Catacombs by Anne McCaffrey;Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Author:Anne McCaffrey;Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780345524782
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-06T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

CHESTER: THE WORM RE-TURNS

I didn’t have to wait for the fugitive cats to arrive to know what I had to do. Pshaw-Ra came to me while I was having a nap and instructed me to go to the pyramid ship, which he said was fully fueled, and take it into space to try to find someone to help us leave the planet.

I rose and found Jubal, who was fishing at the underground river. He pulled out his net full of fish and hauled them onto the bank, saying, Okay, but I’m coming with you.

Carrying the net with him, he returned to the nest Renpet and Chione had made for the kittens. “More cats are coming,” I told Renpet. “Your sister has rejected her own kittens and ordered the deaths of them and all of the others, and she is not very fond of my kind either.”

Renpet spat. “She would! Do you think the exiles would help me mount a revolt against her?”

“Why bother? The boy and I go now to bring help to evacuate us all—no need for you and the youngsters to stay here among cats so stupid they put up with your sister as queen. Frankly, my dear, we’re all too good for them.”

Renpet froze suddenly, her ears back and her fur as puffed out as it would go.

“Chester, I am afraid …”

“Of her? Pffft! By the time she finds you, if she does, the kittens would be able to send her hiding under a bunk. She’s a bully-girl, Renpet. You’re worth ten of—”

“I’m not talking about her. I—I hear the great snake.”

“You said you thought you had but—”

“Not had. I hear it now. Listen.”

She was laying down, and when I lay still beside her, I felt it too—the same ominous thump-bump thump-bump I remembered from our first encounter with the worm.

“Can Chione block him from us with her wall-controlling thing?” I asked.

Renpet consulted with her handmaiden. “She tried.”

Jubal questioned Chione a little more, and told me, She felt the snake break through the last barrier she put in front of it. We’d better get out of here. We can’t go too far, though, because those other cats are on their way. We don’t want them to walk right into the snake.

Can it cross the river?

I don’t see the river giving it any major obstacle, but I think it’s a good idea to get the river between us and it.

The kittens were now too big to make carrying them in our mouths any kind of an advantage, but Jubal and Chione scooped them up. Jubal lifted Shahori and one of his sisters onto his shoulders, where I usually rode, and Chione extruded the bridge, using her little device, then scooped the last two kittens into her skirt and crossed the burbling water. Jubal was right behind her, and Renpet and I were on their heels.

But something else was right behind us.

The fresh smell of the water had masked the snake’s musk until it was upon us. Renpet

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