Flailing, screaming, struggling. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the sigman was dragged back to the rod, while we other humans all stood there frozen—paralyzed; unable to speak, unable to move.
Only then, suddenly, I couldn't stand it any more. With a yell of my own, and a curse and a snarl, I lunged into the fray. Tearing, clawing, I fought to free the sigman.
For a moment, it almost seemed I'd turned the tide.
But then, with a sudden shift, the Kel whirled on me. The sigman fell forgotten and it was I, not he, who was beset. Spongy, yielding pseudo-flesh pressed in upon me. Thin tendrils of it touched and clutched me, leech-like. Long tentacles encircled and constricted. I found myself battling for my very breath.
Mercilessly, the creature dragged me to the rod, the axis of the crimson room. Pulpy protrusions wrapped around the metal. I felt the shaft begin to vibrate. With a high, whining sound, it let go of the floor and lifted Kel and me alike into the air. The sphere's dome, the ceiling arc, rushed in upon me. As from afar, I glimpsed the strain-straut, uptilted faces of the other prisoners below.
And now, abruptly, a strange reaction came upon me. It was as if in throwing myself upon the alien foe I'd somehow cast aside my panic. Like the old story of the boy who'd found the nettles didn't prick if only he had the courage to seize them firmly.
We passed through the hatch. A seamless sheen of metal cut off the last sight of my comrades.
Coolly, I gazed about at a room even more weird in conception than the dungeon sphere.
Again, the arc seemed to be the basic motif. But in this place it was a chopped-up, intersected arc, as if function here had held sway over symmetry.