Electra was hesitating, and Nada knew her well enough to know that something was on her mind. So she slithered out of the pocket. Electra felt the motion and put her hand up. Nada crawled onto it, and Electra set her on the ground. Then Nada assumed woman form. "What's up?" she inquired.

"This looks a lot like the Gap," Electra said.

"It's too small. The Gap is a hundred times this big."

"But could it be an offshoot of the Gap? A crack branching off?"

"I suppose. There are a lot of them. What about it?"

"Then one end must go to the Gap, and the other just gets smaller until it quits."

"Of course. What's your point?"

"It would be hard to cross, toward the Gap, but easy toward the end."

Nada was getting impatient. "So what, 'Lectra? Just walk along it until you find where you can cross."

"But if we rescue—when we rescue Che, the gobs'll be chasing us. So—"

"So we find a good crossing point first," Nada said. "Now I get your notion. Very well, I'll check one direction, you check the other, and we'll return here and compare notes."

"No," Electra said.

"Now look, I'm not going to jump in!" Nada said. "I promised, remember?"

" 'Snot that," Electra said. Nada shuddered; she would have to get the girl to stop using such expressions, even if she wasn't a princess. It conjured a vision of a leaky nose.

"Isn't there time? The moon's still out, so it's not dawn yet."

" 'Snot that either." Ouch! "If they're chasing us, we don't want an easy crossing."

"But we can't afford to be delayed, if—" Then Nada understood. "The goblins! To stop the goblins!"

"Yes. If we can get across, and they can't, we'll be safe or at least get a good head start. I thought with Godiva's wand—"

" 'Lectra, that's brilliant!" Nada exclaimed. "This cleft can be better than pineapple bombs! So we need to find a good wide section they can't cross, and then come to that."

"But they probably know this cleft pretty well, and maybe they have crossing places," Electra said. "So maybe we need to find those and get rid of them, so they can't cross."

"Yes indeed! Very well, we'll split up and explore, and see what we find. We have to move quickly, though, so we have time to get together with Godiva."

"Right." Electra headed off along the cleft, running, though she must have been tired. Nada assumed the form of a black racer and zoomed in the other direction.

As it turned out, she had the Gap side. Before long the cleft joined another cleft, and Nada had to detour around that until she found a place narrow enough for her human form to hurdle. Then she snaked on down until she came to the Gap itself. She had observed no suitable crossings; the goblins evidently didn't mess with this portion of it.