Limbeck tried to sound cheerful, but he found his pleasure in his speech rapidly draining. He was hungry, cold, wet, and frightened. The storm was blowing itself out, and an awful, terrible silence was descending over him. That silence reminded him of the big silence – the Endless Hear Nothing – and reminded him that he was facing that Endless Hear Nothing, and he realized that the death of which he spoke so glibly was liable to be a very unpleasant one.
Then, too, as if death wasn’t bad enough, he pictured Jarre receiving his note, reading it with pursed lips and that wrinkle which always appeared above her nose when she was displeased. He wouldn’t even need his spectacles to read the words of the note she’d send back. He could hear them already.
” ‘Limbeck, stop this nonsense and get up here this instant!’ Oh, Jarre!” he murmured to himself sadly, “if only you had believed me. The others wouldn’t have mattered-”
A bone-jarring, teeth-rattling, earth-shaking thud jolted Limbeck out of his despair and simultaneously knocked him down.
Lying on his back, dazed, staring up at the top of the pit, he thought: Have the dig-claws come back? This soon? I don’t have my note written!
Flustered, Limbeck staggered to his feet and stared up into the grayness. The storm had passed over. It was drizzling rain and foggy, but it was not lightninging, hailing, or thundering. He couldn’t see the claws descending, but then, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Fumbling for his spectacles, he put them on and looked back up into the sky.
By squinting, he thought he could just barely distinguish numerous fuzzy blobs materializing out of the clouds. But if they were the dig-claws, they were far above him yet, and unless one had come down prematurely or fallen-which seemed unlikely, since the Kicksey-Winsey rarely allowed accidents like that to happen-the dig-claws couldn’t have been the cause of that tremendous thud. What, then, was it?
Hurriedly Limbeck began to climb the sides of the pit. His spirits were rising. He had a “what” or a “why” to investigate!
Reaching the rim of the pit, he peeped cautiously over the edge. At first he saw nothing, but that was because he was looking in the wrong direction. Turning his head, he gasped, marveling.
A brilliant light, shimmering with more colors than Limbeck had ever imagined existed in his gray and metallic world, was streaming out of a gigantic hole not more than thirty feet from him. Never stopping to think that the light might be harmful or that whatever had created the humongous thud might be lethal or that the dig-claws might be slowly and inevitably descending, Limbeck clambered up over the edge of the pit and made for the light as swiftly as his short, thick legs would carry his stout body.
There were numerous obstacles blocking his path; the surface of the small isle was pockmarked with holes dug by the claws. He had to avoid these, as well as heaps of broken coralite dropped when the dig-claws carried the ore upward. Making his way up and over and around these took some time, as well as considerable energy. When Limbeck finally reached the light, he was out of breath, both from the unaccustomed exertion and from excitement. For as he drew nearer, Limbeck could see that the colors in the light were forming distinct patterns and shapes.
Intent on the wonderful pictures he could see in the light, Limbeck stumbled almost blindly over the rocky ground and was saved from tumbling headfirst into the hole by tripping over a chunk of coralite and falling flat on his face at the hole’s edge. Shaken, he put his hand to his pocket to feel if his spectacles were broken. They weren’t there. After a horrible moment of panic, he remembered that they were on his nose. Crawling forward, he stared in amazement.
For a moment, he couldn’t see anything but a brilliant, multicolored, ever-shifting radiance. Then forms and shapes coalesced. The pictures in the light were truly fascinating, and Limbeck gazed at them in awe. As he watched the constantly shifting and changing images, that portion of his mind which continually interrupted important and wonderful thoughts with mundane matters such as “Mind you don’t walk into that wall!”, “That pan’s hot!”, and “Why didn’t you go before we left?”, said to him urgently, “The dig-claws are coming down!”
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