here passed hours of weary, tortured stumblings, and slitherings, and sudden falls—down, always down, interminably. A pale glimmering showed us the way, a dim shining through the icy walls.
At last, faint with toil, bleeding and torn from glass-sharp splinters, we reached a level chamber, vaulted, surprisingly, with solid rock. It was good to see something of the earth again, something that was not that deadly, all-embracing ice. At the far end lay a blinding patch. I blinked.
"Sunlight!" I shouted joyously.
"Yes," Keston answered quietly. "That opening leads directly into the valley on our land."
Abud roused himself from the unreasoning dread he had been in. It was the first time he had spoken.
"Let us get out of here. I feel as though I'm in a tomb."
"Are you mad?" Keston said sharply. "The visors would pick you up at once. You wouldn't last very long."
Abud stopped suddenly. There was a plaintive, helpless note to him. "But we can't stay here forever. We'd starve, or die of cold. Isn't there some way to get back to the top of the Glacier?"
"No—only the way we came. And that's been blocked with terminite."