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Ishmael looked back toward the doorway through which they had escaped, hoping to see the
doorway on the other side of the room, the first they had entered, still limned with faint light. It would be
a sort of light-house, assuring him that they were not in a universe which had gone eternally dark.
He did see the rectangle, or its ghost, far off.
He also saw something else. Rather, he saw the lack of something.
"Where is Pamkamshi?" he said.
The others looked back too. Then they looked at each other.
"He was behind me a moment ago," Goonrajum, a sailor, said.
"I thought he was carrying a torch," Ishmael said. "But you have one now. Did he give you his?"
"He asked me to hold it for a moment," Goonrajum said.
And now Pamkamshi was gone.
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Ishmael and the others, keeping close together, re-traced their path until they were close to the
doorway. This was again covered by a web.
Ishmael led them away from the door but on a wind-ing path calculated to cover territory at
random. No-where was there any sign of Pamkamshi.
Again Ishmael threw his torch high into the air. He saw nothing, except. . . But he could not be
sure. He picked up the torch and threw it once more, put-ting every bit of force he had into the throw.
The torch, just before beginning its downward arc, illuminated palely something that might or
might not be two bare feet.
"Listen!" Namalee said.
They were quiet. The torches sputtered and flickered. Ishmael could hear his own blood singing.
And he could hear another sound, very faintly.
"It sounds like somebody chewing," Namalee said.
"Chomping," Karkri said.
At Ishmael's request, Karkri took the torch and cast it upward. Though he was shorter and
lighter in weight than Ishmael, he still had spent half of his life throwing a harpoon. The torch sailed up
higher than when Ismael had thrown it, and it showed a pair of bare feet hanging in the air. They were
moving slowly away from the men below.
Namalee gasped, and some of the men uttered prayers or curses.
"Something snatched Pamkamshi into the air when nobody had their eyes on him," Ishmael said.
"Something up there."
He felt cold, and his stomach muscles were contract-ing.
"Shoot up in that direction," he said to Avarjam, who had a bow. "Don't worry about hitting
Pamkamshi. I think he is dead. His feet weren't moving by themselves. Something is carrying him off
across the room."
Avarjam shot an arrow into the darkness above them. The string thrummed, and then there was a
thudding noise. The arrow did not clatter on the floor ahead of them.
"You hit something," Ishmael said, wondering if it was Pamkamshi. Perhaps the arrow had driven
into a man who was only unconscious, not dead. But he could not help that. The safety of the greater
number and of the mission was paramount.
They walked on ahead until Ishmael ordered a stop. Karkri again threw the torch up, and this
time it showed not only the feet but the legs. The upper part of Pam-kamshi, however, was as shrouded
as if he had been buried.
"He's lower than he was," Ishmael said, and then there was a loud thump ahead of them. They
hurried for-ward and saw in the torchlight the body of Pamkamshi. His bones were broken and his flesh
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burst open. But it was not the fall that had killed him. Around his neck was a broad purplish mark, and
his eyes bulged out and his tongue protruded. Something had eaten his scalp and ears and part of his
nose.
"Everybody put one hand up by their necks and keep them there until I say to do otherwise,"
Ishmael said.
"What did the arrow hit?" Namalee said.
She looked up and yelled, forgetting Ishmael's orders to keep quiet, and jumped back. They
looked too, and they jumped away, opening out.
The creature that fell onto the stone floor by Pamkamshi was pancake-shaped and bore a great
suction pad on its back and on the other side a coil of purplish hue by a great mouth with many small
teeth. The arrow had run half its length through it and probably pinned it to the ceiling after its death had
released the huge suction pad.
The beast had dropped its long tentacle nooselike around the neck of Pamkamshi and snatched
him into the upper darkness. Whether it had selected the man because he was being unobserved by the
others or whether it was by accident, Ishmael did not know. But he suspected that the beast possessed
some organs of perceptions not apparent to those unfamiliar with the creature.
He also suspected that the ceiling was crowded with the beasts and that he and his band were in
deadly peril. If this was true, however, something was preventing the beasts from making a mass attack.
Did there exist among them, as he suspected there did among the creatures of the room they had just
quitted, a com-munal mind? Or, if not a mind, some sort of common nervous system? And this allotted to
each in its turn a chance to try for a victim? Or did the hypothesized common agreement insist that any
beast could attack when it was safe for one to do so? And what was the safety rule? That one of the
prey should be unobserved momentarily by his fellows?
If this was the rule, then the creatures were vulner-able in some respect; otherwise they would
not care whether or not the intended victim was isolated fromhis group.
Ishmael leaned over the thing to study the effects of the arrow. A pale green fluid had spread out
from the wound, which was centered on a lump in the body about the size and shape of an ostrich egg.
Ish-mael thought that this could be one of its vital organs.
There were about fifty of the eggish lumps in the body. The rest was apparently occupied by little
but fatty tissue and a circulatory system, though this was only his guess.
Ishmael straightened up and signaled that they should proceed. They all kept one hand by their
necks, and they kept glancing upward, as if they expected to see a purplish tentacle drop into the
illuminated world of the torches.
After walking sixty paces, Ishmael stopped them again and again Karkri tossed a torch upward.
The light flared briefly on a dozen tentacles uncoiling slow-ly from the darkness above.
Ishmael had no idea of what was causing this con-certed action now. Perhaps the beasts, in,
whatever form of communication they used, had conferred and decided that individual action was a
failure. Or per-haps the death of one resulted in triggering an instinct which activated them to a communal
effort.
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Ishmael gave an order, and the band ran forward. They stayed, together, however, and each [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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