“Are you all right, captain?” she called to me.
“I’m all right,” I said.
“Can we be of any help?”
“Yes,” I said. “You can lug my pal back to camp with you.”
I said camp because, for the life of me, I could think of no other way to put it.
Out of the side of my mouth, I snarled at Hoot. “Cut out the goddamned foolishness and slide down into the trough.”
I switched my attention back to the wheel. It stayed where it was. I still had the feeling that it was looking at me. I twisted around and got my feet planted under me, ready to take off if the situation should demand.
I heard Hoot go sliding down the slope. A moment later Sara called to me.
“What is this thing? Where did you find it?”
I looked around and she was standing over Hoot, staring down at him.
“Tuck,” I yelled, “get down there and help Miss Foster. Tell Smith to stay exactly where he is.”
I could envision that damn fool of a blind man trying to follow Tuck and getting all fouled up.
Sara’s voice was plaintive and a little sharp. “But captain…”
“He’s lost just like us,” I told her. “He doesn’t belong here and he’s in trouble. Just get him back to camp.”
I looked back at the wheel. It had finally started to move, revolving slowly, almost majestically, walking up the dune slope and looming higher every minute.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at Tuck and Sara, without looking back.
The wheel stopped. It was almost at the crest. Very little of it was hidden by the dune. It loomed high into the sky.
Now that I had a better chance to look it over, I saw that the strange thing about it was that it was actually a wheel and not just something that might look like a wheel. Its outer rim was formed of some sort of very shiny substance, with a tread ten feet across, but perhaps no more than a foot thick. For all its massiveness, it had a slender look about it. As it had climbed slowly up the dune, the rim had picked up sand and carried it up its rearward surface, with the sand spilling free as the wheel moved forward. The greenish hub floated in the center of the wheel-and floated was the word for it, for the fragile spokes, despite the number of them, could not have held the hub in place. And now I saw that the spokes, thin as they were, were crisscrossed by even finer wires (if they, indeed, were wires) to make the entire area between the hub and rim a sort of spider web. The thought stopped there, however, for the hub itself had no semblance to a spider. It was simply a sphere of some sort, hanging in the center of the wheel.
I looked quickly over my shoulder and there was no sign of the others. The slope of the dune was scarred with deep tracks, where they had climbed it.
I got to my feet and went sliding down the slope and labored up the face of the dune. At the top, I turned and had a look. The wheel had stayed where it was. I went down the rope and climbed the dune behind which I had left the others. They were all down there, I saw, and the wheel still hadn’t moved. Maybe this was the end of it, I thought. The wheel might have come out to have a look and now, satisfied at what it had seen, might go about its business.
I went sliding down the slope and Sara came climbing up meet me.
Her face was very solemn. “We may have a chance,” she said.
“A chance of getting out of here?”
“You told this Hoot of yours what happened,” she said. “He seems to know about this sort of thing.”
I was astonished. “I wasn’t even sure he knew what I was talking about,” I told her.
“He didn’t understand entirely, but he asked some questions and now they’re working on it.”
“They?”
“Tuck and George are helping. George is very good at it. It seems he is able to pick out the door.”
“George would be able to,” I said.
“I wish you’d stop not liking George,” she said.
It was no time to get into a hassle with her, so I went on down the dune.
The three of them were squatting in a row-or at least the other two of them were squatting and Hoot was lying there, with his legs buried in the sand. Tuck was staring fixedly ahead and Smith had an intense, excited look upon his flabby face. All Hoot’s tentacles were extended straight in front of him and the tips of them were quivering.
I looked where Tuck was looking and I couldn’t see a thing. There was just the slope of the other dune pitching upward to the sky.
I stood quietly behind them and Sara came up and stood beside me. We didn’t stir a muscle. I didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it might be, I didn’t want to interfere. If they thought there was a chance to bust that door wide open, I was all in favor of it.
Suddenly Hoot’s tentacles went limp and sagged down to the ground. Tuck and Smith slumped in, upon themselves. It was quite apparent that whatever they had tried had failed.
“More strength we need,” said Hoot. “If all of us, perhaps…”
“All of us?” I asked. “I’m afraid Fm not good at this sort of thing. What is it you are trying?”
“We strain upon the door,” said Hoot. “We try to pull it
‘ open.”
“It still is there,” said George. “I can sense the edges of it.” “We can try,” said Sara. “That’s the least that we can do.” She squatted down beside Hoot.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“You try to visualize the door,” said Tuck.
“Then you pull,” said Hoot.
“Pull with what?’ I asked.
“With your mind,” Tuck said, nastily. “This is a time, captain, when a big mouth and muscles do not help at all.”
“Friar Tuck,” said Sara coldly, “that was very much uncalled for.”
“That’s all he’s been doing,” Tuck declared, “ever since we set foot upon the ship. Yelling at us and pushing us around.”
“Brother,” I said, “if that is what you thinks once we’re out of this…”
“Be quiet, the two of you,” said Sara. “Captain, if you please.”
She patted the sand beside her and I squatted down with the rest of them, feeling mortified and foolish. In all my life, I’d never seen such downright stupidity. Oh, there was no doubt about it-there were some alien folk who could accomplish wonders with their mental powers, but we were human beings (all of us but one) and the human race had never been noted for anything like that. Although, I thought, take a couple of jerks like Tuck and George and anything might happen.
“Now, please,” said Hoot, “all of us together leave us bring forth the door.”
His tentacles shot out in front of him, so fast they seemed to snap, standing out rigidly with their tips a-quiver.
God knows, I tried to concentrate. I tried to see a door in front of us, and, so help me, I did see it, a sort of ghostly door with a thin edge of light around it, and once I saw it, I fried to pull on it, but there was nothing on it for a man to grab a hold of and with nothing to grab a hold on there was little chance of pulling. But I tried just the same and kept on trying. I could almost feel the fingers of my mind trying to get hold of its smooth and slippery surfaces, then slowly sliding off.
We would never make it, I knew. The door seemed to be coming open a bit, for the crack of light around it appeared to have widened. But it would take too long; we never could hold out, to get it open wide enough so we could slide through.
I was getting terribly tired-both mentally and physically, it seemed-and I knew the others could be in no better shape. We would try again, of course, and again and again, but we’d be getting weaker all the time and if we couldn’t get it open in the first several tries, I knew that we were sunk. So I tried the harder and I seemed to get some small hold on it and pulled with all my might and could feel the others pulling, too-and the door began to open, swinging back toward us on invisible hinges until there was room enough for a man to get his hand into the crack, that is, if the door had been really there. But I knew, even as I pulled and sweated mentally, that the door had no physical existence and that it was something a man could never lay a hand on.