Boldly she stood before the oval door. Her finger traced its complex symbol, and the symbol responded with a glow like moonfire.
Again, as it had been with that oval door in Monta Park, there was baffling suggestion of unmechanical movement.
The stone block did not slide, roll, or swing open. It gave a slight quiver and dissolved.
Songeen stepped through its aperture and the inner darkness of the building claimed her. Reluctantly, Newlin followed—caught as much by curiosity as driven by the yelping spectres of pursuit.
No light entered the building from any source. It was dark as the pits of Ganymede or the under-surface laboratories of Pluto. It was dense and tangible as a block of black crystal. Newlin could see nothing, not even Songeen. And there was an alien feel to the interior.
He was aware that Songeen operated some hidden mechanism, and that the door, though he could not see it, was replaced.
"Now, for the moment, we are safe," she said slowly. "They cannot enter here."
Newlin shrugged bitterly. "It's all one. They can't enter and we don't dare go out. So we stay here and die of thirst. If you were really a top-rung witch, you'd think of details like air, food and water."
Songeen's laugh was a ripple of eery crystal in the darkness.
"How did you guess I was a witch?" she asked whimsically. "But we need not die here. Not unless you prefer to die among surroundings familiar to you. There is another way out. If we dare take it. For me, it will be simple. For you—"