Twice our captors wheeled our group to right or to left as though following a definite course through the streets of the lightless city. In a few moments more, though, when they touched us with their flap-arms to make us again turn, I misunderstood the touch and took a step to the right instead of the left. Instantly agony shot through my every nerve as a buzzing sounded directly beside me. That agony was so terrible and so unexpected that it made me do what never else would I have done, whirl around and strike through the darkness at the thing behind me with all my frenzied strength.
My clenched fist drove into the cold, bulky body of the thing and I felt it knocked backward by the blow, heard the buzzing cease and felt the pain stop as whatever weapon the thing had held rattled upon the paving. Instantly from the other guards came flute-like cries and the sound of flopping steps rushing toward me through the darkness. I yielded to the first instinct as I heard them and threw myself away from them, running blindly through the darkness as their cries sounded behind me.
There came scuffling sounds and then the buzz of many of their weapons, and as I heard cries of pain I realized that my friends and crew had attempted to break loose also but had been halted by their captors. Then after me through the darkness they were racing with quick, flopping steps.
I ran madly forward, collided with a great creature and then with another, and as I blundered away from them was aware that in this world of perpetual darkness I was at a terrible disadvantage in attempting to escape the creatures of darkness who pursued me. Flute-like cries were sounding all along the street now, it seemed, a babel of shouts of alarm spreading quickly over the city. As I blundered again into a great creature whose flap-arms sought to grasp me I realized that not for long could I elude them in this darkness to which they were accustomed. Again I yielded to instinct, and as I felt beside me a wide door I threw myself through it, crouched motionless just inside it and behind the base of what felt to my touch like a great metal mechanism.
It seemed a great room in which I was, for I heard from far along it through the darkness the humming and clanging of machinery, and also the hurrying steps of many of the creatures of darkness as they left their tasks to answer the alarm of cries in the street outside. Their flapping limbs took them directly past me as they rushed to the door, and I could have reached out in the darkness and touched them. I made no move, scarcely daring to breathe; for though I was but a few feet from them, I felt sure they could become aware of my presence in the darkness only by any sounds that I might make.
I heard them answering in their strange voices utterances of the creatures outside, heard the noise of the alarm gradually receding as those who searched for me moved along the street. I breathed a little easier for a moment, but only for a moment. For as the creatures who had rushed to the door streamed back into the great room two of them halted so close beside me that their bodies actually brushed slightly against my arm.
Motionless as a statue I crouched there in the darkness, as the two conversed in their fluting voices beside me. Were they to move a fraction of an inch nearer they must discover me. Were the slightest sound to come from me my discovery was certain.
At last, after what seemed an eternity of waiting, though it could have been really no more than a few moments, the two passed on, and a kindly providence kept them from brushing nearer me as they went. Soon the activities of the great hall seemed resumed, the humming of its mechanisms coming to me again through the darkness, and the sound of the creatures among them moving from one to another.
The peril of immediate discovery seemed past, but how could I hope to escape for long in this city, this world, of eternal darkness? I could not move through it as the creatures that inhabited it did, as surely as though in day; and to stumble blindly through its streets meant swift discovery. How could I hope to find Korus Kan and Jhul Din and the others in this strange world of which I could see nothing? It seemed that by escaping for a while as I had done from our captors I was but prolonging an agony of spirit that might otherwise have been cut short, at least, by death.
In this desperate situation I strove to order my thoughts.