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When he took a sudden step forward, the limb retracted completely into the
round body. Avoiding him, the fuzzball rolled into a clump of dancing spines
and vanished.
One faint hope was dashed when his communicator responded to his terse
entreaties with the expected silence. He would have been shocked if Fawn had
replied. Clipping the unit back onto his belt, he tried to decide what to do
next. What could he do? He had been transported to a very elegant nowhere.
Everything was off, outlandish, and unnatural, from the stream to the stars to
the sun that had abandoned the alien sky with deviant precipitousness.
At that point the orange liquid inhabiting the creek bed began to flow out of
its banks and head toward him. As he backed away warily, the whole stream
lifted itself up and started looping in his direction like some gigantic
candy-flaked sidewinder.
Having no intention of being strangled by a stream, he turned and ran, hoping
as he did so that he wouldn't run smack into something worse. Swinging the
backpack around in front of him, he half closed his eyes as he searched the
surface of the pulsating stone for a significant depression, a crack, anywhere
it might make sense to place a manipulative organ. A glance back showed that
the perambulating tributary was closing on him.
A couple of the larger growths twitched and leaned in his direction. If the
stream didn't get him, it seemed increasingly likely that the forest would.
Twisting the stone had brought him here. There was nothing for it but to try
again.
Reaching into the pack, he secured a firm grip and wrenched hard with both
hands. His greatest fear was that the mass would separate back into its
component halves, marooning him here for what promised to be a very brief if
spectacularly educational future.
How far was he from Senisran? A light-year or half a galaxy -away? Not that it
mattered. When nothing happened, he twisted hard against the mass a second
time. The ambulatory orange tide was quite close now. When it caught up, would
it try to choke him, or drown him?
For a second time, the cosmos fragmented on the fringes of his consciousness.
When he could again focus and cogitate, he found himself once more
transported. There was just enough time for him to breathe the proverbial sigh
of relief before realizing that, while liberated from hostile rivers and
neurotic woods, neither was he back on Senisran.
Chapter Thirteen
The distant mountains were limned in black. Closer at hand stood a cluster of
stark, gnarled trunks, leafless and forlorn, that on a lusher world would not
have passed for trees. Bare-stemmed and ghostly, they thrust naked limbs at
the sinister sky as if struggling to hold a hostile universe at bay.
Gaunt, spectral flying creatures twitched uneven paths through the oppressive
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atmosphere, dipping and soaring as if avoiding unseen, unpleasant lumps in the
air. Beneath his feet the ground was pale gray. Rocks were a darker gray or
charcoal-hued. Atop one, something the size and color of old sewer pipe was
quivering with horrid life. Smaller, dun-colored young huddled close to its
protective bulk.
Holding up one hand, an unsettled Pulickel saw that it had acquired the same
unhealthy ashen pallor that permeated this place. It was cold, and his jungle
shorts and shirt provided inadequate protection. Only the warmth that
continued to pour from the sacred stone kept him from shivering.
Though no sun appeared, the sky began to lighten. Instead of blue it was
white. Not a revelatory, illuminating white, but a dull, listless shift from
gray to something else farther up the spectrum. Stars revealed themselves in a
night that was brighter than the day. They were black.
Instead of blinking, they regarded the stark landscape with a steady, baleful
glare.
Ahead, the sun began to emerge from hiding, and it was as caliginous as the
misbegotten stars. A
sickly gray effulgence ghosted the rim of the burning black orb.
Slowly Pulickel brought his hand toward his face and found that he could see
through the pale, wan flesh. Black bones stood out as clearly as in an
old-fashioned X ray. But the sky was worse-the
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6%20-%20The%20Howling%20Stones.txt ghastly white sky splotched with unhealthy
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