Painfully, he rose on all fours and began crawling toward the other room, where he thought the dust would not be so thick. At the same time he tugged at Amra's arm--at least he supposed it was her arm, since she'd been so close to him when the explosion took place. His gesture was intended to tell her that she should follow him. She rose and followed him, touching him from time to time. Once she stopped, and he turned to find out what was bothering her, even if he felt that he couldn't stand much more of the almost solid dust in his lungs and had to get out to open air or strangle. Then he knew that the woman was Amra, for she was carrying a child in her arms. The child had a scarf around her head and, as he remembered, Paxi was the only infant so dressed. Coughing violently, he rose to his feet, pulling Amra to hers, and swiftly walked toward where he hoped the exit was. He knew he'd fallen on his face in the general direction of the doorway; if he kept in a straight line he might make it without wandering off to one side. He found soon enough that he was going just opposite, for he fell headlong over a body on the floor. When he got up again, he ran his hands over the body. The skin was crusty, scaly. Aga's burned corpse. The cutlass was lying by her side, assuring him of her identity. Re-oriented, he turned back, still pulling Amra by the hand. This time he ran into a wall, but he had his free hand stretched out in front of him for just such an event. Frantically, he groped to his left until he came to the corner of the room. Then, knowing that the doorway lay back to his right, he turned and felt along the metal until he came to the opening. He plunged through it, almost fell into the other room, which was as dark and dusty as the one he'd just left. He trotted on ahead, bumped into another wall, groped to his right, found the next exit and ran through that. Here the air was much more free of dust. He could actually make out outlines of his companions as the light was penetrating the fainter haze. Nevertheless he and the others were coughing and weeping as if they were trying to eject lungs and eyeballs alike. Spasm after spasm shook them. Green decided that this room wasn't really much better than the others, so he led Amra and Paxi around the right-angled corner and into the dark tunnel. Here his violent rackings began to quiet down and by rapid blinking, which forced tears, he cleaned his eyes of much of the dust. Anxiously, he peered down the passageway toward its end, where the cave mouth formed a dim arch in the moonlight outside. It was as he'd feared. Somebody stood there, outlined in the beams, bent forward, peering in. He thought that it must be the priestess, for the figure was slight and the hair was pulled up on top of the head in a great Psyche knot with a feather stuck through it. Moreover, around her feet were four or five cats.