"Tza-tchagalok.... Tza-tchagalok...."
The Pit Man pointed a flipper upward. Suspended in mid-air, without visible support except for the streaming pillars of light, was an elaborate structure. Wilding studied it. There were bars studded with prisms which shattered the streaming light to rainbow effects. It was like an immense jewelled cage.
Wilding sensed movement within the cage. He was curious how the creatures reached the staging, since there was no ladder, no ramp, no stairs.
He learned quickly. The Pit Man took flight, lurching clumsily into the air and floundering about on his flippers and the stretched membrane. It was a combination of swimming and gliding. The thing poised, as if waiting for the man to follow. Wilding did actually make the attempt. With the light gravity and the heavily pressured air, such swimming flight seemed almost possible. Wilding's attempt ended in ludicrous failure. He sprawled in flailing trajectory and fell awkwardly into web-like nets of glittering metal.
Pit Men gathered about and helped extricate him. Their birdlike vocals chittered in ear-splitting showers.
His guide and two others whisked him off his feet and soared upward through the mists. Once aloft, his low-gravity weight seemed no burden to them. In flight, their awkwardness vanished quickly, and they swam about with ease and grace. The approach to their temple may have been ritual; it was certainly not direct.
Wilding's senses spun. He felt nauseated and alarmed.
The Pit Man trio swooped down and deposited Wilding solidly on a platform built into the cage.
On the platform, paddling about mysterious ceremonies, was a very old, very gray, and very dusty Pit Man. He looked more like an owl than anything else. He goggled and waddled ponderously. He made a bobbing obeisance to a gigantic image, and to Wilding the ritual posturing was both solemn and impressive.
So was the idol. It was towering, of some burnished red metal, and represented a being completely non-anthropomorphic, like those strange and morbid Pzintar images Wilding had seen on Mars. Ancient Mars had worshipped beings neither birds nor serpents, but mending qualities and appearances of both. This idol was like those, though not an exact duplication. It represented something utterly alien to man, infinitely wise, infinitely benevolent, infinitely sad. There was no suggestion of good or evil; there was only calm acceptance and understanding of things as they are, and a serene certainty in things as they should be....