“Don’t bother,” she said to Roland, who had actually doubled up his fist to do as the sign said. “It’s from the story, that’s all.”

Eddie pulled her chair back slightly, stepped in front of it, and took hold of the circular pulls. The doors opened easily, the hinges rolling in silence. He took a step forward into what looked like a shadowy green grotto, cupped his hands to his mouth, and called: “Hey!”

The sound of his voice rolled away and came back changed... small, echoing, lost. Dying, it seemed.

“Christ,” Eddie said. “Do we have to do this?”

“If we want to get back to the Beam, I think so.” Roland looked paler than ever, but he led them in. Jake helped Eddie lift Susannah’s chair over the sill (a milky block of jade-colored glass) and inside. Oy’s little shoes flashed dim red on the green glass floor. They had gone only ten paces when the doors slammed shut behind them with a no-question-about-it boom that rolled past them and went echoing away into the depths of the Green Palace.

3

There was no reception room; only a vaulted, cavernous hallway that seemed to go on forever. The walls were lit with a faint green glow. This is just like the hallway in the movie, Jake thought, the one where the Cowardly Lion got so scared when he stepped on his own tail.

And, adding a little extra touch of verisimilitude Jake could have done without, Eddie spoke up in a trembly (and better than passable) Bert Lahr imitation: “Wait a minute, fellas, I wuz just thinkin—I really don’t wanna see the Wizard this much. I better wait for you outside!”

“Stop it,” Jake said sharply.

“Oppit!” Oy agreed. He walked directly at Jake’s heel, swinging his head watchfully from side to side as he went. Jake could hear no sound except for their own passage... yet he sensed something: a sound that wasn’t. It was, he thought, like looking at a wind-chime that wants only the slightest puff of breeze to set it tinkling.

“Sorry,” Eddie said. “Really.” He pointed. “Look down there.”

About forty yards ahead of them, the green corridor did end, in a narrow green doorway of amazing height—perhaps thirty feet from the floor to its pointed tip. And from behind it, Jake could now hear a steady thrumming sound. As they drew closer and the sound grew louder, his dread grew. He had to make a conscious effort to take the last dozen steps to the door. He knew this sound; he knew it from the run he’d made with Gasher under Lud, and from the run he and his friends had made on Blaine the Mono. It was the steady beat-beat-beat of slo-trans engines.

“It’s like a nightmare,” he said in a small, close-to-tears voice. “We’re right back where we started.”