* * * * * It took a long time to get my breath back and sort out my various abrasions. My back was worst then my legs and hands. There was a messy spot on the back of my head and sharp pains shot down my spine, and I was getting tired of breathing through my mouth instead of my smashed nose. Other than that I'd never felt better in my life. I had plenty of room to relax in, I could breathe. All I had to do was rest, and after a while they'd drop some more nice bread and water in to me.... I shook myself awake. There was something about the absolute darkness and silence that made my mind want to curl up and sleep, but there was no time for that. If there had been a stone freshly set in mortar to seal the chamber after I had been stuffed inside, this was the time to find it--before it set too hard. I ran my hands over the wall, found the joints. The mortar was dry and hard in the first; in the next ... under my fingernail soft mortar crumbled away. I traced the joint; it ran around a twelve-by-eighteen-inch stone. I raised myself on my elbows, settled down to scratching at it. Half an hour later I had ten bloody tips and a half-inch groove dug out around the stone. It was slow work and I couldn't go much farther without a tool of some sort. I felt for the water bottle, took off the cap, tried to crush it. It wouldn't crush. There was nothing else in the cell. Maybe the stone would move, mortar and all, if I shoved hard enough. I set my feet against the end wall, my hands against the block, and strained until the blood roared in my ears. No use. It was planted as solid as a mother-in-law in the spare bedroom. I was lying there, just thinking about it, when I became aware of something. It wasn't a noise, exactly. It was more like a fourth-dimensional sound heard inside the brain ... or the memory of one. But my next sensation was perfectly real. I felt four little feet walking gravely up my belly toward my chin. It was my cat, Itzenca. CHAPTER XVI For a while I toyed with the idea of just chalking it up as a miracle. Then I decided it would be a nice problem in probabilities. It had been seven months since we had parted company on the pink terrace at Okk-Hamiloth. Where would I have gone if I had been a cat? And how could I have found me--my old pal from earth? Itzenca exhaled a snuffle in my ear. "Come to think of it, the stink is pretty strong, isn't it? I guess there's nobody on Vallon with quite the same heady fragrance. And what with the close quarters here, the concentration of sweat, blood, and you-name-it must be pretty penetrating."