He must have seen Deyv step out of the vessel. He would, however, have difficulty making himself heard above the uproar.
"I hope your ancestors tell you the right thing to do," Deyv muttered. He went inside, closing the door after him, and he lay down. After some tossing and turning, he slipped into a dreamless sleep.
Some time afterward, he felt the floor lift and fall. He was safe, however, unless the earth opened wide enough to swallow the craft. He closed his eyes but quickly opened them. There had been only one movement. What kind of a temblor was that?
By then The Shemibob was out of her room.
"Did you feel it?"
"Yes."
He got up and swung the door out a few inches. A yell from many throats greeted him. A spear shot over his shoulder and thudded against the wall behind him.
He caught a look at a dozen fierce faces near him and beyond them a horde digging a deep wide hole in the side of the hill. He shut the door and turned wide-eyed toward The Shemibob.
"I think they're going to bury usl"
By then the others were awake. The baby began crying. Deyv told Vana to take her where she wouldn't be disturbed.
"Not until I know what's going on!"
He told her what he'd seen.
She said, "I'll be back as soon as I've fed and changed Keem."
The Shemibob picked up the spear. "They mean business. They must have worked themselves into a frenzy to attack us, though."
Sloosh buzzed the equivalent of the human snort.
"Ancestors? Their ancestors are themselves telling themselves what they want to hear! It's my opinion that they also drugged themselves, all of them, so they could get their courage up."
"It doesn't matter why now," the snake-centaur said. "It's what they're doing that counts. Also, what we do."
There seemed to be only two choices. They could stay inside and be buried. Eventually, since the power supply was low, the air-making machine would quit, and they'd be asphyxiated. Or they could storm out, hoping to scare the people into taking refuge in the stockade again.
"I think we'd be dead before they had a chance to get frightened," Deyv said.
The plant-man said that there was only one way to test that speculation.
"We have to do something quick," Deyv said. "That hole looked like if s about half-done. All six tribes must be working on it. It's mud, easy to dig."
"Ah, well," Sloosh said. "This is what I deserve for trying to save the unsavable."
There was silence for a while. Sloosh was leaning up against a wall, his eyes shut. The Shemibob stood on her forty feet, swaying slightly, silvery eyelids half-closed, her fingers steepled. Deyv was sitting with his back against the wall, a physical simile of the situation they were in.
What to do? What to do?
He could put hiiriself into a sleep and try to summon his grandmother again. However, she had said she would come no more, and she might be angry if he summoned her. If he was to get a good idea, he would have to do it by himself. The Shemibob and the Archkerri, the higher beings, were as empty of fruitful thought as he.
Vana entered, holding the baby to her breast Evidently, she had been unable to wait until after Keem was fed. Deyv told her just what they could do. He did not try to make it seem that they had much chance to get out alive. He wouldn't have fooled her if he had.
"Oh, if only you still had your bag of treasures, your powers," she said to The Shemibob.
"That's itl" Deyv shouted as he sprang up from the floor. "Power! Power!"
The Shemibob blinked and said, "What do you mean? What power? I don't have any."
"You don't!" he cried. "But the vessel does!"
She and Sloosh looked at each other. The plant-man said, "We don't know how to operate it. We could kill ourselves. But we'll die anyway."
"Better that than to choke to death or be run through with spears," The Shemibob said. "We'll at least be trying."
"There might be enough fuel left to get us a short way into the air and a longer way horizontally. It might be enough to give us a chance to outdistance them. Or they might be so scared they'll not dare chase us. But the impact when we come down ... most desperate, most desperate."
"Come with me," The Shemibob said. "We'll see if we can make even more sense of the circuits. We don't have much time."
The two hurried out They would be careful to stay in the central portion so that their weight on the upper level wouldn't roll the craft over. Vana came to Deyv and said, "Hold us."
He embraced her. The baby started crying again. Deyv stepped back and said, "She's afraid I'll take her from you. I wish that was all she had to fear."
Time passed. Deyv went up the stairs in the middle and sat down on the corridor floor. He could see The
Shemibob and Sloosh working in the control room. Presently, she looked up and saw him.
"We're almost ready," she called out.
The chairs had not been unfolded, since neither of the two could sit on them. The panel had been moved down at a 45-degree angle to the floor. Lights twinkled on them. On the panel were a large dial and a slim stick.
Suddenly, the floor began to tilt upward.
Deyv cried out
Sloosh buzzed, "No! We haven't started it! The tribesman are starting to carry us to the holel"
Vana's voice came to him from below. "What is it?"
Deyv could see the section of wall in front of the two operators become silvery. Then it cleared, and he was looking at the slope of the hill and the village on it.
"We've got it!" The Shemibob said.
The back end began to tilt. Shortly, the floor was level.
Sloosh turned and said, "You and Vana get into a room and put your backs against the rear wall. We don't know if we can control the acceleration!"
Deyv hastened to obey. As soon as they were settled, The Shemibob's voice came faintly through the door. "They're carrying us to the hole! Hang on!"
Deyv didn't know what to expect, a mighty roar, a surge that would throw them into the wall, or what
They fell hard, and then they felt a bumping.
The people had dropped the vessel. It was moving slowly up the hill.
He could imagine those outside, screaming, running every which way to get away from the suddenly animated vessel. Perhaps they thought that the magicians inside had made it come alive and now it would be chasing them to eat them. They would also be regretting very much that they had not accepted the offer of friendship.
The front end rose high, then flopped down. It bumped a little more. It stopped.
The Shemibob's face was in the doorway. She looked serious but undisturbed.
"It just doesn't have enough energy left to get us off the ground. We're inside the village walls now. We went through the entrance. You two get out and bar the gate."
She withdrew. Deyv and Vana opened the door and stepped out. Vana followed him a moment after, having placed the baby on the floor first. She was screaming as if she were trying to vomit her lungs.
Together, they ran to the gateway. The tribes were standing in the swamp near the trees and looking up at them. Their voices, shrill and quavery, floated up faintly.
Though it was a task for six men, Deyv and "Vana managed to shoot the massive wooden bar. He stepped back, panting but grinning. He didn't know why he was so exultant, since their situation had improved only a little. Those who'd been inside were now outside, and those who'd been outside were inside. Nevertheless, they had an extension of life. It might not last for long. But it had given them a chance to stretch their lives out a little longer.