The moon trogs cheered up considerably, however, when they heard about Grand Central, and the fact that the old Agglemonian teleportation network was lost and buried underground, and when Thomas told them that the key to the teleportation chamber was lost, possibly destroyed, and that without it they could never go home, the relief felt by the moon trogs was so great that it was gushing from them in waves, although they were polite enough to express their sympathies and say how sorry they were for them.

     “Does the loss of the key mean that, as well as you being stranded up here, no-one else on Tharia can follow you up here?” asked one of the moon trogs, the Manir of the Dellseam clan.

     “That’s right,” agreed Thomas emphatically. “That’s why the Agglemonians locked the door in the first place, to stop anyone from following them up here. When we came up, the locking spell had weakened, allowing us to open it without any effort, but in so doing we ‘jarred it loose’ so to speak, restoring it to full power. A powerful wizard could probably unlock it easily enough, but a wizard that powerful could probably teleport up here under his own power anyway. Certainly no-one else will be able to use the chamber to go in either direction until the locking spell weakens again.”

     “And how long will that take?” asked the moon trog.

     Thomas shrugged. “It took three hundred years the first time. It won’t take that long this time, because most of the locking spell’s magic has dissipated, faded away, but we’re definitely talking about years here. Possibly decades.

     “Unless someone finds the key,” said another moon trog. He was a younger looking individual bearing the emblem of a wolf’s head with glowing red eyes, one that none of the Tharians had ever seen or heard of before. He stared at them suspiciously, as if he knew exactly what they were up to.
“That’s right,” said Thomas, resisting the impulse to say more than that. The wrong word now could be disastrous.

     Shaun then took over the narrative and told of their time in the human city. Their exploration of the dead central region and their subsequent capture by the Konnens. He dwelled heavily on his and Matthew’s misery in the Konnen dungeons while the others were forced to fight for them against the Traldians, wanting to emphasise as strongly as possible that they were the enemies of the Konnens, that they would never assist or co-operate with them in any way.

     Jerry then took over, describing the human city and its inhabitants in detail; their misery at being forced to fight people who hadn’t been their enemies (although they were now, undoubtedly), and how they’d finally managed to escape.

     “That was when we discovered that you were in much more immediate danger than that presented by the teleportation chamber,” he said.

     “What do you mean?” asked Abar-Dhan, leaning forward apprehensively.

     “We didn’t know how long we’d be wandering around in the caverns before finding safety,” explained the tiny nome, “so we decided to steal some food from their kitchens. We discovered they’d been making a large quantity of this.” He produced a packet of Konnen trail rations from a pocket and held it up for them to see.”

     “What is it?” asked the High Manir.

     “A concentrated foodstuff,” explained Jerry. “Small and light enough that a man can carry several weeks worth of food around on his person, containing everything he needs to survive.” He grinned to himself. “Except water.” He grew serious again. “We’ve only been able to think of one reason why they would need such a concentrated form of food as this. As soon as the Konnens have conquered the Traldians and united the city, they intend to march on you.”

     A babble of alarm broke our around the room, and the High Manir shouted for silence. “Let me see it,” he said, indicating the trail rations.

     Jerry judged it carefully and pushed the packet towards the moon trog, using both hands to push it away from his chest. His aim was good and the packet moved through the air in a perfect straight line, tumbling over and over as it went, and as it approached the High Manir he caught it skilfully out of the air with his left forehand. He examined it closely for a moment and then carefully opened it.

     “Tastes horrible,” he said, nibbling one of the biscuits. “We’ll get one of our cooks to look at it, see what he thinks of it. So, just how much of a threat do you think these people are to us?”

     “Well, when we first left the city we knew virtually nothing about you,” explained the tiny nome. “We had the vague idea that you’d be living freely in the tunnels and caverns in small family groups, like the human renegades. We had no idea, no idea at all, the level of civilization you’d achieved. The huge tunnels, the optical fibre lights. The farm domes, the, the, all this!” He waved his hand around at the room. “It’s now clear to us that you wouldn’t be such easy victims as we first thought.”

      “You forgot to mention the fact that we outnumber the humans by at least three to one,” said Abar-Dhan. “However, it may be that your original estimate of our vulnerability was closer to the truth than you knew.”

     He held up one of his arms and pushed the arm of his baggy jumpsuit up to the shoulder to reveal the skeletally thin limb with its wrinkled covering of hairless skin. “Look at us. We are frail creatures. Those of us who work in the mines and the farm domes are stronger. Their muscles are built up by physical labour, but even they are only as strong as your human children. You humans are constantly struggling against a gravitational field that would crush us. You have to be immensely strong just to stand up. We, on the other hand, have had it easy. Our musculature has atrophied to the point that we cannot swing a weapon hard enough to do any damage with it. Our guardsmen have to carry poison blowdarts to keep the peace, and even these would be useless against the whole body armour worn by you humans. If the Konnens attacked us, the only thing we could do would be to close and lock all the airlock doors, and even that would be futile as they would simply cut their way through, leaving us vulnerable to decompression.”

     “So what would you do?” asked Lirenna anxiously.

     “There’s only one thing we could do,” replied Abar-Dhan. “Surrender and resign ourselves to a life of slavery.”

     A horrified silence filled the room. “There must be some way you could defend yourselves,” said Thomas at last. “With your level of civilization, there must be any number of weapons you could knock up to fight them with. I can’t believe that such a small city could conquer an entire race capable of doing the things you’ve done.”

     “Believe it,” said the High Manir gravely. “There is no way we could stand against them.”

     Silence fell again, stretching out until Lirenna spoke up in a sad quiet voice. “It’s all our fault,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for us, the Konnens and the Traldians would still be deadlocked. It’s all our fault.”

     “Don’t be silly,” said Thomas calmly. “They’d have broken the deadlock on their own eventually. This isn’t the first time that one noble family has conquered the whole city. Every other time, though, disagreements between former allies have always led to another war breaking out almost immediately. I’m sure that’s what’ll happen this time as well. They won’t have time to even think about attacking the moon trogs before they’re fighting amongst themselves again.”

     Lirenna shook her head, though. “It’s not the same,” she said. “Thanks to us, they’ve got the Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing, and with them they can reach the Lifegiver, the source of all the city’s food, water and fresh air. With that in their control, the Konnens would have a grip on the city that no-one would ever be able to break. They could defeat their enemies simply by cutting off their food and water. And it’s all our fault!” She looked pleadingly at the others. “There must be something we can do. It’s our fault that this situation came about, so it’s up to us to put it right.”

     “I really don’t see what we could do,” said Shaun as gently as he could. “Look at the predicament we found ourselves in the last time we went there. We only just managed to get away with our lives.”

     “That’s because we walked in openly,” replied the demi shae, her eyes blazing with fervour. “This time we’ll sneak in secretly. We know much more than we did then. We’ll stand a much better chance of remaining free and doing what needs to be done without them knowing we’re there.”

     “I agree,” said Diana. “I will not have it said that good, civilized people were worse off and suffering because of us. We caused this, so we have to put it right.”

     Thomas started to argue, but shut his mouth as a thought occurred to him. Going back to the city might be a good idea, but for a completely different reason. He still had hopes of getting back to Tharia, but to do that they had to have access to the teleportation chamber in the observatory above the city. To get to it, they’d need Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing, and to open it they’d need the key, both of which, so he thought, were in the city. If the Tharians were there, hiding in one of the empty living areas or something, at liberty to move around and explore freely, he was sure that eventually they’d find a way to gain possession of both key and necklaces and so be able to go home, and a mission to prevent the humans from invading the moon trogs was the perfect excuse they needed. The perfect way to return to the city without arousing the moon trogs’ suspicions.

     “I agree as well,” he said therefore. “We have a moral obligation to do everything we can to avert this catastrophe.”

     Lirenna looked at him suspiciously. She didn’t need a Ring of ESP to know that he had an ulterior motive for wanting to go back, and it wasn’t hard to guess what it was. Fortunately, though, the moon trogs seemed incapable of reading human facial expressions, or else the game might have been up there and then.

     Diana also didn’t see what Thomas was up to, or maybe she was just willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. “That settles it then," she said. "We’re going back.”

     “Don’t we get a say?” asked Matthew in annoyance.

     “Of course you do,” replied the cleric. “It’s completely up to you whether you come with us or stay here.”

     “Hey now, wait a minute!” said Shaun however. “What you’re suggesting is extremely dangerous! If they catch us, it won’t be the dungeons this time. It’ll be a scaffold in the forecourt! No way am I going to let you just walk into that kind of danger.”

     “He’s right,” agreed Abar-Dhan. “We could not let you take that kind of risk on our behalf.”

     “If the Konnens conquer the whole moon, there’ll be nowhere in all Kronos where we’ll be safe,” pointed out the cleric. “They’ll catch us sooner or later no matter what we do, no matter where we go. Going back to the city is, therefore, the safest thing we can do, in the long run.”

     “But it’s so...” began Shaun.

     Thomas interrupted him. “Shaun,” he said, “going back to the city could be the key to a happy outcome for all of us! The key to everything! Do you understand?”

     The soldier got it then, and understanding spread over his face. “Oh yes! Yes, you’re right. We do have a moral obligation to do everything we can.”

     Now it was Diana’s turn to stare suspiciously. She looked at Lirenna and shared a meaningful look with the demi shae, a look that sent a shiver of fear along Thomas’s spine. By the Gods! he thought. They’re serious! They really intend to try to stop the Konnens from invading the moon trogs!

     This all went completely over the moon trogs’ heads, however. “I urge you to reconsider,” said the High Manir in a worried tone of voice. “The renegades have perfected the art of hiding from the city dwellers. You could live happily among them for as long as you wanted. You know that you’d be sure of a warm welcome among them after saving two of them from the cons.”

     “No,” said Shaun firmly. “I’m sick of running. We’ve been running ever since we arrived in the Underworld. First we ran from the Underworlders themselves, then we ran from the kimmats, and then we ran from the Konnens, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to run any more. It’s about time we bloody well began fighting back!”

     “I’ll second that!” agreed Jerry enthusiastically. “The nomes have done their fair share of running from their enemies as well. I’ll be doing a bit on behalf of the whole nomish race.”

     “We’re Beltharan soldiers,” agreed Matthew. “It’s about time we started acting like it.”

     The Tharians were all united in purpose, therefore, even though they differed in motive. “Like I said then, it’s settled,” said Diana firmly but with another wary glance at her brothers, a glance that said that she knew perfectly well why they really wanted to go back. If they thought they were just going to lie low while the Konnens went on the rampage, though, they were in for a very rude awakening. Diana intended to make sure they did their part when they got there.

     “With your leave, Abar-Dhan, we’re going back to Kronosia.”