The giant’s hands took him up, hurled him out over the chasm, out into wild rain and bellowing wind.
His arms stretched out, his fingers caught the edge of a metal flange.
But the hurricane had his body; it flung him out, over the abysm.
Fingers strained.
Shoulders throbbed. Muscles cracked.
But he hung on.
The merciless gust released him, left him clinging to the flange, drenched and strangled hi roaring rain.
He tried the flanges, found that they would serve, however awkwardly, as a ladder; he nodded at the others.
He braced himself, then, standing on one leg, the other knee hooked over the flange above, waited, arms free.
Jay Kalam was flung out, and he caught him, helped him to a higher position.
Then Giles Habibula, green-faced, gasping.
And Aladoree, who said in a queer, muffled tone,
“Thank you, John Ulnar,” when he caught her in his arms.
Hal Samdu then passed out the gory legs of the tripod, which they slung to their belts.
Standing on the narrow ledge, he closed the sliding grate, so that the lock snapped, in hope of confusing pursuit.
Then he leaped, through blinding sheets of rain, and John Star leaned out to catch him.
His great weight made an intolerable burden for John Star in his cramped and insecure position.
A furious downward gust increased it.
John Star felt, as he clung to the giant’s wet hand, that his body must be torn in two.
But he kept his hold.
Hal Samdu caught a flange with his free hand, was safe.
And they started down the drain.
The bracing flanges were uncomfortably spaced; it would have been no slight feat to climb down a mile of them under the most favorable circumstances.
Now rain fell hi blinding, suffocating sheets from the roaring sky; the pitiless wind tore at them.
All of them were already half exhausted.
But apprehension of inevitable pursuit drove them to reckless haste.
In only one way was the storm an advantage, John Star thought; it had driven the Medusae to shelter from above their buildings and machines; there seemed no danger of accidental discovery, before pursuit started from above.
But that advantage they paid for very dearly in the battle with wind and rain.
They were halfway down, perhaps, when Aladoree fainted from sheer exhaustion.
John Star, just below her, had been watching her, afraid that she would slip from the wet flanges.
He caught her; he held her until she revived and protested stubbornly that she was able to climb again.
Then Hal Samdu lifted her to his shoulders, made her cling to him pickaback, and they climbed on down.
The great chasm’s floor, as they descended, became more dis-tinctly visible through the mist of falling water.
A vast square pit, a full thousand feet across.
Black, blank sides of huge buildings walled it, without a break.
The floor was flooded with yellow water from the rain.
All the water on the planet appeared yellow in volume, carrying in solution the red, organic gas.
Anxiously scanning the flooded floor, John Star could see no possible avenue of escape from it—unless they should climb another of the drains that was discharging its flood into the pit.
And they were all too near exhaustion, he knew, to make such a climb, even if that could promise safety.
The torrential rain slackened suddenly, when they were near the bottom.
The rumble of thunder diminished; the lurid red sky lifted slightly; the cold wind beat at them with decreasing violence.
John Star’s feet had just touched the cold standing water on the floor, when Giles Habibula gasped the warning:
“My mortal eye!
The evil Medusae, coming down to take us back!”
Looking upward, he saw the greenish, black-fringed flying domes, drifting one by one from the hall they had left, floating down swiftly.
23 Yellow Maw of Terror
Standing in ankle-deep water, as the others were finishing the descent behind him, John Star looked desperately about for some possible way of escape from the pit.
Before him lay the sheet of yellow flood-water, a thousand feet square.
Above it, on every side, stood glistening black walls of tremendous buildings, the very lowest taller than the proud Purple Hall.
Here and there the high doors broke them, but none that he saw could be reached by any but a flying creature.