“You’re right,” she said apologetically. Max stared at her, surprised that she had taken him seriously.
Emil jumped up impatiently. “We’re supposed to explore.”
Max was still looking at Lucinda when she made a choking sound and pointed behind them. He jumped up and saw that openings had appeared in the column.
“There’s twelve,” Emil said as he went around and came back from the right.
Each was a perfect square of blackness. Max stepped into one square, drawn by its strangeness, then forced himself to back out, feeling somehow that this was not the right one.
Emil and Lucinda were gone.
“Where are you?” he shouted as he hurried around the column. He halted before an opening, then realized that they might have entered any one of the portals, and that he had lost his bearings by circling the column in panic. He hesitated, then decided that he would have to start somewhere.
“Emil! Lucinda!” he shouted as he stepped into the blackness. It seemed to flow around him, as if it were liquid. He went forward and drifted to the right, sensing the curve of the passage. He stopped suddenly, feeling lost, and backed out again into the light, emerging just in time to glimpse Lucinda as she disappeared into the next entrance.
“Wait!” he shouted, but she ignored him, as though she knew where she was going and didn’t care about anyone. He went in after her, and again veered to the right through the flowing darkness. He slowed his pace, reached out, and touched a shoulder.
“Lucinda?”
“It’s me,” she said.
“Were you trying to lose me? Why are you standing here now?”
“Waiting for you. We have to go through this way.”
“Where’s Emil?”
“Up ahead.”
He slipped his hand into hers. They went forward and bumped into Emil, who moved away.
Lucinda pulled Max along.
“Do you feel strange again?” he asked.
Her hand tightened in his. The cold odorless blackness flowed around them. Max felt as if he were breathing it.
“There’s an opening!” Emil shouted as they came around the curve.
Max peered ahead and saw a square of light. Emil’s dark shape appeared in it and went out through the exit.
Max and Lucinda rushed forward and emerged into a yellow-lit space. Emil was just ahead.
“We’re in a dome of some kind,” he said as he faced them. “Look at that!”
Max turned to look at the column from which they had emerged. Glassy, but smaller than the one they had entered, it also rose up into a glowing haze.
Suddenly the yellow light faded. A night sky appeared, with two alien suns setting on a ragged horizon of black mountains. One sun was a white-hot oval, the other a yellow dwarf, also egg-shaped from the distortions caused by mutual gravitational attraction. Rings of glowing red gas spiraled out from the two suns. Max squinted as his eyes adjusted. A great rocky plain surrounded the dome.
“Where are we?” Lucinda asked, letting go of Max’s hand.
“Not in Earth’s solar system,” Emil said, “that’s for sure.”
“But how did we get here?” she asked.
“Through the passage,” Emil answered, “from wherever the giant sphere is, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” Max asked.
“Well, our habitat is inside the giant sphere, which is probably somewhere in Earth’s Sunspace, I think. When we stepped into the column, it took us to another star system, through some kind of interstellar shortcut. The columns must be a transit system of some kind.”
“Maybe not,” Max replied. “It could be that this is where the giant sphere is, circling these suns, and we only went from the sphere to this planet.”
Emil nodded. “Could be, but it seems more like a bridge system, even if it only took us from the sphere to this dome.”
“But that would mean that the sphere captured our habitat and then came here,” Lucinda said, puzzled.
They gazed out at the bleak world around them. Max had seen holos of massive double stars, but to stand in the real glow of these suns was eerie. Two stars were locked in a fiery embrace, exchanging rivers of plasma along gravitational and magnetic lines.
“We should go back,” Lucinda said, breaking the spell as she retreated toward the column. Max felt her fear. A sudden deep hum sent shivers through him.
“Look!” Emil cried.
The openings in the column were blurred by its speed of rotation. “What’s happening?” Lucinda shouted.
The hum became a roar, then shifted into a high-pitched whine. Max began to feel dizzy from the sound.
Slowly, the whine died away. The openings became clearer and stopped. The stormy mass inside roiled lazily.
“Which is the right way back now?” Lucinda asked.
“No way to know,” Emil said with dismay.
“Maybe they all lead back to where we started,” Lucinda said.
Max shook his head. “Fat chance.”
Emil pointed at the portal in front of him. “Maybe it’s this one.”
“Let’s try it,” Max said.
“We’ll split up,” Emil offered suddenly. “Each of us tries one portal, then we meet back here.”
“That’s dumb,” Lucinda answered. “We might not all wind up back here. These things could go anywhere. It’s better to try each one in turn, together.”
Emil looked embarrassed. “Right. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Stay close,” Max said as he went in.
Emil and Lucinda were right behind him as he followed the S-curve. The darkness flowed around him, guiding him through. Light flashed ahead, and Max paused. Emil and Lucinda came up on his right as he approached the exit.
“The air smells strange,” Emil said.
“Ozone,” Max said. “Too much could be poisonous.”
“What?” Emil said fearfully.
“Wait,” Max said. He turned and looked back, trying to see by the flashing light, then moved to the right and touched the wall. It felt rocky. “We’ve come out into a cave!”
Emil and Lucinda were moving toward the opening. He hurried after them.
Black clouds rode in a white sky as they emerged onto a high place.
“It’s so big!” Emil cried out in surprise at the size of the landscape, then moved toward the edge of the Cliff, with Lucinda behind him. Max’s curiosity raced as he followed them. They were on the
outside
of a planet, where the surface curved the other way and might be millions of times larger than the interior of the habitat.
A shimmering green forest lay below the cliff. Wind ruffled the trees, whispering. Black clouds swirled in a white sky. Lightning struck the forest, setting fires. Max felt an overpowering sense of danger.
Emil stepped to the edge, then backed up and sat down, covering his eyes.
“Are you all right?” Lucinda asked.
“He nodded, eyes closed. “Makes me dizzy.”
“I feel lighter,” Max said, “so this planet’s mass must produce less than our one gravity.”
“So do I,” Lucinda added, “but not by much.”
A gust of wind blew raindrops into their faces. Max backed into some tall weeds that had grown out of cracks in the rock.
“We’d better go!” Lucinda shouted, helping Emil to his feet.
Lightning lit up the whole sky as they retreated from the edge. The black clouds bunched up into a solid blanket.
“Strange place for an exit,” Emil said loudly, looking around. “It must have made sense once to have one here, maybe before erosion changed the land.”
“Come on!” she shouted at him.
The clifftop trembled and pitched toward the forest. They staggered back from the cave entrance as the world lifted up and tumbled them toward the edge.
Emil cried out as he went over. Max grabbed the tall weeds and hung on. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lucinda doing the same. The ground shook again, and the weeds came out by their roots. Lucinda screamed as she brushed against him and rolled over the edge.
No
, Max thought as his weeds pulled loose. He tried to dig his fingers into the rock as he slid toward the edge. For a moment he hung there, but the next tremor shook him loose.
In a dream there would be time to look down and see where Emil and Lucinda had struck, he thought as he fell, and that would prove it was a dream, he told himself as he hit—and slid into something soft and wet.
Then his feet touched bottom, and he was standing chest-high in mud.
He heard a gurgling sound and turned to see Lucinda pulling Emil’s head out of the mud. “Help me!” she cried. He pushed forward, struggling to make his way to her.
Emil was still breathing when he managed to get to them. Max helped Lucinda hold her brothers unconscious body upright as rain began to fall.
Max looked for a way out.
“What is it?” Lucinda shouted.
“We can’t climb back up!” he answered.
“What happened?” Emil asked in a weak voice.
“We fell into this mud,” Lucinda said. “How do you feel?”
“Okay,” he gasped, struggling to see in the downpour.
“Anything broken?” Max asked.
“I don’t think so.” Emil moved his arms and stood by himself. “Which way?”
“To the bank,” Max said. “Back up to the cave.”
Emil and Lucinda pushed through the mud. Max followed, but it was hard going as the rain increased, and suddenly he could see nothing but the shapes of Emil and Lucinda. The rain in his ears was deafening. He forced his way to them, and they huddled together in the mud as lightning washed the world white.
He spoke into Lucinda’s ear. “We can’t stand this for long. We’ll go deaf and catch cold.” She coughed violently. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Come on!” he shouted.
They pulled Emil along by his arms. The mud sucked at their legs as if it were alive.
Emil shook free. “I can make it!” he said.
The rain thinned, and Max saw that they were almost at the bank below the cliffs. The smell of mud was strong. Other, stranger smells mingled with the odor of the red clay. How had all this happened to him? Only a few hours ago he had been in his room. He might die here, and nothing would be left of him but wet bones, packed neatly in the clay.
He shook off the gruesome image and pushed harder. Emil and Lucinda fell behind. He slowed, and they caught up. Linking arms, they struggled onto the bank and collapsed on the stones and broken slate, then crawled closer to the clay wall for some shelter from the rain’s bombardment. The clay, Max saw, was soft, and part of the wall might fall on them if the rain weakened it. He motioned for Emil and Lucinda to go back. Finally, they covered their heads with their hands and tried to rest.
The rhythm of the rain numbed Max as he floated near sleep, half thinking, half feeling. Images came to him at random. He was playing in the hollow, rolling down its grassy slopes, following a trail around the inner equator, hangkite gliding with the sunplate warm on his face. His mother called for him to come in, and her voice seemed to sing his name. Where was home now? It was trapped in a big sphere somewhere, and he was fighting for his life in another solar system, light-years away.…
The rain stopped. He listened to the silence, then sat up and saw white mists twisting like lazy snakes over the stream that flowed through the gorge.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted suddenly. “The water’s rising.”
Emil and Lucinda sat up.
“Where?” she asked tiredly.
Max estimated that they were not far from where they had gone over the cliff. “We’ll go downstream and find a way back up to the cave.”
Emil said, “The quake might have closed it.”
“I’m bruised all over,” Lucinda said as she got up.
“My knee hurts,” Emil added.
Max stood up, ignoring the ache in his shoulder.
“The water’s still rising,” Lucinda said as he led the way down the bank of pebbles and slate.
“This gorge might run for hundreds of kilometers,” Emil said.
Max examined the clay walls on either side of them. “We have to climb out.”
“It’s too steep,” Lucinda said. “Maybe it’s not as bad farther down.”
Max peered ahead through the thinning mists as he went along the bank, but the walls were nearly vertical as far as he could see.
He led the way around two turns, then stopped and went to the wall at his right, determined to climb up. “Follow me in the steps I make.”
“They won’t hold your weight,” Emil said.
“I’ll dig them deep,” Max replied.
He scooped out clay with his hands, working at eye level. “Boost me up,” he said to Emil when he had made two steps.
Emil sighed, but bent down and put his hands together. Max stepped up, clutched the wet wall, and put his right foot into one of the holes, then hugged the wall and got his other foot in. Blood pounded in his ears as he slipped in the softness.
“Told you,” Emil said.
“Quiet!” Lucinda snapped as Max dug with his right hand. When the hole was deep enough, he shoved his hand in and began to dig with his left.
“I can’t go up like that,” Emil whispered to Lucinda.
“You’ll have to,” she said.
Max finished the second hole, pushed his hand in, and rested.
Emil asked, “How are you going to move from that position?”
Max breathed deeply, reached down below his waist and dug another foothold, then looked up and saw that it was twenty-five meters or more to the top. Climbing might be possible once the holes were dug—if he could dig them, if they remained firm, if he didn’t slip halfway up and break his neck. .…
He finished the hole below his waist and tried to step into it. He succeeded on the third try, but the clay gave way. He would not be able to lift himself by standing in it.
A roaring sound drowned out the pounding in his ears.
“Max!” Lucinda shouted.
He looked to his right and saw a wall of water rushing down the gorge.
Max slipped from the wall and landed on the bank just as the flood hit them. He tumbled and twisted, struggling to right himself in the rush, gulping muddy water as his shoes and clothing dragged him under. He surfaced choking and coughing as he gasped for air, treading water with all his strength to stay afloat. He looked around as the current seized him, but couldn’t spot Emil and Lucinda. They had struck the wall and drowned, he thought, dazed.