Chapter VIII: Beasts of the Dark

So Cabot lay and slept on the narrow ledge about a foot above the surface of the subterranean stream of the caves of the lost river of Kar. His sleep was fitful and troubled by dreams, through which there stalked Formians, and ant-bears, and Prince Yuri, and dead Cupian babies.

Often he would awake with a shriek of horror as some one of the nightmare figures became too realistic. His cry would echo and reverberate throughout distant vaulted arches of the cave, until finally it would vanish amid the dripping and rippling of the waters, and all would be silence again. Then Cabot would drift off once more into troubled sleep.

One of his dreams was that he was lying in the Stillman infirmary at Harvard with cancer of the foot. His was an unusually rapid case, for he could actually watch the progress of the disease. At first the sensations were rather pleasant, as though some one were massaging the foot, while he could see the skin peel off and gradually disappear. But, as the disease worked its way deeper into the tissues, the feeling gradually changed to a mild pain. A heavy weight seemed to be holding his leg motionless, although he could see nothing on the hospital cot to account for it. The bones of his foot now lay exposed, and the blood oozed out between them as though it were being sucked by a vacuum cleaner.

Then suddenly such an intense pain shot through his leg as to cause him to wake with a start, and to jerk his leg and shake it violently as though to rid his foot of the disease. The result was a loud splash in the water close by. Quite evidently some creature had been suckling and gnawing his foot, and had been kicked by him into the quiet stream.

Cabot sprang to his knees. The splashing continued, and indicated that the creature was attempting to crawl out of the water back onto the ledge to finish its rudely interrupted meal. But it was clearly having considerable difficulty in getting a foothold. So Cabot crept in the direction of the sounds and ran his hand along the edge of the ledge. His fingers came in contact with two webbed paws, which did not relinquish their grip at his touch. So, drawing back his hand, he doubled up his fist and then shot it out just above and between the two paws. It struck a slimy snout, which snapped feebly ere it gave way. Then a rippling splash, followed by silence.

Cabot waited for a few moments for the return of the creature. Then examined his foot. It appeared to be bloody and slightly lacerated, but not seriously damaged. His fingers were bruised from their terrific impact with the face of the aquatic monster. He was naked and cold. His toga and radio set were gone. But otherwise he seemed to be all right.

Thoroughly aroused now, he stood erect, stretched his arms and legs, drew a few deep breaths, and engaged in some rapid setting-up exercises. These over, he felt much better, ready in fact to resume his journey. But just how to resume his journey presented considerable of a problem.

Myles laughed grimly to himself as he reflected that now he did not even know in what direction lay the north. How, then, could he continue northward? This question was, of course, absurd. The immediate problem was not one of the points of the compass, but rather was one of getting out of these caves at all. He sat down on the ledge again to think.

Thus he remained for some time, but no bright ideas came. Merely longings for Lilla, grief for the death of their baby son, and despair for the condition of Cupia. But at last he roused himself. This would never do!

A ripple of water drew his attention to the river which flowed by. The river!

“It must flow somewhere,” he mused. “Why, probably it even flows north! For that was the direction when I crawled into it to escape the fire set by the Formians. As it entered these grottoes, so must it eventually leave them again. If I swim down stream, there will be no danger of circling, and sooner or later I will either emerge into daylight again—or be drowned. But what matter? Drowning won’t kill me any deader than starvation on this ledge.”

So saying, he dipped his hand into the stream to determine the direction of the current. But, as he did so, a slimy body just beneath the surface brushed his fingertips. Hastily he snatched his hand away. No river for him!

Instead he would walk down stream along the ledge, in the hope that the ledge would persist. At least he could follow the ledge as far as it went, and postpone his plunge into the depths until the ledge ended. So he groped his way cautiously along. The river wound in and out through the cave for over a stad, and the ledge followed it.

But finally Myles came to a place where his groping foot hung in the air. The ledge had abruptly terminated. He drew back his foot and leaned against the wall for a few moments. Then sat down on the ledge, reclined backward to rest his shoulders against the wall, and fell clear over, for there was no wall there. Scrambling quickly to his feet, he bumped his head with a resounding thwack which felled him to the floor again.

For some time he nursed his aching head. As his senses recovered from the shock, he realized that he had fallen through the mouth of a small tunnel which led away at right angles from the river. So into this tunnel he crawled.

In spite of being on his hands and knees, he made faster progress than he had along the ledge, for now there was no danger of falling off into the river, and hence no need of feeling his way so carefully. Thus he pressed rapidly on for quite a distance, in fact until the passageway enlarged and he was able once more to stand erect.

“Yahoo!” he shouted, and the reverberations of his voice showed him that he was in a large vaulted cave, very similar to that through which flowed the river Kar, except that here there was no river. The reverberations were followed by a fluttering noise, like that of a flurry of dried leaves before an October storm. It was as though his earthly voice had had some tangible physical effect in stirring up a disturbance in this grotto. But the exact nature of the disturbance he could not imagine. He did not need to imagine it, however, for in a moment it burst upon him, a fluttering shower of winged creatures about the size of sparrows. But their wings, as they brushed his face—and his hands, which promptly tried to ward them off—appeared to be leathery and cold, rather than warm, and covered with feathers.

“Bats!” exclaimed Cabot, as he reached out and snatched one of the small creatures from the air. But his immediate reward was a sharp bite across one of his fingers, which caused him to drop his captive with an “Ow!”

* * * * *

As he again fell to work defending his head, he noted—ever the scientist—that the teeth marks on his injured finger felt as though they extended clear across the two rows on each side. This was not the localized bite of the incisors of a bat. What could these creatures be?

To satisfy his curiosity, he grabbed another one of them from the air, and encircled its jaws with his left hand before it had time to bite him very badly. Then holding it firmly by the head, as it struggled wildly to escape, he ran the fingers of his right hand appraisingly over its body.

Its head was long and rectangular, and much too large for its body, judged by the make-up of earthly flying creatures. Its skin was cold and scaly like that of a lizard. Its wings were bat-like, except that the skin was stretched on a single long finger, instead of on four. The other fingers were short and free, and equipped with sharp claws. The back of the wing, along the arm part, was covered with long feathery scales. The tail was as out of proportion as the head, and sported a fan of scales at its tip. The smell was nauseatingly like that of a snake.

It was evident that he held in his hand a small variety of pterodactyl, apparently similar in every respect to the reptilian forerunners of birds on our own planet. But its companions were becoming altogether too numerous and troublesome to leave him any leisure for further scientific investigation of his captive. So, casting it from him, he set about defending himself.

A perfect swarm of the filthy little creatures now encompassed him in the pitch darkness of the cave. They battered against him, and tore at his naked body with their sharp claws and teeth. More and more of them kept arriving, so that it soon became evident that he must escape from them in some way and in some haste, in order to avoid being overpowered.

So, warding them off as best he could with one hand, he turned sharp to the right and groped his way around the wall of the grotto with his other hand.

Finally he came to an opening, which he entered at once. Of course it might be that he had completely circumnavigated the cave, and that this was the same tunnel through which he had entered. Even so, it would be better to return to the ledge and the river, than to be overwhelmed by this rapidly augmenting swarm of pterodactyls. But no, it was not the same tunnel, for it did not grow smaller as he progressed; so, after frantically beating at the bat-like creatures with both hands for a moment, he crossed his arms Boy Scout fashion in front of his face and fled precipitately down the corridor.

This way proved to be practically straight. His outstretched hands prevented any collision with the walls or other obstacles, which otherwise must inevitably have occurred in the pitch darkness. Cabot was not quite as helpless in the dark as most earth men would have been, for he had over three years of experience with the inky, starless Porovian nights.

As he ran on, his tormentors gradually dropped behind him, until finally they were reduced to only two or three more determined members of the breed.

Cabot accordingly slowed down to a walk. But, just as he did so, one of his feet stepped out into nothingness. With a despairing effort he strove to throw his body backward to safety. He reached out his hands to the sides and then above, groping madly for some support. But all in vain; for, after toppling for it seemed ages on the brink, he pitched over headlong into space—

And struck the surface of a body of water with a resounding splash within a few feet below where he had been standing. The unexpected impact quite took his breath away. He struggled feebly on the surface and groaned until the air flowed into his lungs again. But his relief was supreme at this anticlimactic ending of his fall into an imagined abyss.

When he had fully regained his breath, he struck out for where he thought the shore to be, and was just getting up a good headway when he ran full on into a large, soft, animate form floating idly on the surface. Instantly this creature ceased being idle, and became a thing of action. With a prodigious splashing, it went for Cabot, who warded it off with his hands and feet. He had no idea what it was that he was fighting, but it seemed like several huge rubber windmills. Back, ever back, it forced him, until finally a long snout got by his guard, and two toothless gums closed upon his abdomen, and dragged him beneath the water.

Cabot was an expert swimmer. He had even saved lives on earth. And he knew that the best possible tactics to use when a drowning person drags you under, is to swim down, down, until your incubus lets go in terror. Such tactics, of course, would not work on a subaquatic creature, but the chances were about even that the beast which held him in its deadly grip was an air-breathing denizen of the surface. At any rate, it was worth gambling on, so Cabot struggled downward instead of upward.

This action seemed to puzzle the beast, for it resisted a few moments, then floundered undecidedly, and then let go. Swimming far out to one side, Myles shot upward to the air, and again struck out for the shore. A few short strokes brought him to a ledge, where he hung for a moment to catch his breath. In fact, he would have hung there a little longer than he did, had not a cold and slimy form, brushing across his back, recalled his attention to the perils of the deep.

With a kick of his feet, he chinned himself up to the level of the ledge, bent up one elbow after the other; and then, leaning far inland, threw up his right leg onto the ledge. He was now completely out of the water, except his left leg, which too would be out in another instant. But just at this moment an eel-like body wrapped itself around his left ankle, and began to pull him back into the stream.

He squeezed the edge of the ledge with his two knees, as if he were riding a horse. With the tips of all his fingers he gripped every slight irregularity of the surface of the rock. He devoted every effort to pull himself ashore, but the slimy ophidian pulled just a little more strongly than he.

Gradually, an inch at a time, he was dragged back toward the water, until finally his right leg slid off the edge of the ledge, with both legs in the water.

The hauling on his left ankle continued; and, to make matters worse, a similar attachment now fastened itself upon his other ankle as well. With this added enemy, his movement backward and downward now became more rapid. But just then his slipping fingers slid into a crack in the rock, where they were able to take a firm hold. The tables were turned, as the man began slowly to pull himself once more onto the rock.

* * * * *

Inch by inch Cabot regained the ground which he had lost, until with a mighty effort he was able to swing his right leg back onto the ledge again. But with it came the creature of the deeps. How large this creature was, or how long it was, or just what sort of a beast it was, he was unable to tell. But, whatever it was, it now anchored itself somewhere on the shore, and there resumed its pulling, so that for the present at least it constituted an ally for the earthman, who with the aid of this new anchorage, was soon able to roll over onto his right side, thus dragging his left leg and the second aquatic creature up onto the rock.

But, even though he was fully ashore, what good did it do him? For his two enemies seemed as much at home on land as in the water, and even with his hands now free to ward them off, they still had him pretty much at their mercy, for he must needs be very careful lest he roll back again into the river. Gradually these two slimy beasts entwined themselves upward around his body, in spite of all his efforts to hold them back.

Thus battled Myles Cabot, the Minorian, against fearful odds, in pitch darkness, on a narrow ledge overhanging the stygian stream of the Caves of Kar.

He had traveled a thousand stads, and had encountered every kind of a danger, from ant to ant-bear, on the way. He had swum Lake Luno amid the rifle fire of the enemy, only to find his castle sacked, his princess gone, and his baby slain. He knew not how fared his princess or his army. He had been burned out of the woods north of Luno, and had been nearly strangled beneath the waters of the lost river. He had been attacked by pterodactyls and other strange reptiles.

And now he was battling alone and for his life against two powerful and unknown beasts, all in the absolute black darkness of a reverberating cave. Who would ever know, or care, the outcome of that battle?

And yet he never for an instant thought of giving up the struggle. Such was the unconquerable will that had led to the adoption of Poblath’s proverb: “You cannot kill a Minorian.”

But this proverb seemed due to encounter the exception which should prove the rule, unless help came quickly. And from whence could help come in the Caves of Kar?

By this time the coils had completely enveloped him, hand and foot, so that he could not stir; and then, after a brief pause, the two creatures began slowly to drag him along the ledge.

Suddenly a third creature landed on top of them all. What manner of beast this newcomer was, Cabot did not know, but it soon became evident that it was no friend of the others, and that it intended to contest with them the possession of their prey. For it seized Cabot’s body with what appeared to be two hands, and started tearing away the snake coils with what certainly seemed to be still other hands.

What could it be? In all of Poros, Cabot knew of no animal with more than two hands.

As the coils were torn away, Cabot’s arms finally became free, and he was able not only to “take a hand” in the struggle, but also occasionally to run his fingers over the paws that gripped him or those that held his snaky enemies. All four extremities of his rescuer resembled human hands, and each of the four had six fingers as in the case of Cupians.

Then Cabot swooned from sheer fatigue, his last thought being to wonder vaguely whether it would after all be any more pleasant to be eaten by this strange new beast than by its predecessors.