thick grayish-white clouds. The fire crackled and thundered.
45
Now, Gardener thought.
He felt something in his mind slip, catch, slip ... and catch firmly. It was like a gearshift lever. Now there was pain, but it was bearable.
THEY'RE feeling most of the pain, he thought faintly.
The sides of the trench appeared to move. At first just a little. Then a little more. There was a grinding, squealing sound.
Gardener bore down, his brow locked in a tremendous frown, his eyes squeezed into slits.
The silvery mesh began to slip past, slowly but steadily. Not that it was moving at all, of course; it was the ship that was moving; that grinding noise was the sound of it pulling itself free of the bedrock which had held it so long.
Going up, he thought incoherently. Ladies' lingerie, hosiery, notions, and be sure to visit our pet department
It was gaining speed, the trench walls passing more quickly to either side. The sky widened out ahead - it was a dull gunmetal color. Sparks twisted by like formations of tiny burning birds.
He brimmed with exaltation.
Gardener thought of looking out of a subway window as the train left the station, slowly at first, then beginning to speed up - how the tile walls seemed to unroll backwards like the strip of paper in a player piano, how you could read the ads as they passed from left to right - Annie, A Chorus Line, These Times Demand The Times, Touch the Velvet. Then into the darkness where there was only movement and a vague sensation of black walls rushing past.
I'm going, yes, going now, going
A Klaxon went off three times, nearly deafening him, making him shriek; fresh blood spattered into his lap. The ship shuddered and rumbled and squealed and dragged itself out of the earth's crypt; it rose into thickening bands of smoke and hazy sunlight, its polished flank coming out of the trench, out and out and up and up, a moving metal wall. One standing right next to this insane sight might have been tempted to believe that the earth was creating a stainless-steel mountain or injecting a titanium wall into the air.
As the arc of the edge grew broader and broader, it reached the edges of the trench Bobbi and Gardener had dug steadily wider - ripping at the earth with their smart-stupid tools like half-wits trying to perform a Cesarean section.
Up and out and out and up. Rocks squealed. The earth moaned. Dust and the smoke of friction fumed from the trench. Up close the illusion of an emerging mountain or wall held, but even from such a short distance away as the edge of the clearing, the thing's circular shape was revealed ~ the titanic shape of the saucer, now emerging from the earth like a great engine. It was silent, but the clearing was filled with the coarse thunder of breaking rock. Up and out it came, cutting the trench wider and wider, its shadow gradually covering the whole clearing and burning woods.
Its leading edge - the one Bobbi had stumbled over - sheared off the top of the tallest spruce in the forest and sent it tumbling and crashing to the ground. And still the ship birthed itself from the womb which had held it so long; continued until it covered the whole sky and was reborn.
Then it stopped cutting the trench wider; a moment later there was actually a gap between the edges of the trench and the edge of the emerging ship. Its center had at last been reached and passed.
The ship rumbled out of the smoky trench, emerging into the smoky sunshine, and at last the squealing, rumbling sounds ceased, and there was daylight between the ground and the ship.
It was out.
It rose on a slanted, canted angle, and then came to the horizontal, crushing trees with its unknown, unknowable weight, bursting their trunks open. Sap sprayed the air with thin amber veils.
It moved with slow, ponderous elegance through the burning day, cutting a swath along the top of the trees like a clipper trimming a hedge. Then it hovered, as if waiting for something.
46
Now the floor below Gardener was also transparent; he seemed to be sitting in thin air, looking down at the billowing reefs of smoke coming from the edge of the woods and filling the air.
The ship was fully alive now - but he was fading fast.
His hands crept up to the earphones.
Scotty, he thought, gimme warp-speed. We're blowing this disco.