And so the seven fell upwards into an apparently endless white somewhere. And such was the silence, each of them could hear the uneven, nervous breathing of the others, and perhaps even the beating of their hearts ...
Even knowing it must come, their resurgence was something of a shock. Anna Marie first: she passed through the skin of the Gate, then half-slid, half-rolled down the curve of the resilient dome on to the heaped jumble of Nathan's armoury, where his weapons had come to rest on a bed of stony debris that formed a shelf around the sphere's perimeter. And in those same few moments she saw that the sphere of white light was lodged like a plug in a massive hole, or a child's marble pushed down into sand by the weight of a finger.
Directly overhead, the lower hemisphere of a second globe seemed suspended in the same shaft, looking almost identical to the Gate as it had appeared in the ceiling of the cavern of petrified monsters. A distance of only five or six feet separated the two singularities. So that Anna Marie couldn't help wondering: or should I think of it as a duality? But in any case, she knew that the top half of that uppermost Gate stood open to the air, glaring out on the vampire world of Starside.
And all around her in the scree and rubble, and cut in the wall of the shaft itself, were those alien energy wormholes that she had seen in the cavern of the Romanian Gate - so that as Trask came through she found wind to shout, 'Ben, look out! The wormholes!' For they were glass-smooth; only fall into one ... it might take a long time to get out again. If ever.
But in a moment Trask was on his feet, assisting the disorientated cavers as they came through, and finally Chung and Nathan. Then, as they dusted themselves down:
'From now on we have to mind how we go,' Trask told them, his voice steady but echoing. 'When Harry Keogh came this way he tried several of these wormholes before he found one that connected with the surface. But he was only one man and there are seven of us. Avoid holes that slant downwards; they twist and turn, could easily make a sudden descent. Look for upward-leading holes. But in any case go slowly, and take no chances. And the first man to see daylight overhead -'
'- or starlight,' Nathan put in grimly.
Trask looked at him and nodded. 'Or starlight, yes ...' And he left it at that.
They separated along the scree ledge, chose wormholes, went headfirst into them, first in the glare of the Gate, then in the light of pencil pocket torches. And Trask was the one who found the way up. There were probably several, but he was first, and the route that his wormhole took fitted Harry Keogh's description (which Trask had read time and again) precisely.
It climbed gently at first, not so steeply as to cause him to slide back. In a little while it swung left, then rose marginally more steeply. A short, claustrophobic climb, before the bore levelled out and swung right. Following which ... it shot up almost vertically! And looking up as from the bottom of a shallow well -
- Starlight.
Trask backed off, returned to the main shaft and the glare of the Gate, called for the others. Anna Marie, Nathan and one of the cavers were already there. Chung and the other two cavers soon came crawling backwards out of wormholes.
'This is it,' Trask told them, indicating the mouth of the exit into Starside. 'As to how we go about it: Nathan goes first, and I'll be right behind him. I'll help him up out of the
well onto the surface. The rest of us string ourselves out along the route, and pass the weapons along and up to him. Finally he helps us to get out, me first, then Anna Marie, and the rest of you in whatever order you prefer.
'On the surface, we each take what weapons we can carry and get clear of the upper Gate. That might take more than one trip, but it has to be done. It's not simply that the weapons are important - of course they are - but it's also that Nathan can't ... er, he can't work to best effect too close to the Gate. But I warn you now: we won't have any time to look about and gawp. When I looked up the last nine or ten feet of wormhole, looked into the sky of Starside, I saw stars up there. If it isn't sundown it's pretty damned close! Now, are there any questions?'