"Feet," said Pink, quoting an ancient joke, "feet, do your stuff!"
Circe was amazing, dodging and pirouetting and even hurdling the gross feet when they couldn't be side-stepped. Pink gamely followed her lead, Jerry now slung over his shoulder. There was panting in his ears—Daley must be having tough going. Then he recognized the deep wheezing breaths: they were his own.
"Daley?" he gasped.
"Right behind you, Pink."
The mouth of their corridor was in sight. Then there were djinn, a row of them standing side by side with feet firmly planted to make a barrier. My God, he thought, this is it! Circe vanished, he did not see where. The feet were there, and arms reaching down for him. He pitched sideways, flipped by a questing finger; crashed on his shoulder, rolled, still miraculously hanging onto Jerry. The brashest course was the only one. He gathered himself and jumped onto a toe. It was as hard as the rock. And this thing, he said irrelevantly in his mind, this massive piece of solidity can vaporize into a gin bottle! He slid down the toe and scuttled ratlike under the lofty legs and was in the clear. The tunnel, itself an astoundingly high cave, appeared directly before him.
There was no time now to look for Circe and Daley, vital though their safety was to him. He carried Jerry into the tunnel and loped with multiyarded strides for the plain. He could not see any lamp-glare but his own. But he could not stop. Humanity in that instant overcame all his private desires. There were fifty-eight souls who would be blotted out if he didn't make the Elephant's Child in two minutes. Sixty-one, if you counted Daley and Circe and Pink himself. In less than one of those minutes he had traversed the tunnel and come out above the plain.
The ship was still there. Some distance away from it stood the big trap, and even yet giants were speeding toward it from all points of the compass. Pink gasped a breath and launched himself out and down the steep hillside. He took it all in that one jump. As he was landing, a curiously weightless man on this tiny planetoid, Jerry came to life and writhed suddenly in his arms, upsetting his balance. Pink fell and his left ankle shrieked with pain as it turned under him and was smashed into the gray rock by his dropping body and Jerry's.
He sprawled full length and knew his ankle was broken or sprained. Jerry rolled free and collapsed, sighing into his radio. Pink tried to stand and the ankle buckled. Horrified, he looked at his glove watch.
He had seventy seconds.