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Ishmael, who considered this world to be a Pacific of Air, thought of it as a bottom-feeder. "It intended to flush us out by making a great noise, and so it tried to crash through to us. But now it will skim just above the roof of this jungle, pulling itself along, and it will go swiftly. More swiftly than we can run through this tangle."
Ishmael had not asked her how the shivaradoo ate its prey, but he did so now.
"Why do you want to know?" she said, shivering. "If you are dead, what difference...?"
"Tell me!"
She moved her head from side to side as if she were trying to locate the beast. It must have stopped to listen, because it no longer made a sound.
"It drips an acid on the kill," she whispered, "and this turns the flesh and the bones into a mush which it sucks up through the tentacles."
Ishmael had had a wild idea of throwing some of its poisoned darts into its mouth and so killing it. But this idea was no good now, though it probably would not have been even if the beast had possessed a mouth large enough to have swallowed a man.
"It will drift over us as silently and lightly as a cloud," she said, "its tentacles probing here and there for the heat of our bodies, and its hearing organs alert for the slightest sound. And if we don't run, it will pinpoint us and shoot a dozen darts at once. And if we run again, it will follow us until we are exhausted and then will kill us."
"I wonder how strong those tentacles are?" he said so softly that she could not catch the words. He repeated them and got the expected question, "Why do you want to know?"
"I don't really know myself," he said, and he put a hand on her cold and perspiring skin. "Let me think."
He knew now how a whale must feel. He was down on the bottom, sounding, as it were, while the killer, moving on the surface, waited and watched. Sooner or later, the hunted must make a break for it, and then the hunter would pounce.
The noise of plants bending and of plants being released as the beast started to pull itself along was renewed.
Namalee clung to Ishmael and whispered, "We must run! And if we do...!"
"It can't chase us in two different directions," Ishmael said. "I am going to run northward, north by northwest, actually, to take me away from it at an angle. You will count to fifteen after it starts to chase me -- not before -- and then run southward."
"You are sacrificing yourself for me!" she said. "But why?"
"In my world, where similar situations occur, the male is expected to defend the female in the best ma
Impulsively, he kissed her on the mouth and then he turned and ran as swiftly as he could through the heavy growths.
The noise of the shivaradoo's passage increased.
He ran on until his feet were caught in a tangle of creepers and he pitched headlong onto the ground. In front of him was an especially dense complex of creepers and vines strung over two large fallen plants. He crawled into it, worming and pulling until he was between the logs. He hoped that none of the creepers was in a mood to dine.
Ishmael reached up and snapped off a pod from a stalk. He punched a hole in it but did not drink. He set it by his side and stared through the tangles until he saw the shadowy mass of the shivaradoo appear above the jungle top.
The enormous moon glittered on the many minute mica-like particles encrusting its skin. It was indeed as Namalee had described it, a pancake-thin creature with bulges of skin on top which enclosed gas bladders. Its many tentacles moved about, sniffing for heat, while other tentacles clung to the plants beneath it.
After a few seconds, it pulled itself closer. It stopped while the feelers probed around, and then it moved closer again.
Ishmael flattened out even more but kept his head raised. He had to see what it was doing. His heart thudded so hard that he was sure the monster could hear it, and his throat and mouth were as dry as the leaves of an old manuscript in a desert monastery.
And soon as dead -- perhaps, he thought.
The beast, having located him, extended six tentacles which, one after the other, shot darts. Each thunked into the log behind which he lay. He counted each and then quickly reached over and jerked two loose before the second barrage came from another six tentacles.
The shivaradoo waited for several minutes during which time seemed to be gold-beaten out into a tissue as thin as the film over a snake's eye.
Perhaps it was waiting to determine, by the loss of heat, if it had struck and killed its prey.
Apparently deciding that it had failed, it pulled itself downward until it bent two dozen stems beneath it and then it pulled itself forward. The poles scraped against the lower side without injury to the creature. Poles sprang up and swished leaves and creepers and vines around as it passed them. About twenty feet from Ishmael, the monster was no longer able to force passage. This was to be no deterrent, since it could extend the tentacles on the part nearest Ishmael not only up to him but past him if it wished.
It was cautious now, however. Perhaps because it could detect that its prey was hiding behind a log. Several tentacles lifted and moved out into the air at a height about ten feet above him. Several others slid along the ground, their fore parts raised. Ishmael waited, not sure what he could do. In a minute, both worlds, the ancient -- his natal world -- and the present -- the future -- would be lost to him.
Namalee had said that the monster could not expel its darts with any force unless it was through a straightened-out tentacle. A bend considerably decreased the force of the air. This may have explained why it did not shoot immediately. It wanted to be able to use its tentacles as perfectly straight tubes.
Ishmael could hear the whoosh of indrawn air into the bladder which served it as an air tank. It gulped again and again, as it compressed the air.
One tentacle, looking in the moonlight-edged darkness like the trunk of a starved elephant or a headless cobra, moved along the ground ahead of the others. Ishmael had raised his head swiftly, seen it, and then ducked back behind the log. He estimated how soon it would glide over the log and held between two fingers of one hand a dart and in the other hand the stone knife.
Above him, three tentacles curved downward, looking with the blind eyes which saw only the heat of his body. Then one dipped down as if to get close enough so that, even with a considerably reduced charge of air, it could still flick a bone-shaft deep enough to drive its poison into him.
A tentacle curved over the log and stopped. Sniffing for the heat of a living body, it moved back and forth. Then it began to straighten out.
Ishmael rammed the needle point of his dart into the open end of the extension.
Immediately after, he rolled back across the log behind him and into the net of vegetation in back of it.
Ishmael rolled back between the two logs, picked up a dart with one hand, leaped up and jumped at the emptied tentacle.
The tentacle retreated, but slowly, as if it were not accustomed to reacting defensively. Ishmael grabbed the tip and this time drove the point of the dart into the soft fleshy part just inside the opening.
The tentacle did react violently then. It dragged him back under the huge disk of the beast, past the fore tentacles. The aft tentacles, which had been facing the other way, perhaps to act as a rear defense, began to turn around toward him.