Half sliding, half climbing, they started. The smooth, marble-like slide had roughened. Little stones began sliding with them. "Easy!" he gasped. "Don't go too fast!"
He clutched her; they slid together a dozen feet; wildly scrambled to a stop. Then Lea lost her foothold. He gripped at her, and lost his own. Then they were bumping, rolling with a clatter of loosened stones coming after them. And then the terrified Carter was aware of a fall. And a rock struck his head with a bursting roar of light as his senses slid off into the soundlessness of oblivion....
He came to himself with the knowledge that Lea was holding him, kneeling beside him in a luminous darkness. "Oh, you are all right now?" she murmured anxiously.
"Yes. I guess so." Dizzily he sat up. "What happened?"
"We fell."
"You—it didn't hurt you?"
"No. I guess not much."
The action of the drug had worn off. As his head cleared he saw that the rocks were motionless; the ground on which he sat at last was steady. Around them now was a great void of luminous darkness with an undulating landscape of naked rocks dimly visible. In a moment it seemed to Carter that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. He could see, far away in the distance where the ground rose up seemingly to meet the sky.
"Shall we take another pellet now, Lea?" he suggested at last.