," he said complacently.
"It's up to the operator of the prism to work out the chronology from the nature of the data and from various referents and comparisons. Also, for the plants to record something, they have to be where they can see and hear it. In this case, they didn't record when The House was built. Therefore, they were not present when it was.
"They first recorded its existence at the beginning of the civilization preceding the last two. This was when The House rose along with a part of a sea-bottom. I assume that all three civilizations knew of it, but their records have been lost. Even the traditions about it vanished among the humans and other sentients.
"Actually, the plants didn't directly record The House. They recorded the existence of The Dead Place.
They must also have recorded the speech of the civilized peoples when these spoke about The House and The Dead Place in the presence of plants. But that does us Archkerri no good, since we don't know how to interpret any of the languages used.
"The origin of The House and its purpose are mysteries. It's possible that the three civilizations managed to decode the flying figures. But I wouldn't know what they read—if anything. In any event, it's obvious that they never managed to get into The House."
"If the ancients, with all their wisdom and powers, couldn't read the message "of the flying figures, then we surely won't be able to," the Yawtl said. "And if they couldn't get into The House, how can we? Also,
O Shemibob, you surely have had a chance to study the figures during your long, long life? If you don't know what the figures mean after all that time, how—?"