Adda drifted out into the Mall a little way and stared down at the gash.

The inner skin of the Mall had been sloughed away, shops and homes scoured off as cleanly as if by a blade. And within the gash itself he could see the cross-sections of cut-open homes, shops. There were splashes of broken flesh. He heard human voices, but no screams: there were groans, and low, continuous weeping.

Farr joined him in the Air. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“A Sea-fragment,” Adda said grimly. “The City has been hit. Looks as if the berg passed straight through… We’re lucky the City wasn’t smashed wide open… Come on, Farr. Let’s see if that damn Hospital is still working.”

They dropped down the wide, almost empty shaft of the Mall, searching for a way to get to the Hospital.

24

Hork ran his thick fingers around the seam of the door. Then, impatient, Waving to give himself leverage, he laid his hands flat against the door and shoved.

The door swung back on invisible hinges, heavy and silent; Air hissed.

Through the doorway Dura caught glimpses of another, larger chamber, walled by more of the featureless gray material.

For a moment Hork and Dura hesitated before the doorway.

“Let’s get on with it,” Hork growled. He grasped the edges of the doorframe. With a single fluid movement he hauled his bulk through; his small feet, Waving gently, disappeared into the frame.

With a sigh, Dura took hold of the frame. Like the rest of the wall material the frame edges were cool to the touch, but the walls seemed knife-thin and the edges dug into her palms. She laid her hands carefully on the outer surface of the wall, beyond the frame, and pushed herself through.

The outer chamber was another tetrahedron — and constructed of the ubiquitous gray-bland material — but perhaps ten times as large, a hundred mansheights across or more. This room would be as large as any enclosed space in Parz City. The chamber from which she had emerged floated at the heart of this new room, its vertices and edges aligned with the chamber within which it was embedded. Dura wondered vaguely what was holding the smaller chamber in place; there were no signs of struts, supports or ropes.

Perhaps they were in a nest of these tetrahedral chambers, one contained in the other, she speculated; perhaps if they went beyond these walls they would swim into a third chamber, ten times larger again, and then onward…

But there was no door in this outer chamber. The walls were featureless: unbroken even by the map device which had adorned the inner cell. There must be no way out; maybe this was the end of their journey.

Hork came Waving toward her. “Dura. I’ve found something.” Taking her by the hand he half-dragged her around the inner cell. He Waved to a stop, causing Dura to bump against him, and pointed to his find. “There. What do you think of that?”

It was a box, irregularly shaped, about half a mansheight across. Dura circled the thing warily a few microns from where it hovered in the Air. Sculpted of the familiar gray wall material, it consisted of a massive block from which a thinner rectangular plate protruded; smaller cylinders stretched forward from the sides of the rectangle…

Its function was unmistakable.

“It’s a seat” she said.

Hork snorted impatiently. “Obviously it’s a damn seat.” He prowled around the object, poking boldly at its surfaces. Levers — thick stumps apparently designed for human fists — protruded from the end of each of the chair’s arms. A swiveling pointer was inset into the left arm.

Dura asked, “Do you think it’s meant for us… I mean, for humans?”

Hork groaned. “Of course it is.”

Dura was offended. “There’s nothing obvious about this situation, Hork. If that map was right, we’ve traveled across space — away from the Star itself. Why should we expect anything but utter strangeness? It’s a miracle we’ve found Air to breathe, let alone… furniture.”

He shrugged; the fat-covered muscles flowed under his coverall. “But this is obviously meant for humans. See how the back, the seat have been molded?” And, before Dura could protest, Hork swiveled his bulk through the Air and settled into the chair. At first he wriggled, evidently uncomfortable — he even looked alarmed — but soon he relaxed and assumed a broad smile. He rested his hands on the arms of the chair; it seemed to match the shape of his massive body. “Perfect,” he said. “You know, Dura, this chair must be three hundred generations old. And yet it looks as good as new, and it fits my bulk as well as if it had been designed by the best Parz craftsmen.”

Dura frowned. “You didn’t seem so happy when you got into the seat.”

He hesitated. “It felt odd. The surfaces seemed to flow around me.” He grinned, his confidence recovering. “It was adjusting to me, I suppose. It was disconcerting, but it didn’t last long… What do you think these levers are for?” His massive fists hovered over the rods protruding from the seat-arms.

“No!” She laid her hands over his.

After a moment he relaxed and lifted his hands away from the levers, leaving them untouched. “Interesting,” he said mildly. “These look just like the control levers in the ‘Flying Pig.’ Maybe there are some basic commonalities of human design, a certain way things just have to be…”

“But,” she said firmly, “unlike with the ‘Pig’ we don’t have the faintest idea what these controls are for.”

Hork looked like a reprimanded child. “Well, as you told me earlier, we’re not going to make any progress unless we take a few chances.” He glanced down at the arrow device inset in the left arm of the seat. “What about this, for instance?”

Dura Waved closer. The arrow was a finger-thick cylinder hinged at its center; it lay at the heart of a small crater gouged out of the chair. The crater’s rim was marked by a band divided into four quarters: white, light gray, dark gray, black. The arrow was pointing at the black quadrant. It seemed obvious that the arrow was designed to be twisted by the occupant of the chair.

Hork looked up at her. “Well? This seems harmless enough.”

Dura suppressed a manic giggle. “You haven’t the faintest idea what it is…”

“Damn you, upfluxer, we didn’t come all this way to cower.” And with a convulsive movement he grabbed the arrow and twisted it.

The device clicked through a quarter of a turn.

Dura flinched, wrapping her arms around her body. Even Hork could not help but wince as the arrow came to rest, pointing to the dark gray quadrant of the scale band. Then he exhaled heavily. “See? No harm done… In fact, nothing seems to have happened at all. And…”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re wrong.” She pointed. “Look…”

Hork twisted in the seat.

The walls of the chamber had turned transparent.

Bzya was dozing, hands loosely wrapped around the Bell’s axial support pole, when the blue flashes started.

He snapped awake.

This had been a long, fruitless dive, and he had been looking forward to home, to breaking some beercake with Jool. But now something was wrong.

He scanned quickly around the cabin. Hosch, his only companion on this trip, was awake and alert; they shared a brief, interrogative glance. Bzya placed his hands gently on the polished, worn wood of the support pole. No unusual vibration. He listened to the steady hum of the great Corestuff hoops which bound about the hull of the Bell; the sound was an even thrumming, telling him that the current from the City still flowed down the cables as steadily as ever, throwing a magnetic cloak around their frail ship. He looked through the nearest of the Bell’s three small windows. The Air outside — if it could be graced with the name, this far down — was a murky yellow, but bright enough to tell him that they were somewhere near the top of the underMantle. He could even see the shadow of the Spine; they were still close to its lower tip, not much more than a meter below the City…