Grim fiddled desperately with the wiring of the ribboned globe. He whispered prayers as he recircuited.
It was no use.
The pain came and crumpled him up and toppled him from the saddle. He struck the ground and rolled, but his hands held to the globe. Lying flat on his belly, teeth drawing blood from his lips with the pain that wracked him, he drove his fingers into the meshed wires and tugged and rearranged them.
A hump of ground rose between his hands; flung the ribboned globe from him, sent it rolling like a rubber ball on the trough of sea-waves. Whimpering, Grim went after it, dragging himself along.
He caught it, held it close to his chest. His hand grabbed a wire—
The pain was gone. Grim lay panting, grinning. Tlokine knelt, staring, whispering, "The Change—it's all around us—but where we are, there isn't any Change!"
There was a radius of thirty feet where the ground lay frozen in its strange formations, an island in the midst of the hub that was the globe. Grim got to his feet. He held the globe in hands that shook weakly with the reaction. Tlokine went to the horses, soothed and stroked them. After a while the horses got to their legs.
They mounted. From the distant island where they watched, Althaya and Black Randolph screamed their rage. But Grim only laughed and waved an arm. With the globe in his hands, he rode the chestnut over the motionless ground, while all around him the earth rocked and bubbled and thrust itself upward into terrible contortions.
"It's like a magic symbol," whispered Tlokine, staring at the ribboned globe.
"People would have called this a magic land, once," said Grim. "But it's sheer science that makes the Change—and sheer science that knows the key to counteract it."