“No new traps,” he said in a soft voice. “The one I dismantled last expedition is still up there on the wall. It hasn’t been repaired. Now Eric. Here you go, boy.”
Eric rose and walked with him to the doorway, remembering to keep his eyes on the floor. You can’t look up, he had been told again and again, not right away, not the first time you’re in Monster territory. If you do, you freeze, you’re lost, you’re done for completely.
His uncle checked him carefully and fondly, making certain that his new loin straps were tight, that his knap-sack and back-sling were both in the right position on his shoulders. He took a heavy spear from Eric’s right hand and replaced it with a light one from the back-sling. “If you’re seen by a Monster,” he whispered, “the heavy spear’s not worth a damn. You scuttle into the closest hiding place and throw the light spear as far as you can. There’s a chance that Monster can’t distinguish between you and the spear. It might follow the spear.”
Eric nodded mechanically, although this too had been told many times, this too was a lesson he knew by heart. His mouth was so dry! He wished it weren’t unmanly to beg for water at such a moment.
Thomas the Trap-Smasher took his torch from him and slipped a glow lamp about his forehead. Then he pushed him through the doorway. “Go make your Theft, Eric,” he whispered. “Come back a man.”
5
He was on the other side. He was in Monster territory. He was surrounded by the strange Monster light, the incredible Monster world. The burrows, Mankind, everything familiar, lay behind him.
Panic rose from his stomach and into his throat like vomit.
Don’t look up. Eyes down, eyes down or you’re likely to freeze right where you are. Stay close to the wall, keep your eyes on the wall and move along it. Turn right and move along the wall. Move fast.
Eric turned. He felt the wall brush his right shoulder. He began to run, keeping his eyes down, touching the wall with his shoulder at regular intervals. He ran as fast as he possibly could, urging his muscles fiercely on. As he ran, he counted the steps to himself.
Twenty paces. Where did the light come from? It was everywhere; it glowed so; it was white, white. Twenty-five paces. Touch the wall with your shoulder. Don’t—above everything—don’t wander away from the wall. Thirty paces. In light like this you had no need of the glow lamp. It was almost too bright to see in. Thirty-five paces. The floor was, not like a burrow floor. It was flat and very hard. So was the wall. Flat and hard and straight. Forty paces. Run and keep your eyes down. Run. Keep touching the wall with your shoulder. Move fast. But keep your eyes down. Don’t look up. Forty-five paces.
He almost smashed into the structure he had been told about, but his reflexes and the warnings he had received swung him to the left and along it just in time. It was a different color than the wall, he noted, and a different textured material. Keep your eyes down. Don’t look up. He came to an entrance, hie the beginning of a small burrow.
Don’t go in that first entrance, Eric; you pass it by. He began to count again as he ran. Twenty-three paces more; and there was another entrance, a much higher, wider one. He darted inside. It’ll be darker, at first. The walls will soak up light from your glow lamp.
Eric paused, gasping. He was grateful for the sucking darkness. After that terrible, alien white light, the gloom was friendly, reminiscent of the familiar burrows now so horribly far away.
He could afford to take a breath at this point, he knew.The first, the worst part was over. He wasn’t out in the open any more.
He had emerged into Monster territory. He had run fast, following instructions until he was safely under cover again. He was still alive.
The worst was over. Nothing else would ever be as bad as this.
Monster territory. It lay behind him, bathed in its own peculiar light. Now. Why not? Now, when he was in a place of comparative safety. He could take a chance. He wanted to take a chance.
He turned, gingerly, fearfully. He raised his eyes. He looked.
The cry that tore from his lips was completely involuntary and frightened him almost as much as what he saw. He shut his eyes and threw himself down and sideways. He lay where he had fallen for a long while, almost paralyzed.
It couldn’t be. He hadn’t seen it. Nothing was that high, nothing ran on and on for such incredible distances!
After a time, he opened his eyes again, keeping them carefully focused on the dark near him. The gloom in this covered place had diminished somewhat as his eyes had grown more accustomed to it. Yellowish light from his glow lamp was providing illumination now: he could make out the walls, about as far apart from each other as those in a burrow, but—unlike a burrow’s walls—oddly straight and at right angles to the floor and ceiling. Far off there was an immense patch of darkness. The burrow will open out into a great big space, a real big and real dark space.
What was this place, he wondered? What was it to the Monsters?
He had to take another look behind, into the open. One more quick look. He was going to be Eric the Eye. An Eye should be able to look at anything. He had to take another look.
But guardedly, guardedly.
Eric turned again, opening his eyes a little at a time. He clamped his teeth together so as not to cry out. Even so, he almost did. He shut his eyes quickly, waited, then opened them again. Bit by bit, effort by effort, he found he was able to look into the great open whiteness without losing control of himself. It was upsetting, overpowering, but if he didn’t look too long at any one time, he could stand it.
Distance. Enormous, elongated, unbelievable distance. Space upon space upon space—that white light bathing it all. Space far ahead, space on all sides, space going on and on until it seemed to have no end to it at all. But there, fantastically far off, there was an end. There was a wall, a wall made by giants that finally sealed off the tremendous space. It rose hugely from the flat, huge floor and disappeared somewhere far overhead.
And in between—once you could stand to look at it this much—in between, there were objects. Enormous objects, dwarfed only by the greatness of the space which surrounded them, enormous, terribly alien objects. Objects like nothing you had ever imagined.
No, that wasn’t quite true. That thing over there. Eric recognized it.
A great, squat thing like a full knapsack without the straps. Since early boyhood, many was the time he had heard it described by warriors back from an expedition into Monster territory.
There was food in that sack and the others like it. Enough food in that one sack to feed the entire population of Mankind for unnumbered auld lang synes. A different kind of food in each sack.
No spear point possessed by Mankind would cut through the fabric of its container, not near the bottom where it was thickest. Warriors had to climb about halfway up the sack, Eric knew, before they could find a place thinenough to carve themselves an entrance. Then the lumps of food would be lowered from man to man all the way down the sack, warriors clinging to precarious handholds every few paces.
Once the pile on the floor was great enough, they would clamber down and fill their specially large, food-expedition knapsacks. Then back to the burrows and to the women who alone possessed the lore of determining whether the food was fit for consumption and of preparing it if it were.
That’s where he would be at this moment, on that sack, cutting a hole in it, if he’d chosen a first category Theft like most other youths. He’d be cutting a hole, scooping out a handful of food—any quantity, no matter how small, was acceptable on an initiatory Theft and be preparing to go home to plaudits from the women and acceptance from the men. He’d be engaged in a normal, socially acceptable endeavor.