"Okay," I said, and left off. I didn't tell her, but my own pulsebeat wouldn't have qualified me for a hero medal, either. Then, up ahead in the blackness beyond Clatclit's glowing tail spike, I heard a dull roaring.
A few hundred yards further on, the roar was louder, and I could feel it through the soles of my boots.
"What is it, Jery?" Snow whispered.
"It sounds like water!" I said. "Like more water than I thought there was on this whole spaceborne Death Valley!"
"Jery!" Snow's fingers dug into my palm. "If this is the way to the Ancients, then this must be what Clatclit meant when he told you he could only take you so far and no further!"
"Sure it is!" I exclaimed excitedly. "A child could have figured it out. What else but water could impede these rock-hard things!"
Clatclit was slowing his pace and moving more carefully. Then, not ten feet in front of him, the fiery glow of his tail tip was reflected from a million foaming, shifting wet surfaces. He took another few courageous steps, then halted, pressed back against the curve of the tunnel wall.
He'd averted his gaze from the raging torrent beyond him, but his outstretched hand still pointed in that direction. I felt a cold wet spray on my face, and saw, with a little shock, that some of the glittering facets of Clatclit's scaly hide were already becoming pocked and eroded.
"We'll have to go fast," I said, releasing Snow's hand only to clutch her arm tightly against my side. "If we take too long, our luciferous friend here will be a sticky red puddle. And I don't intend crossing that in the dark!"
"That" was a jagged ridge of rock that continued forward from where our segment of tunnel ended, scant feet beyond Clatclit's cowering form. It was glistening with pools of black water and wet froth, flung up there by the raging river that passed less than a foot beneath its slightly arched surface. The torrent rushed angrily from somewhere in the hollow blackness to our right, leaped and sprayed past the natural bridge of rock, barely two feet wide, that lay before our feet, and then—