Adda drifted out into the Mall a little way and stared down at the gash.

The inner skin of the Mall had been sloughed away, shops and homes scoured off as cleanly as if by a blade. And within the gash itself he could see the cross-sections of cut-open homes, shops. There were splashes of broken flesh. He heard human voices, but no screams: there were groans, and low, continuous weeping.

Farr joined him in the Air. "What is it? What's happened?"

"A Sea-fragment," Adda said grimly. "The City has been hit. Looks as if the berg passed straight through... We're lucky the City wasn't smashed wide open... Come on, Farr. Let's see if that damn Hospital is still working."

They dropped down the wide, almost empty shaft of the Mall, searching for a way to get to the Hospital.

24

HORK RAN HIS THICK FINGERS AROUND the seam of the door. Then, impatient, Waving to give himself leverage, he laid his hands flat against the door and shoved.

The door swung back on invisible hinges, heavy and silent; Air hissed.

Through the doorway Dura caught glimpses of another, larger chamber, walled by more of the featureless gray material.

For a moment Hork and Dura hesitated before the doorway.

"Let's get on with it," Hork growled. He grasped the edges of the doorframe. With a single fluid movement he hauled his bulk through; his small feet, Waving gently, disappeared into the frame.

With a sigh, Dura took hold of the frame. Like the rest of the wall material the frame edges were cool to the touch, but the walls seemed knife-thin and the edges dug into her palms. She laid her hands carefully on the outer surface of the wall, beyond the frame, and pushed herself through.

The outer chamber was another tetrahedron — and constructed of the ubiquitous gray-bland material — but perhaps ten times as large, a hundred mansheights across or more. This room would be as large as any enclosed space in Parz City. The chamber from which she had emerged floated at the heart of this new room, its vertices and edges aligned with the chamber within which it was embedded. Dura wondered vaguely what was holding the smaller chamber in place; there were no signs of struts, supports or ropes.

Perhaps they were in a nest of these tetrahedral chambers, one contained in the other, she speculated; perhaps if they went beyond these walls they would swim into a third chamber, ten times larger again, and then onward...

But there was no door in this outer chamber. The walls were featureless: unbroken even by the map device which had adorned the inner cell. There must be no way out; maybe this was the end of their journey.