“The rakoshi are there,” he said.

Again she nodded.

Kolabati was a pale blur beside him as Jack stood there in the dark and strained for another solution. He could not find one. A dim rectangle of light beckoned from the other end of the corridor where it opened into the main hold. They had to go through the hold. He was willing to try almost any other route but that one. But it was either back up the ladder to the dead end of the pilot’s cabin or straight ahead.

He lifted Kolabati, cradling her in his arms, and began to carry her toward the hold, praying that whatever power her necklace had over the rakoshi would be conducted to him as well. Halfway down the corridor he realized that his hands were entirely useless this way. He put Kolabati back on her feet and took two of the Cricket lighters from his pockets, then motioned to her to hop on his back. She gave him a small, tight, grim smile and did as directed. With an arm hooked behind each of her knees, he carried her piggy-back style, leaving his hands free to clutch a Cricket in each. They seemed ridiculously inadequate, but he derived an odd sort of comfort from the feel of them in his palms.

He came to the end of the corridor and stopped. Ahead and to their right, the hold opened before them. It was brighter than the passageway behind, but not by much; darker than Jack remembered from last night. But Kusum had been on the elevator then with his two gas torches roaring full force.

There were other differences. Details were scarce and nebulous in the murky light, but Jack could see that the rakoshi were no longer clustered around the elevator. Instead, some forty or fifty of them were spread throughout the hold, some crouched in the deepest shadows, others slumped against the walls in somber poses, still others in constant motion, walking, turning, stalking. The air was hazed with humidity and with the stink of them. The glistening black walls rose and disappeared into the darkness above. The high wall lamps gave off meager, dreary light, such as a gibbous moon might provide on a foggy night. Movements were slow and languorous. It was like looking in on a huge, candlelit opium den in a forgotten corner of hell.

A rakosh began to walk toward where they stood at the mouth of the corridor. Though the temperature was much cooler down here than it had been up in the pilot’s cabin, Jack felt his body break out from head to toe in a drenching sweat. Kolabati’s arms tightened around his neck and her body tensed against his back. The rakosh looked directly at Jack but gave no sign that it saw him or Kolabati. It veered off aimlessly in another direction.

It worked! The necklace worked! The rakosh had looked right at them and hadn’t seen either of them!