He stared defiantly into the dark, toward the back of the grokr's belly, determined drive out his fears. Now he was going to cross the entire belly of the grokr and touch the back wall, he decided—no hesitation, no second thoughts, no panic.
He patted himself on the thigh and stepped forward, went past the icerock pillars at his sides and started going down along the sloping floor. The dust yielded obediently under his feet step by step, then without warning gave way and swallowed him up.
Aarvo barely had time to realize what was happening when found himself in a terrifying darkness, enshrouded on all sides by insidious dust. He was falling deep into the belly of the grokr! With the thrill of a premonition that came true, he realized the beast had sprung its deathly trap to swallow him up alive and turn him into dead dust. A blind panic swept through him like a lightning bot. Without knowing where up or down, right and left was, he exploded his jets at full throttle.
In a whirlwind of dust and dazzling light he shot out of the floor. Before he could figure out where he was, he crashed into the ceiling head first. For an instant it was as if a boulder of deep space had crashed into his brain, then everything went black. His jets turned off and he fell back, swallowed up against by dust.
Another surge of panic shot through him, slapping him back awake. He fired up the jets again, but this time at half strength, then wriggled his way through the scratching darkness, while the grains of dust reluctantly made way. He hit something hard and stopped. Hoping to find a way out, he followed the contours of the object, until he reached the bottom of the belly of the grokr. Great, so now he'd gotten even deeper into trouble! But at least he now knew where he was - if that was really the bottom, of course...
With an effort, he turned around, planted his feet and pushed himself upwards. His hands found another solid body, examined it, and recognized the consistency of the icerock. That must be one of the pillars that projected toward the ceiling. He placed his hands around the pillar, then followed it in its ascent, pushing with his feet and pulled by its jets.
He slid cautiously through an eternity of darkness and dust, haunted by the fear of hitting his head against something he couldn't see and passing out. Suddenly, he felt he was slipping out of the dust. He turned his jets off and tightened his grip around the icerock pillar. He swung his arms around to make sure he was really out of the dust, then opened his eyes. He lit ups his jets again and glance at his own tracks in the dust, near the entrance to the tunnel that had brought hi there. He jumped down and retreated on solid ground.
He stayed for a while with his back against the wall, trying to calm down his core that kept on thundering in his throat. The grokr had almost gotten him, but he still managed to get away! A sick euphoria replaced fear. What an adventure! What an incredible struggle for survival! He almost felt like doing it again...
This crazy thought frightened him even more than all the panic he had felt before. Out, out! He better get out of this awful place! He turned around and threw himself headlong into the tunnel.
As soon as he came out on the other side, he rushed forward through the labyrinth of walls and vaults until he made a turn and a beam of light blinded him, stopping him in his tracks. He shielded his eyes, blinked, until he recognized the ring of icerock in front of him, suspended from the four tie-rods fixed to the walls. A wave of relief swept through him. Everything was all right—he was back behind the grokr's good eye and now was finally ready look through it.
He stepped forward, passed under the rods, and stood in front of the icerock ring, just behind the last lens of the grokr's eye—the convex one. The spot of light visible on the surface of the lens condensed into a green and red mass. Before he knew, Aarvo found himself staring at an enormous monstrous eye, a malignant pupil staring right at him from inside an immense greenish iris wrapped in a mass of red, blackened flesh.
Aarvo made to jump back when he realized that what he was seeing could not be an eye. He looked closer and noticed he could see the stars through it. He calmed down and realized he was looking at a cloud of gas, a galaxy suspended in the void of space so magnified by the eye of the grokr that it looked like the eye of a giant. So the grokr's eye worked exactly like his starlooker and it was even sharper!
Pleased by his discovery, he crawled out of the grokr's head and started searching for the giant's eye in the sky. At first he couldn't find it, then he followed the trajectory of the grokr's gaze, and there it was! Far away in the sky, a small cloud of red and green gas winked at him through the crowded chaos of the stars. Aarvo squinted and recognized the concentric red circles, the green iris, and the black pupil. He's never thought it could be so far away. The eye of the grokr was really powerful!
If only he could watch Eera like that too...
For a couple of moonhours he got to work carving the grokr's good eye. When he finally managed to pull out the entire array of lenses in one piece, he put it on his shoulders and with tremendous strength hoisted it all the way up onto the ridge of the crater.
He was about to carry it down and head toward the near side when he changed his mind. He had come to the far side to explore it and find something that could help him get to Eera, not to get a new starlooker.
He put it down grudgingly and was comforted by the thought that he could come back and pick it up whenever he wanted. For sure it wasn't going to go anywhere on his own. He turned it around and aimed it at the immense expanses of moonhair that still guarded the mysteries of that unknown place. He saw the farthest reaches of that landscape become fields so close that he could have touched them. Nothing stirred in that immense white and ghostly expanse except the moonhair itself. Perhaps the world he was looking for was really underground.
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