His own shadow, Linc realized quickly. But that brought no relief from fear. For the light casting the shadow came from the yellow star.
It really is getting closer to us, Linc told himself. The old legends are true!
Keeping his back to the window and the yellow star, staring at his slowly shifting shadow, Linc felt panic clutching at him.
The yellow star is coming to get us. It’s going to make ghosts of us all!
2
Linc had no idea how long he stayed, nearly paralyzed with fear, at the observation window. His shadow crept across the floor and up the far wall of the passageway, faded into darkness, then reappeared again. And again, And again.
Finally he pulled himself away, muttering, “If I tell the others about this, they’ll go crazy. But Magda… I’ve got to tell Magda.”
His voice sounded odd, even to himself. Shaky, high, and unsure. “I wish Jerlet was still with us.”
He stalked down the passageway purposefully, no more playful lightweighted leaps. Into the next open hatch he ducked, then stopped at the platform that opened onto the longspiraling metal stairs of the tube-tunnel. Jerlet was upward, in the far domain where legends said there was no weight at all and everything floated in midair. Downward were the others, his own people, in the Living Wheel, where there was warmth and food and life.
And fear.
“Jerlet. I’ve got to find Jerlet,” Linc told himself sternly, even though he had no idea of how far the journey would be, or how difficult.
Linc placed his slippered foot on the first cold metal step leading upward. But he heard a scuffling sound—faint as a breath, but enough to make him freeze in his steps.
Again. A faint rustling sound in the darkness. Something soft padding on the metal steps in the shadows below.