The southwest hoop was only a huge round of metal. He went toward the last one while the sun continued westward and downward. It shone in a silent sky over a silent earth. Even the wind had died down, and the only sound was the rushing of the river, which died as he walked away from it, and his own feet on the rocks and his breathing.
When he got to the northwest hoop, he felt like putting off his rock-throwing for a while. If this proved to be another jest of Red Orc, it might also prove to be the last jest that Kickaha would ever know. So he might as well get this over with.
The first stone went through and struck the rock beyond.
The second went through the other side and fell on the ground beyond.
He jumped up and down and yelled his frustration and hit the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. He kicked at a small boulder and then went howling and hopping away with pain. He pulled his hair and slapped the side of his head and then turned his face toward the blind blue sky and the deaf bright yellow sun and howled like a wolf whose tail was caught in a bear trap.
After a while he became silent and still. He might as well have been made of the light-red rock which was so abundant on this earth, except that his eyelids jumped and his chest rose and fell.
When he broke loose from the mold of contemplation, he walked briskly but unemotionally to the river. Here he drank his fill and then he looked for a sheltered place to spend the night. After fifteen minutes, he found a hollow in the side of a small hill of hard rock that would protect him from the wind. He fell asleep after many unavoidable thoughts of the future.
In the morning, he looked at the Beller’s body and wondered if he was going to have to eat it.
To give himself something to do, and also because he never entirely gave up hope or quit trying, he waded around in the shallows of the river and ran his hands through the waters. No fish were touched or scared into revealing their presence. It did not seem likely that there would be any, especially when there was an absolute absence of plant life.
He walked to the top of the hill in the base of which he had slept. He sat on the hard round peak for a while, moving only to ease the discomfort of the stone on his buttocks. His situation was desperate and simple. Either Red Orc had prepared a way for his prisoner to escape if he was clever and agile enough or he had not. If he had not, then the prisoner would die here. If he had, then the prisoner-in this case, Kickaha -was just not bright enough. In which case, the prisoner was going to die soon.
He sat for a long while and then he groaned. What was the matter with his brain? Sure, the stone had gone through the gates, but no flesh had passed through them. He should have tried them himself instead of trickily testing them only with the stones. The gates could be set up to trigger only if matter above a certain mass passed through them or sometimes only if protein passed through them. Or even only if human brainwaves came close enough to set them off. But he had been so concerned with traps on the other side that he had forgotten about this possibility.
However, any activated gate might be adjusted to destroy the first large mass that entered, just as the gate from the room with the mercury pool had been booby-trapped.
He groaned at the thought of the strain and sweat involved, but he had not survived thus far by being lazy. He lifted the body of the Beller onto his shoulder, thanking his fortunes that the man was small, and set off toward the nearest gate.
It was a long, hot, and muscle-trembling day. The lack of food weakened him, and every failure at each gate took more out of him. The swim across the river with the dead weight of the corpse and the beamer drained him of even more. But he cast the body six times through the three gates, once through each side.