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didn't want to know what was happening to him.
He was moving on again, somehow, holding Merit up with his good left arm. They
came upon Ray, sitting crosslegged in the passage.
"I've thought about the geryon," said Ray, in conversational greeting. Now it
was Ray's face that was changing in and out of its proper shape, altering,
bulging, sagging like wet plaster. But Ray did not mind. He said: "They're not
just animals, you know. They're something more."
"They're after us now, Ray. They're right behind us." Adam slumped down,
unwillingly, his legs just giving out beneath him.
"I know what they are," said Ray.
"They're animals and they want to kill us and eat us. Ray. Can you-"
"No, not mere animals, Adam. I am considering, evaluating, the possibility
that the geryons are really the Field-builders themselves. They are the ones
who really built."
Ray paused. His face, handsome once again, frowned lightly. "What was it that
they really built?"
"Ray. Listen. Can you get Merit out of here somehow? Teleport with her?"
"You see, Adam. First, at the bottom of the scale, there are vegetables. no,
start with viruses. Or perhaps one should really start with rocks."
"Ray."
". and vegetables, and then there are animals, and then comes good old
Earth-descended Homo. Sap. And then at the top are Jovians."
"Ray, I'll listen to it all some other-"
"The ladder of created being," said Ray in a loud firm voice. "That's what
C.S. Lewis-do you know him?-wrote somewhere. but he was wrong. Very wrong.
Because that is all there are."
"Ray."
"Rock, vegetable, animal, human, Jovian. We're at the top. Now I am
considering the possi-the possi-I am thinking about."
"Ray."
"Lemme think. I-can't-think-" Ray's body distorted into new frightfulness; a
moment later he once more flickered away out of sight.
Adam stared stupidly; had Ray really been there at all, this time? Adam's arm
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was throbbing violently now. He must be feverish. He looked around and saw a
geryon watching him, from the last bend in the passage, watching with those
yellow eyes, like those of a dead thing. The geryons were real enough.
The animal stretched its neck forward, the human face as always lacking any
expression except for the illusion of pride. Was it at long last impatient,
ready to charge? Adam got to his feet.
Merit's mind touched his again; now it was as if he could hear her calling to
him, out of a foggy distance.Adam, leave me, go on, look for help .
It took no courage to say no to that. There was no place in the world for him
to go, if he left her.
Some time later, they were again limping along in glaring sunlight. Adam
realized that they were now inside the Ringwall, because now the day-light was
much brighter, and around him there were tall trees and tall stones, and
towering, unidentifiable shapes that he had not seen outside. But it didn't
matter. Soon everything would be over. He kept expecting to feel teeth.
At one point he realized clearly that he was crawling up a little slope,
moving on his knees and his one good hand, and that Merit was standing beside
him, trying to pull him along. Then they were sitting together, side by side,
backs propped against a wall, looking down a little slope to where the
familiar geryons-almost old friends by now- peered from among tall rocks to
see if their victims were yet weak enough. Merit looked as if she had passed
out again. Good. That was good. She might never feel the teeth.
Chapter Twenty
A frightening thought came to disturb Adam's calm. It was that he might be
able to get up and go on farther if he really tried. It would be much easier
just to sit here and be chewed to death. But he couldn't just sit here, that
was impossible. There welled up in Adam a terrible puny rage, a fury like that
of a sick old man, against the animals. He would not them defeat him, destroy
him and his woman. He could not. He groped with his left hand for something,
anything, to use as a weapon. Like an animal, he growled at the other animals
that menaced him.
They cringed away uneasily. But not from Adam. They looked around, raising
their leathery ears beside their human faces. They turned and looked behind
them, aiming their tails in his direction. Then they retreated prudently
between tall rocks, to watch and wait. Someone was approaching from that
direction. Or something was.
A figure wearing heavy Space Force ground armor emerged from among the tall
rocks, a little distance beyond the geryons. The figure came walking, with
steady powerful strides, straight toward Adam and Merit.
"Our plan has succeeded," said a voice at Adam's side. Ray's voice. Ray sat
there on the ground. His face still showed what Adam's hands had done to him,
but his shape was normal again, as he sat watching the walking figure
approach.
The newcomer halted a few meters in front of them. Through the transparent
front of the ground-suit's helmet a man's face was plainly visible. and Adam
thought that he had seen that face somewhere before. Somewhere, somewhere.
"You're not real," Adam accused him suddenly. "We're in the Field here. Your
groundsuit wouldn't work if you were real."
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"But my suit does work," the stranger's air-speaker replied calmly, in what
sounded like a native Earthman's voice. "Therefore we are not in the Field.
Not right here."
Ray stood up, towering taller than the other. "Now I have you," Ray said to
him majestically. "Your race is in my power. I am the supreme being of the
universe, do you realize that? I have come to harrow your dungeons, release
your prisoners, destroy your power."
Merit was still passed out.
Ray's mad rambling voice seemed to be reaching Adam's ears from a distance.Not
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