"My parents dyed my hair, and with another name I got by for a while. I
was going to be a field worker, but they caught up with me. They always
do. Anyway, as I was saying, this creature is much like an ianthina, or
snail, of earth. It breathes through a siphon, or tubular proboscis. It
uses this siphon to suck in air with which it builds these rafts for
itself, to keep its heavy body and shell afloat. It's an adventurer
like you, Moljar. It spends its life floating or sailing about like a
ship."
Moljar grunted. He moved one corded arm behind her. She shifted a
little.
"Very interesting thing," she said. "Biology. When this ianthina
decides to build its raft, it exudes a sticky mucous over the surface
of the sea, layer after layer of it. Then it draws air into its siphon
and permits the bubbles to escape beneath the mucous to which they
cling. These air sacks imprison the air as the mucous hardens. And
we have this very strong raft, a life boat with air tanks. Aren't we
lucky?"
The raft jolted violently. "Are we?" said Moljar. "Maybe it does not
want to share its raft."
A number of tentacles slithered up and over the edge of the raft. Two
antenna with slimy knobs stood up and quivered at Moljar.
The girl tried to ignore the sight. "But this raft is better than any
man has ever been able to build." Her voice tightened as more of the
ianthina surged into view. "This snail can make more bubbles at will,
and it can enlarge its raft whenever it wants to."
There was a sudden upsurging height of gigantic pink-fleshed bulk. It
rose up until it towered over its raft. A little above the level of
the water they could see its brilliantly colored spiral shell-house
gleaming olive-green with streaks and spots of purple, violet and black.
The body of the ianthina continued to exude outward from its shell.
From it a thick tendon of flesh spread out to either side to form the
frame work of its raft, an integral part of its giant body.
"We've got to get this craft moving someway toward Anghore," said
Moljar.
She stared at him, open mouthed, and then said, "Is that all? How will
you summon your genii, or is that you?"
He shrugged. "It must be done. We are wasting time. First we must burn
this shell away from the raft. It encumbers us."
She was shaking her head as he crouched on his knees, leveling the gun
at a point beneath the ianthina's waving antenna. He was about to press
the stud, then cursed and fell sidewise beneath the long descending
squeal.
* * * * *
Attracted by the glow of the ianthina, a monstrous bat had dived
suddenly toward them from somewhere up in that dense grey curtain.
Neither of them saw its giant webbed wings until it fanned them like an
abrupt deadly wind.
"Burn it!" scream Mahra, as the bat's hideous evilly grinning mouth
opened to reveal rows of yellowed teeth, and its gleaming red eyes
bored toward them through the mist. "I lost my electro in the water."
Moljar was shaking his head. He tossed her the blaster. "You. Burn
the ianthina free from the raft." The bat had sped by, circled, was
returning. "This bat can do us some good!"
Moljar stood up and met the sweep of the bat's flexing claws. Just in
time he leaped upward between them, and clutched the bat's thick furred
belly. He felt the ratty teeth clack shut behind him as he was raised
upward into the swirling vapor.
His nose curled, and he choked with the stench of the beast's
vermin-infested fur. Then, still gripping the coarse hair with one
hand, he raised his knife with the other. A quick long slash brought a
fearsome scream hissing in his face. He slashed again and again until
the probing blade found the beast's heart.
Gore spilled over him as he clung to the now wet hair. It got too
slippery to hold. He grabbed the flailing claws as the gasping,
thrashing creature plummeted seaward. The bat's body flopped into the
water not far from the raft. It beat futilely with one foot, spinning
in weakening frothing circles. Suddenly it was dead.
Moljar worked frantically against time. The blood would attract every
kind and condition of sea monster. He hacked and strained at the joint
where the huge wing joined the body. The stench almost overpowered him
as he floundered about. But finally the great ribbed wing came free.
Moljar's breath was coming in deep gusts as he dragged himself up onto
the raft and pulled part of the wing up after him. He sat on it to
anchor it while he rested.
He looked at the girl. She nodded. "You're pretty brave, for a
half-breed."
He grunted breathlessly.
She came closer and handed him his blaster. "I burned it away. I burned
its ganglia first, which it used for a brain. Then I severed the
tendons which fastened it to its float. Anything else?"
Moljar was up again now, hacking at the thick tough surface of one end
of the raft. "Yes. Watch that bat wing. Don't let it slide away. It is
what we must have to reach Anghore."
"What are you doing now? And what's the wing for?"
He answered carelessly, "I'm going to make us a sail from the wing.
It is almost a perfect sail of its kind. I figure the gyro brought us
halfway across the sea. Maybe we have a third of the way to go. I have
a compass and I saw what direction we were following before we crashed.
With a fair wind, and luck, we should reach shore within a day."
She stared with no attempt, now, to conceal her admiration for the
barbarian. "For a half-breed," she said, "you've got a brain."
Moljar said nothing. He had finished digging the hole in the surface
of the raft. He next cut long strips of leather from his tunic for
rigging. The twenty-foot-high leading edge of the bat's wing, a high
curving spar, he stepped deeply in the hole, like a mast. Soon they
were moving through the fantastic sea before a slight, lethargic breeze.
Their blaster protected them many times from the countless varieties of
sea and air creatures that constantly attacked them. Moljar devised a
sea-anchor by cutting off one of the air sacks from beneath the raft,
and tying it to one end of a long leather rope. When the wind blew in
the wrong direction, he threw out the sea-anchor.
There was little difference between night and day, except that the
phosphorescence dimmed and was replaced by a grayer, more sickly light.
And the high, gracefully-curved membrane of the bat's ribbed wing
arched above them like the bizarre rigging of the junks that ply the
Martian canals between the ruins of Phreer and Sumph-Logan. Black, with
veins of dried blood, it caught the wind and tautened like the black
sails of ancient pirate craft.
But though they could fight the monsters that flew and swam about them
they could not fight the sea itself. The sea is cunning. It can bide
its time, and spring with more violence than the greatest beast. The
wind was its ally.
It was late the following afternoon that Mahra's hypersensitive nerves
detected the distant pounding of the surf against high crags. They both
visualized the dark mountains of Maghrone where the dull spires and
minarets of Anghore towered up from its granite sea wall thousands of
feet into the mist.
The thunderous surf grew in volume to a steady roaring as their
makeshift craft bore them shoreward.
Then, abruptly, Moljar's nostrils quivered. He leaped to his feet and
his black mane matted and curled as his eyes strained upward. "The
cloud layers," he said. "Look!"
Each cloud layer was moving rapidly in different directions. "A storm!"
cursed Moljar. "The wind and sea will pulp us on the rocks!"
Mahra cowered down, clutching at the floor of the raft. One hand
gripped the bone mast of the bat's wing. She reached up the other, and
Moljar's broad yellow hand closed over it, and held it in a silent bond.
The sound of the descending storm came from afar. It rose higher and
higher, reaching the pitch of a thousand shrieking giants. A colossal
comber bore toward them, lifting up, and up. Their eyes followed its
curling summit, helpless, bold pygmies. A wall of blue, foaming with
white like a mad beast, translucent as they saw it towering up through
the swirling vapor. Then it collapsed over them.
Moljar's hand gripped hers. A vise that all the frenzied pounding of
the ocean could not break. As the tons of water crushed them down,
shattered the raft, hurled it away like chaff, their hands were locked.
Their ears rang. Their minds cried out and were smothered. Coughing,
blinded, they were absorbed by the sea.