Nightmare journey

beneath the earth, feel the humming power of an extraterrestrial consciousness.
    This is it!-Tedesco.
    For once I do not need to play the devil's advocate, Chaney 'pathed. If there is a Black Presence, this being is what we want.
    But it still remained detached, distant, unresponsive to their best efforts to establish telepathic contact. Indeed, except for a shudder now and again, the creature seemed oblivious to them.
    They broke up their gestalt and rose from the ring.
    Someone will have to go down there, get closer, find out why it isn't responding, Chaney 'pathed.
    I will, Jask said at once. He felt, unaccountably, that if he did this last thing for them, he would have expunged the last traces of his own guilt for having snubbed them so long in the beginning of their journey. As one, the others 'pathed to him the understanding that all his early stupidities had been forgiven, that proving himself here was not necessary, and he believed them. Still, for his own peace of mind, he wanted to be the one sent down to find the Presence.
    This place is not called Deathpit without reason, Melopina reminded him, holding tightly to his hand.
    Someone must go down.
    Why you?
    Why not? He turned to Tedesco. We can make a harness with the rope in your rucksack. You and Chaney should be able to support my weight without any trouble. Lower me slowly enough so I can avoid whatever obstacles there might be.
    The rope was fetched and, in short order, the harness was made. Jask climbed into it, sat on the edge of the wall as Tedesco and Chaney got good handholds on the loose rope, which, when the initial slack was taken up, they would lower after him. Melopina kissed him, did not want to let go, finally had to. Jask slid off the edge of the pit and dropped…
    He fell two meters, jerked hard as the slack snapped tight. He slammed sideways into the pit wall, hard enough to hurt himself but not with enough force to lose consciousness. He rubbed his aching chest, winced at the pain, which lay like hot metal between his ribs. When his heart had slowed and he could get his breath again, however, he decided that the injury was a small enough price to pay for getting to the Presence. The reward, after all, was great: the stars.
    He tugged on the rope and 'pathed, Lower away!
    Tedesco and Chaney fed the rope into the well.
    At ten meters the pit entrance had dwindled until it was only a tiny coin of bright light overhead.
    At fifteen meters it had shrunk to half a coin, a bead.
    At twenty it was only a point of light, a pinprick in the darkness.
    When he reached twenty-five meters, nearly to the bottom of the shaft, the darkness suddenly exploded in cold, white light.
    Jask!-Melopina.
    What's down there?-Tedesco.
    Jask screamed as the light passed through him like a thousand pins. He jerked in his harness, fell, and before he could draw another breath, he died.
    A second later a huge, dark form entered the bottom of Deathpit. It was shapeless and looked more like an incredibly dense cloud of smoke than like living flesh, constantly churning but never dissipating as smoke would be expected to. When it encountered the esper's body, it twisted and writhed more furiously, split into three separate entities, each as shapeless as the motherform. One of these returned to the ship from which the creature had originally come; one remained behind with the crumpled body of the esper; the third soared up the length of the shaft, like a hellish spirit cannoned into the world. It erupted into the late afternoon sun, bobbling in the warm air before the four living espers, who had fallen to the courtyard in shock and terror at the death of Jask.
    Good god, what have we unleashed? Chaney asked.
    Melopina threw her head back, sought Jask's mental aura, could not find it. She screamed and screamed.
    33
    THE Watcher wakes from his nap, cut deep by a psychic radiation the like of which he has never before encountered on this world.
    He rises up, moves forth, seeking the source.
    He finds the ebbing life force in the corpse, locates the espers in the courtyard above, and he realizes that his brief nap has been extremely costly.
    He moves out to make repairs.
    34
    AT first, when they removed her from her post as General of the Preakness Bay enclave and imprisoned her prior to her execution, Merka Shanly did not so much mourn her own coming death but the end of the programs she had initiated, and which might eventually have saved the Pures from extinction. None of