They didn't. They started to close in below the men, swimming
effortlessly against the current. Some of them began to clamber out
on the low ledge behind them. They were agile and graceful. There
was something unpleasantly child-like about them. There were fifteen
or twenty of them, and they reminded Harker of a gang of mischievous
kids--only the mischief had a queer soulless quality of malevolence.
Harker led the way faster along the ledge. His knife was drawn and he
carried a short spear in his right hand.
The tone of the river changed. The channel broadened, and up ahead
Harker saw that the cavern ended in a vast shadowy place, the water
spreading into a dark lake, spilling slowly out over a low wide lip of
rock. More of the shining child-things were playing there. They joined
their fellows, closing the ring tighter around the three men.
"I don't like this," McLaren said. "If they'd only make a noise!"
They did, suddenly--a shrill tittering like a blasphemy of childish
laughter. Their eyes shone. They rushed in, running wetly along the
ledge, reaching up out of the water to claw at ankles, laughing. Inside
his tough flat belly Harker's guts turned over.
* * * * *
McLaren yelled and kicked. Claws raked his ankle, spiny needle-sharp
things like thorns. Sim ran his spear clean through a golden breast.
There were no bones in it. The body was light and membranous, and the
blood that ran out was sticky and greenish, like sap. Harker kicked
two of the things back in the river, swung his spear like a ball bat
and knocked two more off the ledge--they were unbelievably light--and
shouted,
"Up there, that high ledge. I don't think they can climb that."
He thrust McLaren bodily past him and helped Sim fight a rearguard
action while they all climbed a rotten and difficult transit. McLaren
crouched at the top and hurled chunks of stone at the attackers. There
was a great crack running up and clear across the cavern roof, scar of
some ancient earthquake. Presently a small slide started.
"Okay," Harker panted. "Quit before you bring the roof down. They can't
follow us." The plannies were equipped for swimming, not climbing. They
clawed angrily and slipped back, and then retreated sullenly to the
water. Abruptly they seized the body with Sim's spear through it and
devoured it, quarreling fiercely over it. McLaren leaned over the edge
and was sick.
Harker didn't feel so good himself. He got up and went on. Sim helped
McLaren, whose ankle was bleeding badly.
This higher ledge angled up and around the wall of the great
lake-cavern. It was cooler and drier here, and the lichens thinned out,
and vanished, leaving total darkness. Harker yelled once. From the echo
of his voice the place was enormous.
Down below in the black water golden bodies streaked like comets in
an ebon universe, going somewhere, going fast. Harker felt his way
carefully along. His skin twitched with a nervous impulse of danger, a
sense of something unseen, unnatural, and wicked.