the splintering
the edge now, trying to stay out of the way. /Hroom, tell us how to help!/ he cried. The foreman-shadow didn't answer, but he felt another shift in the virtual medium, and saw a shadow outstretched before him, a shadow in his own shape, but elongated. He reached out instinctively to join it; he contracted into it, then back toward his own physical center, reclaiming the control he had given up to the icecore, to the boojum.
A huge bat fluttered close to him in the icelink. /Wh'rooom'm'm. Hruuu-eeeee! . . .your stones. . .pull free of the icecore. . .quickly. . . Whreeek! . . .quickly, John Bandicut. . ./
He focused his thoughts dizzily inward, drawing himself out of the icelink connection. It was like pulling loose from a shower of exploding electrical connections, as the world of the icecore was stripped from him. He gasped a breath of real air, blinking his eyes, straining to peer out through the physically solid, icy snowflake that enveloped him. It was difficult to breathe, impossible to move.
Whreeuuk! ". . .stay still. . ."
Shadow-people, not images now but the real thing, swarmed nearby. The prison of ice crystals glowed like strands of molten glass and shattered. He gasped for breath, staggering backward. Beside him, his friends stood stunned amid splintered ruins of ice.
"Hroom—!"
Whreeek-k-k-k! ". . .stay. . .focus your stones. . ."
Stones? Bandicut clamped his eyes shut to focus, then suddenly hesitated, remembering the echo of Charlie's voice in the icelink. Was there really something of the quarx in there? There was no way to know, and too late to find out. One more thing lost. He trembled, focusing on the reality of the boojum's frantic efforts to escape into the icelines, to speed away to hide elsewhere. /Translator-stones,/ he whispered, /if you can do what the shadow-people ask—/
*Ready.*
He swallowed. "Ik! Li-Jared!" His friends were staggering toward him.
"What has happened?" Ik cried. "I could not see until the shadow-people came. The boojum—?"
"It's all through the icecore! This is its lair!" Bandicut shouted. "The shadow-people u