“If anything should happen to me, I don’t know what, you and the men get to hell back to the ship. And take off. That’s an order.
“You’ll be the captain. Coppename’s a good man, but he doesn’t have your experience, and you’re the steadiest man I know.”
Piscator smiled. “Firebrass ordered you not to land if something happened to him. Yet you did land. Could I allow you to be in a dangerous situation and just leave you?”
“I don’t want you to endanger the ship. Or the lives of almost a hundred men.”
“We shall see. I’ll act as I feel the situation demands. You wouldn’t do otherwise. And then there is Thorn.”
“One thing at a time,” she said.
She turned and walked toward the entrance. As she neared it, she gasped.
A low light had filled the hall.
After hesitating several seconds, she continued. As she passed beneath the arch, she was suddenly in a bright light.
59
Jill stopped. Piscator said, “Where is the light coming from?”
Jill turned and said, “I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any source. Look. I don’t have a shadow.”
She turned back and started to walk slowly. And then she stopped again.
“What’s the matter? You …”
“I don’t bloody know. I feel as if I’m in a thick jelly! I can’t breathe, but I have to struggle to take another step!”
Leaning into the palpable, invisible barrier as if she were going against a strong wind, she managed to force herself three more steps. Then, panting, she stopped.
“It must be a field of some sort. There’s nothing material here, but I feel like a fly caught in a spider’s web!”
“Could it be that the field is affecting the magnetic tabs in your cloths?” he called.
“I don’t think so. If that was it, the tabs would be pulling the cloths, and that’s not it. I’ll try it, though.”
Feeling some shyness at stripping in front of fifty men, she pulled the tabs loose. The air temperature was just above freezing. Shivering, teeth chattering, she again tried to force her way into the thick element. She could not go a centimeter beyond the limit of her original advance.
She bent down to pick up her cloths, noting that she could do so easily. The force acted only in a horizontal direction. After backing away two steps, and feeling the force diminish, she put her cloths back on.
Outside the entrance again, she said, “You try it, Piscator.
“You think I could succeed where you can’t? Well, it is worth experimenting.”
Naked, he walked in. To her surprise, she saw that he was not affected by the field. Not, at least, until he had gotten several meters from the curve. Then he called back that he was encountering difficulty.
He moved ever more slowly, struggling, his panting so loud that she could hear it. But he did get to the curve, and there he paused to regain his breath.
He said, “There’s an open elevator at the end. It seems to be the only way to get down.”
“Can you get to it?” she called.
“I’ll try.”
Moving like an-actor in a slow-motion film, he plowed ahead. And he was gone around the bend.
A minute passed. Two. Jill went into the corridor as far as she could. “Piscator! Piscator!”
Her voice rang strangely, as if the corridor had peculiar acoustical properties.
There was no answer, though if he were just around the curve, he would be able to hear her.
She shouted again and again. Silence replied.
There was nothing she could do except to return to the entrance and let others try.
The men went in by twos to save time. Some progressed a little further than she; some, not as much. All shed their cloths, but this did not help them at all.
Jill used the walkie-talkie to order the men in the ship to make the attempt. If one out of fifty-two could do it, perhaps one of the forty-one in the ship might succeed.
First, though, everybody except herself had to return to the vessel. They trooped off, phantom figures in the dimly lit fog. She had never felt so lonely in all her life, and she had known many hours of the blackest isolation. The mists pressed wet hands against her face, which seemed to be congealing into a mask of ice. The funeral pyre of Obrenova, Metzing, and the others burned fiercely. And there was Piscator, somewhere around the corner. What situation was he in? Was he unable either to go ahead or to go back? Returning had not been difficult for her or the other men. Why should he not be able to retreat?