He hurried to the door, and was relieved to see the rest of the men gathered outside, staring at something and talking excitedly. He joined them. Conley greeted him and pointed silently.
Barely a mile to the north, from whence they had come, a great greenish display suffused the lowering sky.
"That started a moment ago," Conley said. "I think we got out of there just in time."
Hardly had he spoken, when all of the ice-capped terrain beneath the light collapsed into a vast hollow, miles wide. It happened silently, abruptly; seconds later faint rumbling shook the ground. It was final. The greenish display had vanished and only the hollow remained, as if a giant had plunged his thumb into a rotten apple.
Conley sighed and turned away. "When I think of poor Wessel and the others, buried a mile below there—"
"They got," Jim replied caustically, "just what they asked for. You'd better hope that entity is as dead as they are!"
"No doubt about that. But I can't understand it, Jim. I thought sure we were lost, when it was brow-beating us there in the plaza. What happened after that? All I remember is running for the car."
"What happened," Jim replied softly, "is that a wild hunch of mine worked. Did you ever indulge in Martian tsith stems, Conley? It's horrible, vile stuff; makes anyone, except an addict, violently ill. And it hits you suddenly, like a barrage of rocket-blasts. Well, I gave a whole pouch full—Kaarji's—to that Dim-Ing! D'you know, despite it being an other-dimensional entity, it had some very human qualities? Apparently it was curious, as well as egotistic; it must have investigated and then absorbed those tsith stems, and it became violently ill—at just the right time for us!"
Spurlin had been trying desperately to get the motors started again, but to no avail. Now he approached the others with a worried frown.
"Those motors are so constructed that they can work in two ways. First, they can operate from a direct electronic beam—that's how Bhruulo controlled the car from a distance, and that's the way we've come as far as we have now. But with the destruction of M'Tonak, all the beams are gone!"