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"Lies, lies, lies! But maybe one truth, or half-truth, concealed in the midst!"
There was a crash as the tunnel stopped rolling. The demon was torn from Cull. Before Cull
could recover from his stunned condition and attack him, the demon leaped up. It bent over and bit Cull
savagely on the shoulder.
Cull was too deadened to feel much pain at that moment. Later, it was almost more than he could
stand.
"The Mark of Cain!" the demon shouted, Cull's blood on his mouth. "Signature of Satan! Bite of
Baal! Or what have you! Kiss your bald-headed friend, seeker of X, for me! Tell him that X still lives,
that X will give him salvation, paradise, if he can find X!
"Lies, lies, lies! Maybe! So long, brother!"
Howling like a wolf, he ran from the mouth of the tunnel across the heaving desert. But he did not
get far. Abruptly, a crack opened beside him, a crack that zigzagged like lightning across the field of
vision, that widened as it ran and sent out branches to every side. One of these opened beneath the
demon's feet. He threw up his arms, whirled to run away, could not go swiftly enough, and fell
backwards, his mouth open in a scream they would have heard except for the thunder. His body flopped,
his feet were the last thing of him that they saw.
Immediately thereafter, the tunnel lurched for-ward, apparently rising on the crest of a wave
passing across the land, an earthwave.
Around and around, the broken segment of tunnel, no longer a tunnel but a pipe, spun. Not so
swiftly that the three occupants could not keep from tumbling by running with it, by moving their feet and
staying upright, squirrels in a stone wheel.
But they could not keep up the pace. Their legs became too heavy, and they slowed down.
Then, the rotation caught up with them, swept them up-ward until they fell off the sides and back onto the
part below them. Only to be carried upward and dropped again. They crashed to a stop.
For several moments, they could only lie flat, whimpering or moaning. But Cull sprang up and
said, gasping, "We've got to get rid of these statues! So far, we've been lucky. But if this starts rolling
again, and it sure as hell will, we might not be so lucky next time."
Phyllis lay sobbing, but Fyodor struggled up. His skin was bruised and bloody, and his face was
a red mass. Cull knew he did not look any better; he appreciated the effort the little Slav was going
through just to get up because his own muscles seemed to be caked with the beating they had taken. Yet
he forced himself to move, to grip the statues and roll them out toward the mouth of the cylinder. Heavy
as these were, and angular, they did not yield easily. Only by combined pushing and straining could the
two roll the first statue to the lip of the pipe. It was a gross-bodied thing with the head of a crocodile and
long jaws, which, at right angles to the body, presented a problem. Each time the jaws came into contact
with the floor, its upper part had to be raised, with the jaws as a lever. Then, the upper part would fall
with a crash. Fortunately, they only had to roll it com-pletely three times before it was out of the tunnel.
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Panting, quivering with fatigue, they stood facing each other. Neither wanted to make the first
move to renew the work.
"Two more to go," said Cull. He looked out of the cylinder, hoping that he would see some other
refuge, one that would not require moving masses of stone. One not open at both ends and rolling along
at the slightest force. One in which he could curl up snugly, secure, safe. . .
He was appalled at what he saw outside. The same force that had sent their cylinder whirling
over and over had also ripped up great blocks of sand and stone and piled them in heaps. Their cylinder
had come to rest near the top of one of the now motionless waves of land. Beyond them were rows on
rows of earth, sand, and crumbled rocks, all mixed with torn-off and twisted metal tubes, huge blocks of
granite, basalt, and diorite that had once been piled in orderly rows to form tremendous buildings. Also,
those buildings that had been carved out of Brobdingnagian boulders lay at all angles; some straight up;
some on their sides; some upside down; some half-buried, their tops showing above the cracks into
which the larger part had fallen or their sides projecting above the crevasses or their bottoms showing.
Everywhere were bodies of human beings and demons, or parts of them, lying where falling
rocks had smashed them or hurtling stones had sheared them. Rocktrees, torn from the soil or from the
sides of buildings, were scattered everywhere. So strong' were the forces some of the
almost-indestructible trees had met, they had been cracked or even shattered.
"What's doing it?" whimpered Fyodor behind Cull. "What's making the world come to an end?"
"Something's slowing the rotation of the shell that forms the peripheral foundation of this world,"
said Cull. "And every time the shell slows, the rock and the sand on the shell's inner surface slides over it.
And the stuff tends to pile up here and there. The friction of unimaginable tons of rock and sand sliding is
causing heat, too. Have you noticed how hot it is?"
Sweat matted his hair and beaded his body. And for the first time, he noticed that he, or one of
them, maybe all three, had fouled the interior of the cylinder with their excrement. Sheer terror had forced
its expulsion.
"Let's get the other two statues out of the way," Cull said. "The rotation may slow down again
any minute now. Or begin speeding up. God knows what's going to happen."
"What's the use," said Fyodor dully. "We'll be ground to bits, just like those. . . those. . ."
He pointed at several bodies nearby. They looked as if a steamroller had passed over them and,
then, a harrow.
"Maybe we don't have a chance," said Cull. "But we have to act as if we did. While there's life. .
."
"Why should we be spared?" said Fyodor. "We're sinners. We ought. . ."
"Sinners," whimpered Phyllis. "Oh, God, we've sinned, and now we have to pay. Oh, God, truly
I'm sorry, sorry. . ."
"Shut up!" said Cull. "Both of you! If you don't quit blubbering like two hysterical old women,
and help me get these idols out of the way, I'll kick your asses right out of this tunnel. And you can take
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