Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE COLDNESS BIT into them. It was like a great blind animal striking at them with myriad needle-sharp teeth of oblivion. It was like fire and death.

Their heads were covered, their eyes were closed, their bodies rigid with the sudden, terrible attack. Ice crystals formed on their faces, tears froze before they could be shed, welding eyelids and eyelashes together with a bond that seemed harder than steel. The moisture in their nostrils began to freeze, thinning down the air intake that struck in their heaving lungs like twin knives.

It would be a photo-finish, thought Russell dully. If the cold itself did not kill them first, they would die of suffocation as their noses and mouths froze solid. He tried to hold Anna even tighter, but his muscles would not respond. Her head was close to his, and he fancied he heard a low deep groan forced from her immobile body. He wished briefly that he could see her face. Then he was glad that he could not.

Somewhere there was a dull grinding noise. No doubt the surface of the river in the heart of the mist was a solid sheet of ice with the warmer currents flowing underneath it. If that were the case, the small boat would be wedged into it for ever. He should have thought of that possibility before the expedition started. He should have thought of so many things.

He should have thought that, whatever mysteries surrounded them, life was still sweet with Anna and the rest. He should have thought that perhaps there were some things it was better not to know—and certainly some things that were better not attempted. Such as crazily trying to break through a barrier that had been created by superior beings with a demonstrably superior science for the plain purpose of keeping their prisoners in.

He was getting drowsy and his thoughts were becoming confused, and the pain was lessening as sensation was frozen out of his body. And it seemed that the very images in his head were freezing solid, and there was nothing left to do now but sleep coldly for ever.

He wished sleepily that he could have spoken to Anna, so near him in the darkness and yet so far away in her own shrunken universe of suffering. He wished very much that he could have spoken to her.

Yet what was there to say?

I’m sorry, my love, he thought desperately. I’m sorry I got you into…

And then there was no thinking left.

Only an icy, timeless limbo…

Abruptly, the heavens cracked, the miracle happened, the world—or was it yet another world?—was shrieking with colour and warmth and scents and sound. The return to consciousness, the dizzy riot of sensation, exploded upon him like a bomb.

He opened his eyes, screamed with pain, closed them again and opened them again. He saw Anna’s face above him; and beyond, the blue backcloth of the sky. Experimentally, he tried to move his fingers. They moved. He tried to move his arm. It also moved, but with a strange and immense stiffness.

He sat up and began to laugh. Then he realized that the laughter was hysterical, and fought it down.

“We’re alive,” he said wonderingly.

“Yes, Russell, we are alive. Now just rest a little while I see what I can do for Farn. He came out of it worse than either of us, I fear.”

Presently, Farn zem Marur was sitting up, no doubt experiencing the same fantastic sensations of returning consciousness that had afflicted Russell.

Russell gazed around him. He was leaning against one of the benches. Anna, remarkable woman that she was, must have dragged both him and Farn out of the cabin. He was amazed at her stamina and endurance.

The boat had drifted—or had been guided—into the bank. Upstream, about two hundred metres away, the mist barrier rose, curving away in a uniform arc across the land on either side of the river. It seemed even more formidable now that they had passed through it and lived. Russell shuddered at the thought that, according to the original plan, they would eventually have to trundle the boat, disguised as a wagon, round the great perimeter of mist and re-enter their prison where the river entered it in the North.

Spluttering, and mouthing gratitude and incantations to the robe, the white queen and the black and other Gren Li solemnities of which Russell had not previously heard, Farn zem Marur had returned noisily to the land of the living.

Russell was still puzzled by Anna’s ability to recover faster than either he or Farn had done.

“If you are representative of Soviet womanhood,” he said with a grin, “Russia is destined to dominate the Earth. Perhaps it’s as well I shan’t be there to see it… How did you recover so quickly, Anna? Did you have a secret weapon?”

She nodded. “Chivalry, my love. I was chivalrously squashed between two men who felt it was their duty to protect the weaker sex. You were both very good insulators.” She smiled impishly. “Also, though you may not have noticed it, I am more richly endowed with fat than either of you.”

“Praise be to St. Lenin and Mother Russia for favours gratefully received,” he retorted piously.

“Lord,” said Farn zem Marur. “We who were as dead are now living. Truly there is much wonder in this thing. Our children’s children may yet hear the story with some interest.”

“Amen to that,” said Russell. “And now that we have escaped from our prison we had better try to find out what kind of world we have entered. One thing seems sure: there must be many strange things on this side of the mist barrier that are not on the other side. Otherwise there can be little reason for its existence.”

It was at that moment, as he glanced casually at the surrounding countryside—which, superficially, seemed similar to the land on the other side of the barrier—that Russell noticed the column. It was in the distance, perhaps ten kilometres away; and he noticed it chiefly because late sunlight, reflected from its surface, made it seem like a slender, shimmering finger of flame.

The column was obviously very high. On top of it there was something that looked like a great green translucent bubble.

Russell gazed at it for a moment, spellbound. Then, rubbing his eyes, he groped for the binoculars.