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There were four decks, each about seven and a half feet high. The tharakorm had a number of rooms and corridors, but most of the ship-creature was walled off. According to Sloosh, the space behind the walls contained the large cells for the gas, the gas-generating organs, the central nervous system, or what corresponded to such, and perhaps space for unknown "equipment" and ballast.
The illumination within was enough to see by. The portholes on the sides and bottom and the entrances on top admitted light The very thin though hard walls leaked light. Only in the i
Deyv and Vana went back up and described what they'd found to Sloosh.
"It's like all the others. I've examined a dead, or, to be exact, a nonoperating, one."
They waited. Deyv and Vana became more and more nervous as time passed. Finally, just as it was about sleep-time, the tharakorm began lifting. Its ascent was so gentle that they would not have noticed it if their eyes had been closed and if the supports hadn't fallen in the mud with a soft sound. The area around them receded below.
Deyv was frightened. He felt that he was in an unreal situation, one which he'd never experienced before and which shouldn't have ever happened. But there he was. The birds and the island they were on began to shrink, and presently they were over the lake, the island below and behind.
One of the strange sensations was that he didn't feel the wind.
"That's because we're going at the same speed as the wind," Sloosh said.
He was walking around the deck, so Deyv decided that he could get up. Evidently, the deck wasn't going to tilt if he went to one side of it.
The animals didn't seem to be bothered. Deyv felt somewhat ashamed of his near-panic. However,
Vana's paleness and tight voice indicated that she shared his reactions.
The powerful pleasant perfume had faded.
"Soon will come the hard part," Sloosh said.
He estimated they were about five thousand feet high. A thousand feet ahead was the pass. Deyv became alarmed then because it looked as if the tharakorm would come very near one side of a mountain.
"I wouldn't worry about that," the Archkerri said. "The two we saw ascend also floated close to that projection of the mountain. There's a reason for it The reason is wnat we have to worry about."
The trees along the edge of the outthrust were alive with khratild. Their squealdngs and chitterings reached Deyv before he saw them. Then, as the tharakorm drifted nearer, he saw the brownish shapes swarming everywhere along the lip. Now he understood what Sloosh had meant The dangerous animals were waiting for the tharakorm as it came along. There would be a race, and those who got there first would be its crew. If you could call them a crew, since they'd have nothing to do with the sailing. All they did was to provide food for the generation of gas. But that was a vital service. In return, the shipcreature gave the crew a splendid chance to feed themselves, to observe from above potential victims, and to swoop down on them. Their feeding territory was constantly changing, and so they couldn't deplete it
"The Yawti's impressions go as far as I can see," the Archkerri said. "Evidently, he made it to that point, and he had nobody to help him. However, the tracks of the khratikl also go as far as I can see. So perhaps they overcame him. Well, we shall see what we can do."
Before the tharakorm got to the nearer edge of the projection, a cloud of khratikl dropped off the outer tips of the tree branches. They fell toward the lake, their wings flapping. Presently, long before they neared the surface, they ceased to fall, and their wings caught hold of the air. Then they were coming up toward their intended berth.
Deyv counted about fifty of them.
They came in a closely packed group from ahead and below and then were around their would-be host.
Instead of attacking at once, as he had expected, they broke into a circle four deep. Around and around they flew, getting nearer as time went by. Then he could see the rattish faces, the wet dull-yellow incisors, the humanlike hands, the leathery wings, and the yellow eyes. Their cries came to him, and after a while he thought he could detect intonations and rhythms similar to human speech.
Whether they were actually using language or had a system of signals, they didn't sound angry or hostile.
They seemed more puzzled than anything else.
The vessel passed beyond the mountain, and soon they were over a broad plain. Beyond that were other peaks, but these seemed less tall. Now the calls from the wheeling beasts were plaintive. No doubt about that. Then one, probably the leader, headed back for the pass, and the others followed.
"By Tirsh, what happened?" Vana asked. She looked as relieved, but as astounded, as Deyv felt.
"I don't know," Deyv said.
"It's a revelation to me," Sloosh said. "But you can't blame me for not knowing what would happen. The crystal never showed me anything like that. And apparently the crystals of my predecessors and contemporaries didn't either. I think, though, that I know why we, and the Yawtl, survived."
There was a long pause while Sloosh stood with his eyes closed. Finally, Deyv, irritated, asked, "Why?"
The Archkerri opened his green eyes. "That opened a path to relevant exploration. Yes. What happened was that the khratikl came against a novel experience. They seem to be fairly intelligent, though they are not sentient, that is, capable of self-consciousness. Still, it might be possible that there could be an intelligence equal even to mine which could, at the same time, be without self-consciousness."
Sloosh closed his eyes again.
After a short while, Deyv said loudly, "Sloosh! Where are you?"
"I'm here, where I've always been. I was here when you last addressed me. Oh! I see what you mean.
These symbionts of the ship-creature, though they have a certain intelligence, are still primarily guided by instinct. They expect, guided by their evolutionarily programmed genes, to board an unoccupied tharakorm. So, when they encountered a tharakorm occupied by the Yawtl and one occupied by us, they were in a new situation. They didn't know how to handle it. Thus, instead of attacking us, as true sentients would have, they rejected the situation as outside their instinctual experience. And they returned to the ledge of the mountain to board the next tharakorm that comes along.
"However, their programs have been upset. What will happen to those who come back but who should have been comfortably situated? Will they then have to battle with those who expected that they would inhabit the third one? Is there a pecking order that determines who gets in the front of the line? Or is this determined entirely by the age of the khratikl? Or ... ?"
Deyv sometimes found the Archkerri's speculations interesting. Just now he wanted to know how they were going to survive. Everybody aboard was suffering from hunger, and soon they'd all be thirsty.