heard. “Where’s the wind coming from?”
“Canker’s creating a vacuum,” Henry yelled back. “Air rushes in to fill it faster as the canker grows. Get back!
The party hurried across the slick green surface of the grass toward safety, breaking at the last into a run. The giant wind kept trying to push them back.
“Further!
Abruptly the canker was lapping at the laboratory walls. The stones boiled evilly for a moment and no longer existed. The upper part of the structure fell in, disappeared.
Henry’s face was greenish white. “It’s getting out of control.
They ran. Shrieking, stumbling, trying to breathe, they ran. The canker was faster than they. With the flowing ease of a creature in a dream it gained on them. It was no more than a yard from them when they reached the site of the cooking fire. Two seconds more and it was lapping at their heels.
Vela collapsed and fell. Denis put his hands under her armpits and wildly tried to drag her along. Mrs. Pettit, her face a mask of terror inside the glazed hood of her coveralls, was screaming inaudibly. The wind was horrible.
Hathor appeared. She was standing in the air eight or ten feet above their heads. Though her eyes still had their uncanny look of remoteness and impassivity, something about her suggested exasperation consciously controlled. Standing securely on nothingness she began to make quick, plucking motions with her hands. Slipping, sliding, twisting, they moved in space and out of it.
There was a terrific lightning flash. The world dissolved in curtains of white light. Henry, staggering back from the impact of the prodigy, was amazed that his retinae had not been burned out. It did not seem possible that the eyes could be flooded with such light and still see.
There was another even vaster flash. Slowly, reluctantly, it died away. Henry looked up at Hathor with his scalded eyeballs. Her hands still moved in their twisting pattern, sliding in and out of visibility, but more deliberately than they had. Tiny veins stood out on her temples. Her lips were compressed. Plainly she was imposing some great exertion on herself. The howling wind had died away.
The earth, the horizon, the air, twanged like a plucked bowstring. In the most horrible moment of the afternoon, Henry perceived that everywhere about him were slowly opening doors. Convulsively he shut his eyes.
When he opened them again Hathor had put down her hands. The air was calm and untroubled. All around the party the grass lay as fresh, as green, as unbroken as it had been before the matter canker was set up. The only sign of its existence that the canker had left was an exceptionally heavy coating of dew. But the laboratory was gone.
Hathor fixed her impassive eyes on Henry. Her face had resumed its ordinary inexpressiveness, but he felt the fright that always came over him at mental contact with her. A huge voice began to print itself awesomely in his brain—“DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN.”
It hadn’t worked. Hathor had neither punished them nor got rid of them. And now what were they to do? The laboratory was gone. They had no way of annoying Hathor with another matter canker even if they had been minded to try it. All that was left them was to try to be unsatisfactory pets.
They discussed it night after night as they sat around the coals of their fire. They could decide on nothing. It was not until Hathor, coming to get Henry for the third installment of his training, took Den is along too, that a definite program emerged.
Denis was shaken by his experience. It amused Henry, who was becoming accustomed to the horror that Hathor’s training involved, to see how shaken he was. Denis’ tight little mouth was as firm as ever when he remembered to keep it firm, But in moments of inattention his jaw hung slackly and his lips had a tendency to shake.
“This can’t go on,” he said, pacing up and down on the grass. “Vela’s not well—haven’t you noticed? She needs medical attention but I wouldn’t trust Hathor to prescribe for her. It’s not myself I’m thinking of, it’s her. We’ve got to get home.”
“It would be nice if we could,” Henry replied warily. “But—”
“But what?”
“Nothing. Do you have a plan?”
“Yes. We’ll run away.”
“Run away? Hathor can bring us back in ten seconds as soon as she notices we’re gone.”
“Yes, of course she can,” Denis replied. “But if we keep on running away and she has to keep on bringing us back—you see what I mean. She only comes to visit us every four or five days, but if every time she comes we’ve run away, she’ll soon get tired of it. Bringing us back will be so annoying she’ll send us home to get rid of us.”
Henry was silent.
“What’s the matter?” Denis asked challengingly. “Don’t you think it would work? We could save up our supplies and take food with us. Besides, there’s a lot of wild fruit.”
“Oh, I think it would work. That’s what’s bothering me.”
Denis’ back stiffened. For a moment he was again the martinet. “Explain yourself,” he rapped out.
“I’m afraid.” Henry swallowed. “Afraid to annoy her. Afraid of what she’d do.”
Denis looked relieved. “Nonsense,” he said heartily. “If she didn’t do anything to us for setting up the matter canker she won’t do anything to us no matter what we do. That’s obvious. Besides, what could be worse than what she does when she’s training us? That—that almost makes me sick.”
Henry let his hands dangle down between his knees. His eyes had taken on an odd bright look. “That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” he said. He managed a smile. “Pretty bad. But maybe something could be worse.”
“Rot! I’m going to talk to Vela and her mother about it. If they agree will you come along with us? After all, you’re in this too.”
There was a pause. “All right,” Henry replied at last. “As you say, I’m in this with you. If you go I’ll go with you.”
Hathor had made one of her visits only the day before. She made them at irregular intervals but it was probable that three or four days would elapse before she would visit Henry and the others again. On the third day, carrying what supplies they had been able to accumulate, the party escaped.
The escape was unspectacular. They walked for a mile or two through the rolling parkland where Hathor had established them, turned to the right and were on a road that was no more than a grassy track. Once in the distance they saw a pair of Hathor’s people walking slowly along. Sometimes the big mammals walked, instead of simply materializing where they wished to be.
Denis made the party hide beside the road until the big people were safely out of sight. Later the party passed a lonely building whose walls were shimmering gray webs. Henry identified it to himself as a place where a dimension-spanning vortex, like the one which had brought them thither, was being made. By noon the party was in a rather open wood. They decided to stay there for the night.
Hathor came for them on the second day. She did not seem angry, only more than usually remote. She set them down on the sward beside the open stoa in the park where they slept, and gazed at them. Then she disappeared.
Denis was jubilant. “It’s working!” he said, very pleased with himself. “The next time we run away or maybe the time after that she’ll send us home to get rid of us. You’ll see, old chap.”
“Will she?” Henry answered with a sigh. “Well, I hope you’re right.”
The second attempt at escape was not very successful. Hathor came for them when they had been gone no more than a couple of hours. The third time…
Denis was in the lead when they reached the boundary of the park. He was talking cheerily to Vela, his head turned, as they walked along. When he faced about once more, Hathor was standing there. Her crimson-tipped crest waved gently in the breeze as she bent over and picked up Denis.
The action itself was ordinary enough but Henry felt a sickening pang of apprehension. He plucked at Vela’s arm. “Run,” he said hoarsely, “you and mother run and hide.”
