Another sleep-time came. The humans and the Archkerri were getting hungry. But they went to bed, such as it was, with Vana standing watch. It seemed to Deyv he had just shut his eyes when he was awakened. Vana was shaking his shoulder. A very fragrant odour hung in the air.
‘It must be time. The birds are gone.’
He got up. The others were all awake. At least, he supposed the Archkerri was. He slept standing up.
‘Now’s the time,’ Sloosh said.
They went down the hillside and onto the sticky white-streaked mud at the bottom of the hollow. Deyv felt repulsion and some fear. Despite what the Archkerri said, or maybe because of it, he was not sure that the stuff was not fatal to humans.
Approaching the tharakorm, Deyv looked up one of the supports. Then he climbed up its curve, gripping with his hands and walking on his feet like a monkey. While Vana was ascending, he lowered his rope. Sloosh tied the end around Jum, and Deyv hauled the dog up. He repeated the feat with Aejip, whose claws could not grip the smooth hard stuff.
Sloosh then tied the rope around the junction of his lower and upper torsos. He bent the latter until it was parallel to the ground, and he began inching up the support. His four thighs gripped the arch of the tharakorm and moved in coordination with his two hands. Meanwhile, the two humans pulled on the rope to relieve him of some of his weight. After much sweating and straining, they got the plant-man over the edge of the deck.
He stood up and said, ‘Now, we’ll see if my weight added to yours is too much. I doubt it, since the pack of khratikl it carries must be more than our combined weights.’
Deyv, Vana and the cat went below decks to explore. Instead of ladders, the thing had grown ramps with corrugated surfaces. These allowed the claws of its symbionts enough purchase to ascend them. They were also good enough for the humans and the cat. But the dog and Archkerri might have trouble.
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 was enough to see by. The portholes on the side and the entrances on top admitted light. The very thin though hard walls leaked light. Only in the innermost rooms was it so dark that the humans could barely make out their way. The khratikl, however, had cat-like eyes, so they would have no more trouble seeing than Aejip.
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 non-operating, 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 had not 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 should not 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 did not 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 was not going to tilt if he went to one side of it.
The animals did not 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 what we have to worry about.’
The trees along the edge of the out-thrust were alive with khratikl Their squeakings 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 ship-creature 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 could not deplete it.
‘The Yawtl’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 towards 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 towards 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 human-like hands, the leather 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 did not 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 programmes 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 to 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.
15
Without symbionts to supply food for gas generation, the tharakorm would slowly settle. At least, that was Sloosh’s theory. However, if the cell walls did seep gas, they were not doing so swiftly enough for the present crew. Its members would be dead long before it touched the ground. At Sloosh’s direction, they punched one spot on a wall with the sword and beat it with the tomahawks. The wall, though thinner than Vana’s fingernail, was amazingly tough. It took all the time between two sleeps to break through. However, lack of food and water made the job longer. The labour also made them hungrier and thirstier than if they’d been resting. At its end they were utterly exhausted.
A strong wind came up and sped them along for at least a hundred miles. The Archkerri lost the red trail of the Yawtl then.
‘We may never find him now,’ he said. Tor one thing, he’s alone. He may not be able to make a hole in the cell of his tharakorm. Even if he does, he won’t be able to do it as quickly as we did. Thus, his tharakorm will go much farther than ours. And it is undoubtedly travelling in a different direction from ours. The wind must have shifted and blown him off our path before this big wind came up.’
‘At the moment,’ Vana said in a dry cracked voice, ‘I care only about getting water to drink. And then some food.’
At last the ship-creature landed on the roof of the jungle in the midst of the tossing tops of the trees. The moment it struck, it tilted, and all its crew were rolled off the deck and into the trees. The second it was relieved of their weight, the tharakorm soared and was gone.
Deyv, the last to be shed, saw it rise even as he pitched sideways into the foliage. Yelling with fright, he clawed outward. His hands caught liana, which broke, and he fell deeper. Something, probably a branch, struck him, knocking him half-senseless. Somehow, he caught hold of a thin branch. It broke, and he fell flat on his back on a large branch.
The wind was knocked out of him. For a moment, he did not know where he was. But once his wits were gathered, he knew that he was, for the time being, safe.
Miraculously, nobody was seriously hurt. Sloosh, by far the heaviest, had plunged deeper. A network of liana had finally held him. Jum had landed almost by the Archkerri’s side a few seconds later. Unable to hold onto the branch above Sloosh, the dog had been precipitated, howling, onto the plant-man.
Vana was clinging to the end of a branch bending under her weight. She managed to crawl up it to a thicker part. Aejip was hanging onto the trunk, her claws digging in.
It took a long time for Deyv to work his way above the Archkerri and the dog. He tied one end of his rope to the junction of a smaller branch and to that on which he lay. Sloosh tied the other end of the rope to Jum, and Deyv lowered the dog to a big branch. Sloosh went down the rope then, his immensely strong hands and arms gripping it and supporting his six hundred pounds. Deyv expected the rope to break, but it held.
They rested on the branch a long time, eating fruit plucked from surrounding branches. Once his belly was filled and the juices had eased his thirst, Deyv slept for a while. On awakening, he and Vana began the work of getting the dog and the plant-man to earth. When the four of them had reached the ground, they found the cat devouring the decaying carcass of a ten-pound rodent. Deyv insisted that she share it with the dog. Though she snarled protest, she did as ordered.
Within two sleep-times, they’d healed their bruises, scratches and contusions. They came out of the jungle onto a wide plain. This was covered with grasses of various kinds, none higher than three feet. It was populated by herds of herbivores, attendant predators and vast numbers of birds and flying mammals. And, of course, the ever-present insects and quasi-insects.
Halfway across the plain they came across a strange object lying against two small trees. Its cylindrical shape and the cone at one end made Deyv think at first that it was a House of the ancients. It was a hundred feet long, had a diameter of thirty-five feet, and was of some hard greenish material. On seeing that it had no windows and only one entrance, Deyv decided that it wasn’t a House. How could anybody have entered it when it was upright? The doorway would be fifty feet above the ground.
‘Very curious,’ Sloosh said. ‘I don’t remember coming across anything like this in my studies.’
The round door had no handle, but there was a plate that was slightly inset near by. Deyv pushed the plate, and the door began to swing inward.
He and Vana jumped back, ready to run if anything dangerous-looking came out. But when the door stopped, it revealed a room empty except for some furniture.
Sloosh buzzed his equivalent of ‘Hmm!’
Jum growled, and Deyv looked at him. The dog was not facing the cylinder, as he’d expected. He was pointing back towards the direction from which they’d come.
‘Oh, oh!’ Deyv said. ‘Trouble perhaps.’
The others also looked. Trotting towards them was a pack of big ugly creatures larger than Jum. Their heads were somewhat dog-like but they had two canines which extended at least a foot below the lower jaw. They were somewhat humpbacked, and their rears sloped downward. The bristly fur was grey and marked with small black crosses. Now and then one gave a peculiar high-pitched cry, half-snarl, half-laughter.
When they got about a hundred feet from the travellers, they stopped and seemed to go into a conference. In the centre of the ring they formed was the biggest and the ugliest one, and they seemed to be addressing their horrid cries at him. By now the strong wind carried their odour to Deyv’s party, a stench like rotten flesh mixed with a smell of skunk and garlic.
Vana said, ‘I don’t like this at all. Are they actually talking?’
‘I doubt it,’ Sloosh said. ‘Their foreheads aren’t high enough for that kind of intelligence. It’s just a behaviour pattern. Which doesn’t make them any less dangerous.’
The plant-man went up to the doorway and looked inside. ’The walls are even thinner than those of the tharakorm, but they’re opaque. The furniture seems to be glued to the floor. Or perhaps it’s just a formed extension of the material, a seamless extrusion design.’
He bent his knees and levelled his upper torso with the ground. He thrust his huge hands under the cylinder where it met the ground.
Deyv gasped when the giant object lifted up above Sloosh’s head.
‘It’s no cause for wonder,’ Sloosh said. ‘Come here. You can raise it easily.’
Fearful but afraid to show that he was, Deyv put his hands by the Archkerri’s. Sloosh stepped back, leaving him to support it. Deyv cried out because he expected the cylinder to drop. But he had only a little trouble keeping it propped up against the trees. It surely weighed no more than eighty pounds.
He let it down and said, ‘What is it? It’s not a House.’
‘Not the kind you’re used to, anyway.’
Sloosh looked at the ugly beasts. ‘They’re breaking up now. I think we should take refuge in this artifact.’
The circle had become an extended line, with the leader in front of it. Instead of an immediate advance, as Deyv anticipated, the line spread out to the sides, then the ends began curving in. The predators were not only going to make a frontal attack b
ut they intended to charge on the flanks as well.
Sloosh buzzed that Deyv and Vana should get at one end of the cylinder and he would take the other.
They obeyed, though they wondered what he was up to. Sloosh, having stationed himself below the conical end, shrilled, ‘Now, you two! Lift up on it and carry it my way!’
It would have been easy to do so if the wind had not pressed it so strongly against the trees. They had to lift it up and slide it along at the same time. The side of the cylinder was like a big sail.
Though occupied with his task, Deyv did not forget the grey cross-marked beasts. Glances showed him that they had stopped. Their cries were puzzled. The leader had trotted closer to the cylinder, then stopped, his head cocked to one side.
When the one tree had been passed, and the other was halfway along the cylinder, Sloosh said, ‘Put it down! But hang onto it! Otherwise, one of the ends may swing around, and it could roll away!’
‘I think I see what he means to do,’ Deyv muttered.
Vana asked, ‘What?’
Sloosh buzzed, ‘Now, Deyv! Tell your animals to get inside!’
Under other circumstances, Jum and Aejip might have been reluctant to enter the cylinder. The obvious intent of the ugly beasts made them eager to take shelter, however. They dived into the doorway.
Sloosh said, ‘Now, Vana, you get in! Hang on, Deyv!’
Deyv struggled to keep his end from swinging round under the wind. Vana darted alongside the cylinder and into its doorway.
‘Now work your way towards the entrance! I’ll be doing the same! If one end swings out, run as fast as you can and get inside!’
Synchronizing their progress step by step, they moved towards each other. Deyv’s push against the cylinder wall would not have been as strong as Sloosh’s, but the plant-man was trying to push with the same force as Deyv’s. Before they were within twenty feet of each other, the cylinder began to swivel out at the end behind Sloosh.
By then the pack leader decided it was time to attack. Though no doubt hesitant because of the strangeness of the cylinder, he would not stand seeing his prey get away. He howled wolf-like sounds and sped towards the doorway. Those behind him also charged, and the flanks broke into a run.