“Hey! what’s this?” Kennon asked curiously. “That crater looks peculiar, like a meteor had struck here—but those stunted plants—hmm—there must have been some radioactivity too.” He looked at the crater speculatively. “Now I wonder—” he began.
Copper had turned a sickly white. “No!” she said in a half-strangled voice—“oh, no!”
Kennon looked at her. “You know what this is?” he demanded.
“No,” Copper said. But her voice was unsteady.
“You’re lying.”
“But I don’t know.” Copper wailed. “I’m only guessing. I’ve never seen this place before in my life! Please!—let’s get out of here!”
“Then you know about this,” Kennon demanded.
“I think it’s the Pit,” Copper said. “The redes don’t say where it is. But the description fits—the Circle of Death, the Twisted Land—it’s all like the redes say.”
“Redes?—what are redes? And what is this business about circles of death? There’s something here that’s peculiar and I want to know what it is.”
“It’s nothing. Truly. Just let’s go back. Let’s leave this place. It’s no good. It’s tabu.”