Страница 53 из 96
"Shut your ugly mouth, you old hag!" Kiyt snarled.
He ran toward the stern then, while Feersh, shrieking curses, swung her bony arms around, hoping to strike him, after which, drained by the effort, she slumped to the deck like an old dirty rag.
At that moment Sloosh buzzed distress, and his helpers shouted. Deyv spun to see the pole flying through the air over the bow. Its other end was in the jaws of a giant fish.
"It came up and snatched the net of fish!" Jeydee wailed.
If they hadn't been so utterly tired, they would have been more vigorous in expressing their despair. As it was, they moaned or stared open-mouthed and were silent. Then they looked at each other with fatiguered eyes. A few, past caring, went to sleep shortly afterward.
Deyv sat with his head against his knees. After a while he raised it, and in a hollow voice said, "Well, as long as the beast goes in the right direction; we'll stay on it. When it goes off, we'll take to our boat."
"That's rather evident," Sloosh said.
He didn't understand yet that human beings often spoke the obvious just to hear their own voices and also to inspire a comment on the unobvious.
Unable to ask anybody to do something that he didn't think he had strength to do, Deyv climbed the foremast. It took the last of his energy to shi
Too weak to stay up long, he slid back down the mast. He told Sloosh what he'd seen, then said, "Can you stand watch? We'll have to keep an eye on the beast. The moment it veers off, we'll get in the boat
We'll just have to hope that that is land."
The plant-man buzzed that he would try to stay awake. Deyv said that he knew that Sloosh could do it.
He tied himself to a rope, one end of which was attached to the tiny bowsprit, and he hurtled into sleep.
It seemed to him that he'd just closed his eyes when the Archkerri's huge red hand was shaking him. It was no use trying to ignore it, though he pretended that he couldn't be awakened for 'a short time.
Sloosh pulled him up by his hand.
"We're heading back toward the island."
The peak had long since sunk out of sight, but Deyv could see that they were going downwind. Ahead, big silvery fish leaped out of the ocean. They seemed to be going too fast for the beast to catch them, but that wasn't stopping it from chasing them.
"We'll have to get on the boat," Sloosh said. "If it's land you saw, not clouds, we might make it." He hesitated, then pointed outward. "Unless that adult beast decides to eat us."
Deyv turned around. While he'd slept, a full-grown sailship-creature had appeared. It was scudding along, all sails unfurled, heading toward them from the direction of the island. Shortly thereafter, their beast turned away from it and in the direction they wanted to go.
Time passed. The adult slowly gained on the young. Sloosh said that this was because its sail area was much larger while its body, or hull, was perhaps only twenty feet longer. "I would say, though," Sloosh continued, "that the one we're on is not very young. It's probably a juvenile."
They ate and slept, gaining strength, while the chase went on. They didn't know why their beast was ru
The clouds, or land, on the horizon came into sight of those on the deck. They, or it, grew larger, though it was still impossible to determine its nature. Finally, the adult was only about six hundred feet behind and a hundred feet to one side of theirs. Then the young one changed course and presently was ru
A long time passed after this. Steadily, the large creature closed the gap. And then it was ru
"Why is it doing this?" Vana said. "Do the adults eat the young?"
"I don't see how they could," Sloosh said, "unless their jaws can tear through the hard bone of the hull.
But I've an idea. However, since the question is so close to being answered, I won't voice my conclusion.
Well, perhaps I should. You could then see how close my speculation is to the reality. But if I do, I might cause a panic. On the other hand, knowing what to expect might avert or diminish the panic. What should I do?"
He closed his eyes. Immediately thereafter, they opened—and widely. The big beast had slanted in, and the side of its bow crashed against the middle of the young one's hull. Everybody standing was hurled to the deck. Seven times the collision was repeated, each time the attacker striking a place nearer the young one's bow. Then it came alongside until its front was ahead of its quarry and its bow was behind it.
Three openings appeared in the deck of the young beast. The male slave Shlip had to scramble to keep from falling in as the leathery skin beneath him started to separate along a hitherto invisible seam.
"What's going on?" Deyv cried.
"Just as I thought," Sloosh said.
Three round openings had also appeared on the deck of the chaser. Out of each rose a cylinder of the same color and seemingly of the same material as the hull. The cylinders were vertical and twice as long as Deyv and had a diameter about equal to that of his torso. Their bases were surrounded by some gray gristly stuff, the organs or muscles that had lifted them from below-deck.
Now the three cylinders moved downward, stopping at a 45-degree angle to the deck and revealing that the other ends were open. For a short while, nothing happened. And then, simultaneously, they erupted with a loud bang. Out of each shot something dark and blurred which arced over the gap between the two beasts.
Deyv, along with the others, yelled, and he fell to the deck. Only Sloosh, who'd stationed himself at the bow, remained standing. Lying on his back, Deyv couldn't see the flying objects closest to him. But the one coming down near the aft looked cone-shaped. All three struck near the openings, burst, and splattered Out a sticky green fluid.
Sloosh buzzed loudly, "I would have thought you'd have followed my example after my warning."
"What warning?" Deyv screamed, but he got up and raced toward the plant-man. Vana followed him a moment later. The Yawtl was too far away to hear Sloosh, but, seeing the two take off for the bow, he ran for the stern. Jum and Aejip came bounding in to Deyv a moment later.
The recoil of the explosions had rocked the adult a little. When it had regained its former attitude and the cylinders were again steady, or as steady as they could be in the swelling sea, and as the nose of the beast started to go down, and the beast began to roll upward, the cylinders banged. Again, three cones soared out. Feersh was dragged stumbling by Jowanarr toward the bow. The others had reacted even more slowly; they seemed bewildered and uncertain which way to run. The slave named Shlip dashed toward the stern as the second salvo exploded, but he slipped in the green fluid from the first and skidded shrieking into the ocean.
Kiyt, dashing by the rearmost opening, was engulfed in a burst of blood and fluid as the impact of the cone knocked him sideways into the opening. Deyv glimpsed a foot going down into the hole, the rest of him was a red and green mess.