“Then you would have stayed outside the rim of the giant gate you set around the clearing,” Kickaha said. “Tell me, Urthona, why did you step inside it? Why did you drive us toward the boulder, when we were already inside the gate?”
“How did you know?” Urthona screamed. “How could you know?”
“I didn’t really know,” Kickaha said. “I saw the slight ridge of earth at several places on the edge of the clearing before we came on in. It didn’t mean much, although I was suspicious. I’m suspicious of everything that I can’t explain at once.
“Then you hung back, and that in itself wasn’t too suspicious, because you wouldn’t want to get too close until you were certain we had no hidden weapons. But you wanted to do more than just get us inside this giant gate and then spring it on us. You wanted to drive us into our own gate, in the boulder, where we’d be trapped. You wanted us to hide inside there and think we’d fooled you and then come out after a while, only to find ourselves in this world.
“But you didn’t know that Anana had no activator and you didn’t know that we had the Horn. There was no reason why you would think of it even if you saw the instrument case, because it must be thousands of years since you last saw it. And you didn’t know Jadawin had it, or you would have connected that with the instrument case, since I am Jadawin’s friend.
“So I got Anana to blow the Horn even if she didn’t know why she was doing it. I didn’t want to go into your world, but if I could take you with me, I’d do it.”
Anana got up slowly and carefully and said, “The Shifting World! Urthona’s world!”
In the east, or what was the east in the world they’d just left, a massive red body appeared over the hills. It rose swiftly and revealed itself as a body about four times the size of the Earth’s moon. It was not round but oblong with several blobby tentacles extending out from it. Kickaha thought that it was changing shape slightly.
He felt the earth under him tilting. His head was getting lower than his feet. And the edge of the high hills in the distance was sagging.
Kickaha sat up. The pains seemed to be slightly attenuated. Perhaps it was because the pull of gravity was so much reduced. He said, “This is a one-way gate, of course, Urthona?”
“Of course,” Urthona said. “Otherwise I would have taken the Horn and reopened the gate.”
“And where is the nearest gate out of this world?”
“There’s no harm in telling you,” Urthona said. “Especially since you won’t know any more than you do now when I tell you. The only gate out is in my palace, which is somewhere on the surface of this mass. Or perhaps on that,” he added, pointing at the reddish metamor-phosing body in the sky. “This planet splits up and changes shape and recombines and splits off again. The only analogy I can think of is a lavalite. This is a lavalite world.”
Red Orc went into action then. His leap was prodigious and he almost went over Urthona’s head. But he rammed into him and both went cartwheeling. The beamer, knocked out of Urthona’s hands by the impact, flew off to one side. Anana dived after it, got it, and landed so awkwardly and heavily that Kickaha feared for her. She rose somewhat shakily but grinning. Urthona walked back to them; Red Orc crawled. “Now, Uncles,” she said, “I could shoot you and perhaps I should. But I need someone to carry Kickaha, so you two will do it. You should be thankful that the lesser gravity will make the task easier. And I need you, Urthona, because you know something of this world. You should, since you designed it and made it. You two will make a stretcher for Kickaha, and then we’ll start out.”
“Start out where?” growled Urthona. “There’s no place to go to. Nothing is fixed here. Can’t you understand that?”
“If we have to search every inch of this world, we’ll do it,” she said. “Now get to work!”