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into thick midnight, the blue pavement forked.
"Okay, Starman." Bolivar stopped there, grinning at Benn. "If you know your
halo, which fork do we take?"
38
The Howling Pit
With a bright ironic smile, Bolivar shrugged at Benn's baffled hesitation.
"Okay, Starman! Just follow me."
He glanced at his glowing glove and strode ahead, turning left around that
enormous pillar. Roxane followed silently. With no choice, Benn followed her.
Far around the pillar, the shining path veered away. Straight again, it ran on
through fearful dev-astation.
The invaders must have crushed the last defenders here. The light from the
road and their searching lamps showed only shat-tered foundations. Farther on,
even these gave way to craters and mountains of rubble. Delver giants had
fought and died here, but later salvagers had left no monuments to them except
a few scattered scraps of some hard black plastic that must have been parts of
dreadful war machines.
The road narrowed. Rebuilt since that Armageddon of the Krongs, it lay
straight through total desolation. In places, the builders had cut it deep
through hills of tumbled ruin; elsewhere they had flung a slender bridge
across a cratered valley where only a few great boulders showed squared or
rounded faces to tell that Korath had ever been. They came at last through a
deeper trough in what once had been another fortress wall. Cra-ters grew fewer
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beyond that cut, and Benn saw no more marks of Delver workmanship.
Bolivar stopped. When they came up with him, he was standing on the end of the
glowing road. Beyond him, black pavement ran on into the dark.
"A problem for us, Starman." He grinned at Benn. "Some-thing broken. Road
should light to show the way, but nothing happened when I stepped on it. So
what do you say?"
Stung by his jeering tone, Benn merely shrugged.
"The ring?" Roxane asked. "What does it say?"
Bolivar ignored her, staring at Benn.
"Shall we trust it, Starman?" He turned his hand to flash the Delver ring. "Do
you trust me?"
"We're together." Benn tried to cover what he felt. "Till this step is run."
"Then come along."
Again Bolivar stalked ahead. Golden against the dark, his lifeskin cast a pool
of light that finally showed a long ridge of broken stone that had come down
across the road. He scrambled to the top, paused for a moment to wave them on,
and vanished beyond it.
"Come along." Frowning soberly in her helmet, Roxane echoed the words. "We are
together." She glanced at Benn, and he thought he caught a wry expression. "At
least for now."
As agile as Bolivar, she climbed ahead of him until a rock slid beneath her
boot. Off balance, she stumbled backward. He caught her shining glove to
steady her. For an instant she stood motionless, clutching his hand. He
thought she looked startled.
"Thanks."
She whispered the word and they climbed on together, hold-ing hands. Down on
the black pavement beyond, they found Bolivar waiting.
"Don't let our little starboy hold us up." Though he grinned, his voice had an
unpleasant edge. "Help him down."
Benn hated him, though the eldren way was not to hate. Rox-ane said nothing,
but he felt her squeeze his fingers before she let them go. Bolivar stood
scowling at them for a moment before he glanced at his ring and turned to
tramp ahead. A hundred meters farther, the road lit again beneath his feet.
Its glow showed the cragged rock above, sloping lower here.
The cavern walls crept out of the dark as they went on, hol-lowed and pitted
where those ancient miners had followed the last precious veins. The pavement
turned again, running close to those ragged cliffs until it forked. One branch
ran straight; the other turned into a narrow tunnel.
"Starman?" Bolivar stopped there to wait for Benn. "Which way do we take?"
"Diego, don't!" Roxane flushed. "Have you gone mad?"
"Blame the starman if I'm crazy. It's his crazy world."
Benn's fists had clenched, but Roxane stepped between them. Trembling,
breathing hard, he caught himself and tried to un-derstand his surge of anger.
Had Roxane's touch fired too much emotion in him? Too much in Bolivar, when he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]