Under the Green Star
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Green Star Rises #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Under the Green Star». Краткое содержание книги:
No man can do more than his best.
At length I managed to extricate myself from the clinging web. And for this I owe thanks to the scarlet ythid loyal Panthon had slain with his arrow. For in my struggles with the tree dragon, my glass rapier had pierced its mailed hide again and again, drenching me from head to toe in reeking dragon blood.
The yellow gore stunk abominably, and I was so besmeared with the stuff that I resembled a refugee from battlefield or charnel house. But the oily liquid which stained my limbs resisted the adhesive properties of the sticky web and gave me more freedom of movement than I might otherwise have enjoyed.
Crawling free from the strands, I climbed along the web to where Niamh lay hopelessly entangled.
“Do not be afraid,” I said. “We still have a chance.”
The brave girl stared up at me. Her face was pale but self-composed, and her amber eyes shone with unquenched courage.
“I am not afraid,” she said, “for you are with me.”
I could think of no reply to this astounding testimony of faith, but inwardly I prayed to the grim gods that Niamh’s faith in me was not misplaced!
In its death convulsions, the ythid had not besplattered the princess with its gore. But the portions of the giant web which entangled her adhered more to her garments than to her flesh; thus, setting her free was a comparatively simple matter of tearing away most of what remained of her robes. It left her clad in garments whose brevity would not have pleased modesty or convention: but at least she was free.
“What can we do now?” she asked.
It was a dilemma. I did not care to linger here, awaiting the approach of the monstrous spider, for it would result in a hopeless struggle. I was unarmed, with nothing to pit against the ferocity of the xoph but sheer strength alone. And the iron vigor of my thews would prove a puny defense against the fanged jaws of the monster denizen of this colossal web.
Our only recourse seemed to be to flee along the web, hoping to reach the nearest tree before the brute was upon us. Luckily, this was a task far less difficult than it may sound to you. For while we were thousands of feet above the forest floor, the Laonese are racially immune to the vertigo that would have left all but the boldest adventurer of my distant planet helpless in a paralysis of giddy terror. And when I had inherited the body of Chong, I had inherited as well his cool nerve and the fearlessness for heights that was an attribute of his race.
As well, the cable strand along which we must travel was far thicker than you might think. While the web strands themselves were of thicknesses that varied from the width of a man’s finger to the width of his thigh, the great anchor cables that secured the web to the tree trunks were truly colossal, as big around as tree trunks on my own world, and so sticky there was very little problem of falling.
So we began to inch our way along the cable, going as swiftly as was humanly possible, but not so swiftly as we could have wished. For a strange chittering sounded from behind us, a dry, hollow sound, like the pattering of crisp leaves. And we looked over our shoulders into a face of frightful horror.
The huge spider had advanced stealthily upon us while I had been busied freeing Niamh—and in the next instant it was upon us in a rush, glittering eyes blazing soullessly into mine, horny mandibles clashing at my throat!
Chapter 10
IN THE GRIP OF THE XOPH
Even now my flesh creeps with horror as memory conjures up that moment of transcendent fright. I am sure I shall relive that nightmare battle on the mile-high web in my dreams for years to come.
Picture for yourself our predicament. We stood, insecurely perched on a spiderweb thousands of feet in the air. With every step—with every slightest motion—the taut cable strand swayed and trembled under our feet. Although the monstrous strand was as thick as a tree trunk, the slightest misstep could hurl us from our precarious perch to a horrible death amid the titanic roots far below us, lost in the impenetrable gloom of the forest floor.
And there, upon that giddy, swaying strand, we faced bare-handedly a monster so fearful and ferocious that I would willingly have challenged a pride of lions, armed only with a peashooter, if I but had a choice. Now did I truly have reason to regret the loss of my sword. It had been only a flimsy dress rapier, and not my mighty two-handed broadsword, but in such a predicament I would have felt myself fortunate to be armed even with a dagger.
As for the thing I faced and must fight, words alone cannot convey its frightfulness or ferocity. Imagine a spider grown to the proportions of an elephant and you will have only the faintest conception of the multi-legged horror that loomed before us.
The xoph was unspeakably repulsive and loathsome to the sight. Its cylindrical body was encased in a horny carapace of slimy, glistening chitin as tough as armorplate. This oily thorax terminated in the obscene bulge of its abdomen, which hung down beneath it, the egg sac hideously bloated and swollen. Like Terrene spiders, the xoph has eight jointed legs clad in greasy chitin, terminating in multiple claws; and it hung aloft on these towering skeletal limbs, glaring down upon us with eyes like clusters of black jewels—eyes aflame with cold ferocity and mindless lust.
The stench of the spider-thing was overpowering, a sickening reek of decay and corruption like an open sewer. But what made the xoph so loathsome was that it was snowy-white, a repulsive albino thing, its stalk-like legs and bloated belly shaggy with stinking white fur, besoiled with oily droppings.
Its face was a monstrous mask of indescribable horror. It bore not the slightest resemblance to the face of beast or man, bird or reptile. It was a shield-shaped casque of greasy chitin, lobed and crescentiform, rising to either side of the central mouth orifice in twin bosses or stubby horns. The eyes of the thing were completely inhuman, swollen structures of many-faced ebon crystal, glittering with blood-lust. And, instead of a mouth, the monster had a drooling slit which worked to and fro obscenely. From the corners of this repulsive orifice two jointed mandibles thrust clackingly at me—they were as large as the arms of a full-grown man, ending in curious multiplex claws which rubbed and rasped and clicked together in continuous motion.
It was in the grip of the dexter mandible that I was held, writhing helplessly. The chitinous claw resembled the pincers of a gigantic albino crab, with sawtoothed edges of durable horny stuff. The grip of the mandible was crushing and I feel certain that the pincers would have torn off my arm had it not been for the fortunate fact that the mandible had gripped me on the upper arm, just where I wore an armlet of heavy silver.
Niahm screamed in hopeless despair as the stinking thing pounced upon us with a rush, seizing me in its foremandible. I, too, felt a moment of sickening despair as the xoph tore me from the sticky web strand with a surge of irresistible strength. I hung there above the web, completely helpless in the crushing grip of the spider monster, dangling like a mouse from the jaws of a cat.
Had it been able to grasp me as well with its other foremandible, there is no slightest doubt in my mind but that the giant spider could have torn me in half with a a single flexing of its foreclaws. But as it was, the mandibles branched from either side of that awful, drooling, lipless slit of a mouth, and the width of this orifice was such that the second mandible could not easily get a grip on me, although it scissored with a horrible rasping click only inches from my legs, which swung to and fro as the albino spider-thing swung me about.
Ere long, giving up any further attempt to seize me with both mandibles, it brought the dexter mandible near that gruesomely slavering mouth slit. Within the fleshless maw I could see multiple-horned tusk-rows grinding. If once the monster spider had me in its bony jaws, my flesh would be mangled to pulp in an instant.