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file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20The%20Quintara%20
Marathon%203%20-%20Ninety%20Trillion%20.txt of as the wet world; this was the
first time when he had some time and good visibility, and he made the most of
it.
This place was vast, but with the sky barrier clear he could see that it did
not have an infinite horizon. The hills preceding the maze went on for some
distance, then just seemed to abruptly stop, as if they, too, were hitting
some sort of wall or barrier, and he had the distinct impression that the
"sky"
curved slightly and angled down to the left and right of the city.
The captain had been correct; these were not worlds. Rather, they were
enormous rooms, or compartments, hundreds of kilometers across, designed and
maintained to look like worlds. That was why there had been no variations, no
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day or night.
The waterfall on the wet world probably recirculated all that water, in a
constant cycle.
That implied that, far from traveling great distances, they had been inside
some greater structure all along, the stations less transporters than hatches,
like airlocks, separating one compartment from another and isolating their
biospheres.
Almost like a spaceship. Some impossibly huge spaceship, traveling where? The
multiple stations in the realm where that demon horde was kept, sealed away,
implied many, many more compartments than the ones they had come through. At
the very least, such a ship would be the size of a small planet.
Maybe it was a planet, Morok suddenly thought, startled. Hollowed out, perhaps
completely artificial. The implications of that almost made him start to fall.
If the stations were mere airlocks, and this was merely another level of a
planetary interior, then they might not have gone anywhere at all. They might
well just have been descending, level by level, into the interior of the world
upon which they had first landed!
He wished he could discuss that thought with Captain Chin, particularly
because he was proud of having seen it and come up with it first, but the
captain, who could not overhear his thoughts, was far too busy following and
trying to keep up with Krisha and Manya, madly darting toward the maze exit.
he called to them.
huge idols and I have no idea how you get between them! Think! The Exchange
group is only seconds behind you on your right, and the Mycohl are converging,
perhaps two or three minutes because of additional obstacles!>
They actually saw the much-anticipated exit, and Gun Roh Chin almost ran over
Manya when she and Krisha both stopped suddenly.
"Oof! Sorry what's the matter?"
Manya pointed to the exit. "If you look carefully you can see them," she told
him. "They are slightly higher man the hedge, on both sides of it, and I am
not certain if there is any room to get between."
Krisha shook her head. "It's a road block, all right, and an effective one.
I "
She stopped, as Modra, Jimmy, and Molly rounded the next-to-last corner and
came toward them, stopping about six meters to the other side of the exit.
They knew Modra, and she knew them, but this was the first time the
Mizlaplanians had really seen Jimmy and particularly Molly except in
subjective mind-pictures, and it was the first time the Exchange pair had
similarly looked on the Mizlaplanians.
They all heard noise in the row just behind them, and Jimmy said, "Well,
that'd be the Mycohlians, I suppose. After all this, it's a bloody tie!"
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Gun Roh Chin angled so he could see at least one of the huge guardians of the
bridge to the city. "Any way of dealing with them?" he asked hopefully.
"If you can figure a way past the dog-faced twins, I'll go halves with you,"
McCray responded.
"I meant the idols." He paused, surprise sinking in. "You know Mizlaplanian?"
"I do now," the telepath responded. "After days of monitoring your bloody
thoughts and having comparative translations, I think I've got it back pretty
well. Been a long time since I used it, though. Couldn't make heads or tails
of it when we started out. A reading and working knowledge isn't the same as
actually getting it in conversation."
Chin just nodded and gestured to the exit. "Any ideas?"
McCray shot a quick query to the guardians of the gate, and got back a very
powerful, "Well, they're rather predictable, anyway," he
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commented.
he asked hopefully.
in there.>
right. >
"Ah! Tribute. So it's really a toll gate, is it? Terribly sorry, old boys. I
seem to have left my other pants in my other pants."
At that moment the Mycohl team appeared behind the Exchange, emerging from the
same gap as they had come from. Modra took one look at Kalia's ugly, burned
left side and couldn't suppress a small gasp. Telepathy was indeed a
subjective art.
As for Josef, she hadn't ever seen a man with a body that hairy. He was a much
bigger man than either of them had thought, too, and while Jimmy's beard was
still stubble, Josef's was already black and added to his mean, arrogant look.
Tobrush, in fact, looked the most like they expected.
It was a mark of male ego that both Jimmy and Gun Roh Chin, who'd had little
self-consciousness up to that point, felt somewhat embarrassed at the sight of
the size of Josef's private parts. There was certainly something to be said
for clothes. Jimmy's reaction, received empathically by the three Terran women
in all the parties, caused a fleeting moment of amusement.
Realizing that there was more of a language barrier with this group than with
the Mizzies, Jimmy sent,
fighting it out, we can do that later, after we figure out this nasty little
problem. >
Josef nodded and approached them, somewhat surprised to discover that the two
other Terran males were both much smaller men than he'd thought. Somehow the
telepathic images he'd been getting from the others had Jimmy subjectively
more his size and Chin a virtual giant. Josef was a hundred and eighty-eight
centimeters high and weighed, at least before his forced march on short
rations, around a hundred and three kilos; McCray was at best a hundred and
seventy high and probably weighed no more than fifty-eight or -nine. And Chin,
the now legendary Captain Chin, was only about as tall as Kalia's one
sixty-two, although he was chunky. Krisha, though, was about as tall as
McCray, and Modra
Stryke even taller.
It drove home how subjective and deceptive .holographic telepathy really was.
McCray was immediately on with the other two telepaths.
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