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Halfway across the room, they were attacked. Tentacles fell around them and others fell outside the group.
Ishmael rammed his torch against the one that looped around his neck and hand, and the tentacle withdrew.
Namalee cut at the tentacle encircling her with a knife. Four savage slashes half-severed the tough skin and muscles, and that tentacle coiled upward into the darkness.
There was the odor of burned flesh as other torches seared the tentacles.
The attack lasted less than a minute. Then they were free without losing a man.
Just as they started to run again, they heard a shout behind them. Ishmael whirled and saw torches flaring in the entrance far behind them. The Booragangahns had gotten through.
"Keep on ru
When they reached the opposite door, over which a web was spun, they stopped. The torches of their enemies showed them struggling against the tentacles. Ishmael ordered the archers to shoot, and four of the pursuers, who were massed together while battling the tentacles, fell. Another volley downed four more, and the enemy broke and ran back to the entrance. But there they turned and fled yelling toward Ishmael's group again. A torch lit up the gray stone beast briefly as it rammed itself through the narrow opening with a scraping of stone against stone. Apparently it had swallowed the second god all the way and now was looking for mere humans as tidbits.
The band went at the same swift pace through the room housing the round creatures with the six legs. These swung down, one after the other, at thirty-second intervals, at the ends of their web-strands. But they did no injury to any except themselves. Torches struck them; knives slashed their legs or their strands from their backs. And soon the party was at the air shaft up which they had entered this unpleasant place.
While three archers stood guard -- with only three arrows left apiece -- the others went down the shaft. This took a long time because a boat had to be filled one by one and then pulled away with the crew lying on their backs. Then another boat had to be pushed under the shaft and this one filled. And the crew of this had to push another boat under.
Ishmael, as captain, waited until all were loaded aboard before he descended. He had expected the pursuers to show up long before the first boat was filled. Something had happened to stop them. He neither saw nor heard them, and he could only speculate that they had paused to fight the stone beast and so had given the tentacled things a chance to get at them.
As soon as his boat dropped away, the gas hissing as it discharged from the bladders, he dropped a signal overboard. Its fuse trailed a slight arc as it fell and then it blew up with a bright white glare that lasted for several seconds. A minute later, something equally white burned in the air several miles to the east. The first mate of the Roolanga had seen the flare go off under the ledge. He had attached one with a burning fuse to a small bladder. This soared up for a thousand feet before its compressed gas and explosive powder from a ground plant were set off.
Now the Roolanga should be rising to meet them, and the great ships above the city should be dropping swiftly.
The boats emerged from under the shadow of the ledge. Above them they saw lights dancing around the lip of the ledge. A row of lights slid out into their sight as a vessel moved out.
The alarm having been given, small boats would be setting out to curve around and under the projecting mass of rock.
A small wind suddenly pushed the boat. The loss of gas was stopped, and the masts were unfolded and set up. Then the arms were revolved and secured and the sails were unfurled. There was no moon, and the Roolanga was showing no lights. But the agreement was that the boats would meet them at a stated altitude and area after the first signal was released. The Roolanga, slowly rising, would also be moving northeast, close-hauled, for a while. Then it would turn and hope that this northwest course would bring it within visual distance of the boats. The big ship did not have much room for maneuvering after that. It would have to turn and sail close-hauled once more.
Ishmael watched the lights of the first vessel to leave the immense shadow that was the surface of the city of Booragangah. If it kept on its present course, it might run into the Roolanga. He looked upward but, of course, could not see the fleet of the Zalarapamtrans as yet. They would not be visible unless the moon appeared before they got close to the city. The moon was due to come over the horizon in about twenty minutes, if the sandglass clock could be trusted.
Ten minutes passed. Ishmael peered into the darkness and occasionally looked back and up. Three more lines of light had appeared. Four vessels were put cruising around, looking for the stealers of their gods. There would be others waiting in the docks, ready to shove out as soon as they saw the signal that they were needed.
Five more minutes went by.
"Where is she?" Ishmael muttered, and then he saw the vast dim shape. It was going northwest as they sailed southeast, and they were on a collision courses Ishmael rattled out orders. A sailor opened a shutter in one side of a lantern-cage enclosing fireflies. The glow was not intense, but they were close enough. A minute later an eye of dull fire winked at them. Thereafter, signals were exchanged, and then the two began maneuvering so the boats could be taken overboard.
Ishmael, looking back, saw the lights of four other vessels putting out from the slots on the edge of the great shelf. And then he saw a dark object coming down swiftly above the city, a tiny object visible only because the moon was up. That should be the giant fire-ship, the Woobarangu. It should be deserted by all except a few on the bridge, who were steering the ship to a spot above the center of the city. A minute or more, and the men on the bridge would climb aboard a boat and drift away. Shortly thereafter, fuses at various places in the giant vessel would burn down to the stores of flammable oil and low-energy explosives derived from the earth plants.
And then...
There it was!
The flame spread out and out, burning so fiercely that even at this distance Ishmael could see the vessel quite clearly. It fell more swiftly as the skins of the bladders were burned away and the gases escaped. The flames illuminated the city below, which was to Ishmael a mass without detail. But he knew that it consisted of a broad area about three miles square of flimsy houses and walks and stores and two levels, all supported by thousands of gas bladders. Here the majority of the population lived and worked, their houses anchored to the earth but almost entirely free of the constant trembling of the earth. The immense cigar shape was falling onto the center of the city, and the light skin and wooden structures would catch fire, and the fire would spread quickly.
The vessel struck. Flaming fragments flew far out as the mass tore through the houses and walks of the two levels and smashed into the rock of the ledge. The fire spread out even faster than he had envisioned. Within a few minutes, a large part of the center was burning.
From where he was, the fire was beautiful. But he could imagine the screaming and the ru