When the moment came, tense as he was, the panel almost did take him with it; it flew up and away, and he suddenly felt himself going forward into the opening. Only Anne Marie’s strong hands grabbing his legs and bringing him back in saved him, and, being hauled back on his stomach, he was suddenly very thankful he’d kept wearing the hardened codpiece.
“Wow! Can she bend!” Julian gasped. “She didn’t even have to kneel!” But she rushed to Lori.
Mavra nodded and said to herself, “Things aren’t quite as static as they seem on the Well World. Dillian evolution has sure done a neat job on them!”
Julian bent down next to Lori, concerned. “Are you all right, my husband?” She asked in Erdomese.
He nodded. “Just bumped around a bit. I will be all right in a minute or two.” He turned on his side and looked back and up at the centauress who’d grabbed him. “Thanks a lot, Tony.”
“Think nothing of it, dear,” responded Anne Marie, not taking any offense at all at being confused with her twin.
Mavra came over and inspected the opening. “Okay. That means Lori, Julian, and I can sit on the edge and then jump off rather than having to contend with a meter-high hurdle, and you two have a straight jump.”
“How much longer will it be, do you think?” Julian asked her.
Mavra looked at her watch and then at the sun. “Maybe fifteen minutes. Okay, you’ve all seen these switching points; you know what they look like. Get as far away to the south—the direction that you’ll jump—as you can as fast as you can and stay out of sight of anybody in the yard area. Assemble behind the first building that gives us cover and wait until we’re all there. Understood? They may not be expecting us to jump, but they’re sure to have somebody at the station to keep a tail on us, and it’ll most likely be an Itun hired for the job. From this point we avoid Ituns until we’re across the border.”
They waited as the shadows grew and the light began to fade around them. Darkness came quickly to the Well World, and within a few minutes it would be pitch black. That actually bothered the two Erdomese the least, since they could simply lift their natural eye filters and see the full spectrum. Mavra and the two Dillians, however, had no more night vision than ordinary Earth humans, a thought that occurred to Julian.
“We should jump off last,” she said to Lori, “because we can see.”
He shook his head. “No, I think we go first for that very reason. We can find them a lot easier than they can find us, and I think it would be better to be on the ground just in case one of them has a problem with the jump.”
“All right, then. You go and I’ll follow. Night is almost completely upon us, and there are many lights not far ahead. I can already feel us slowing just a bit.”
Lori turned to Mavra, who had noticed the lights as well, and she nodded. “Any time you feel right after we’re slow enough. Just don’t take it too fast. We’ll get out.”
The Erdomese moved to the opening in the flatcar stakes. Lori sat, legs over the side of the car, uncomfortable sitting on his behind because of the tail and tailbone. It was not a normal position for Erdomese, and he decided to jump as soon as he felt it was safe.
“Remember the heavier gravity,” Julian warned him. “You will hit very hard, my husband.”
“You take care, too.”
The train was definitely slowing now, going perhaps thirty kilometers per hour, and it continued to slow. Lori’s tailbone was hurting badly enough that when it was down to about twenty, he took a deep breath and launched himself into the night. He hit as hard as Julian had warned, pitched forward, and found himself rolling down a small embankment into a fetid, muddy drainage ditch. Covered with stinking mud, he almost panicked, got control, and clawed himself out of it and up onto dryer land. He lay there, breathing hard, for a minute or so, then picked himself up. He not only stank, he was sore, and his left ankle and right wrist stung when he moved them. For a moment he was afraid that he’d broken something, but he quickly realized that they were probably only sprains and not that serious. By force of will he made his way in the darkness just below the tracks toward the lighted area about half a kilometer farther on.
Julian came to meet him, walking on all fours. “Are you all right?” she asked, concerned, then twitched her nose. “You sure don’t smell all right!”
“Rolled all the way down into the drainage canal. Didn’t pay enough attention to the slope. I’ve got some twists, but I can handle it. You?”
“A little bruised but not bad. It was slower, and I had a more level area. About the only problem I’ll have is getting grass stains out of my fur.”
He managed a chuckle at that. “The others?”
“Mavra was right behind me. She just jumped out, rolled once, and landed on her feet almost beside me! Like an acrobat or something. She told me to find you and she was going to check on the Blondie Twins.”
“Let’s join up,” he told her, gesturing forward.
“You are limping! Come! Put your hand on my shoulder, and I will help you,” she invited, standing erect.
“I—I can make it on my own,” Lori insisted, then grimaced and almost fell forward. She caught him and helped brace him, and this took just enough weight off that he was able to manage it.
“I thought you couldn’t even move, let alone stand in this place,” he noted.
“I grow strong when I am needed,” she responded, quoting a female Erdomese proverb.
Both Dillians had jumped without a hitch and now waited with Mavra for Lori and Julian to join them in a dark area behind the first automated switching tower. Mavra, seeing them in the very dim glow of the tower lights, motioned for the much larger centaurs to remain where they were and ran toward the two Erdomese. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you hurt bad?”
“I’m not sure,” Lori answered honestly. “I thought the ankle was just twisted a little, but now I’m not so sure. It doesn’t feel broken, but I think it’s a hell of a sprain.”
“Well, a very ancient man who knows the Well World far better than I do once said to never travel without a Dillian if you can manage it. We can repack all the stuff on one of them and put you on the other. Don’t argue! Whoever’s watching us has probably already discovered that we’re not there. The sooner we get away from here, the better!”
When they reached the Dillians, one of them was already repacking the saddlebags on the other. Then the one who carried all the equipment helped Lori onto the other’s back.
“Ride forward,” the centauress suggested. “That should take the pressure off your tail as well. And watch that horn on your head! I don’t want to get stabbed if I have to make a sudden stop!” Left unsaid was the rather noticeable stink of swamp and mud permeating his hair.
He felt awkward and helpless and, even worse, stupid. It was almost like a horse riding a horse. He was just never designed to ride on the back of a soft animal, but there was little choice at the moment.
Mavra turned to Julian and said, “Well, you’re leading the way because you can see and we can’t. Can you handle it? I know how hard this high G is on you.”
“I’ll be all right,” she assured the woman in black. “You said south, right? How far do you wish to go tonight?”
“Well, we’re going to be moving a lot slower and more cautiously than I planned, but we ought to go on until at least one of us has to stop. It shouldn’t be more than a dozen kilometers or so to the border if we head due south. That’s a haul on foot in the dark under these conditions, but we haven’t done much more than rest on our duffs all day. Can you make it?”