fangs into his flesh, but he held it very firmly indeed as he turned sideways and smashed it against the wall with all his might, not caring that the uneven surface bruised and gashed his own knuckles as he hammered the monster against it three times more.
When he dropped the creature, it was dead—but so, it seemed, was Raleigh, who had fallen backwards into the water, his face streaming with blood and his temple already turning blue-black where his attacker had flooded his flesh with poison.
Thomas had no idea what to do—but there were others present now who had. Aristocles and two others of his own kind had come bursting into the room; while Aristocles seized Thomas and drew him to one side, the others pulled Raleigh out of the water, set him on his back, and descended upon him as if they intended to scour the flesh from his bones.
They did not. Exactly what they did instead was obscured from Thomas’ view, but when they withdrew again Raleigh’s face was no longer blood-stained, save for a few clotted drops clinging to his neat beard, and the blue-black stain had likewise been obliterated. His wound was still visible, but it was covered by a glossy transparent gel that was already hardening.
Aristocles was still holding hard to Thomas, and had inspected his hands very carefully while Thomas had been in no condition to take notice. The grazes there had similarly been covered over; there was no pain.
Thomas shuddered. Aristocles released him immediately, as if the monster were fearful that it was his touch that had caused the response—but it was not. It was the narrowness with which Raleigh had escaped death that had affrighted Thomas.
Aristocles touched Thomas’ face, very lightly.
“An arachnid,” Lumen translated, dutifully contriving to manufacture an apologetic tone. “An accident, perhaps....”
Obviously, it was possible for lepidopteran philosophers to say more than they intended, and more than would usually be reckoned wise. Aristocles stopped immediately, but too late.
“Perhaps!” Thomas echoed, speaking aloud although his meaning reached the moth-like creature via his fingertips. “You mean that someone might be trying to murder us?”
CHAPTER SIX
Aristocles was very reluctant to discuss murder, and seemed equally reticent on the subject of arachnids. Lumen seemed to side with his erstwhile adversary in the former instance, telling Thomas that he had taken the wrong inference from the word he had translated as “perhaps”. It was, however, difficult for Thomas to set aside entirely the possibility that Field was right, and there might be some Selenite members of the True Civilization that were anxious not to give the human race the opportunity defend itself before the Great Fleshcores against the opinion that it was fit only for extermination. It was also tempting to hazard a guess that his own kind was not the only family of creatures abominated by fervent symbiotists.
Thomas was given no opportunity to pursue the question of arachnids while he and his crew ate dinner, for he was bombarded with urgent questions from every side, but he took the liberty of pressing Lumen on the issue when his comrades eventually fell uneasily silent as they gathered at the foot of the mighty cannon-cum-telescope that would transmit them to the heart of the sidereal system.
“I know little enough about them myself, never having shared the consciousness of one,” Lumen told him, “but I know what the Selenites think of them. I suspect that Aristocles and others as fervently dedicated as he is to the cause of symbiosis might soften the opinion considerably, but they’d agree with it in broad terms. He’d doubtless contend that every kind of life has its part to play in the rich tapestry of interspecific relationships, and that predators and parasites are no less essential to the welfare of the Whole than healers and constructive laborers—but even so, he’d have to concede that predators and parasites are sometimes pestiferous, and that their branches of the real Tree of Life rarely produce true intelligence. In the occasional instances when arachnids do show traces of true intelligence—arachnids rather different from the one that attacked Walter, of course—it tends to take a perverted form.”
Thomas was unable to pursue the matter further because Lumen’s impression of Aristocles was interrupted by the monster himself, who was already ushering the party of five humans to stand within the focal point of the etheric communicator, in order to transmit them to their destination.
As he was hastened towards his departure for the distant stars, though, Thomas’ mind was working furiously. Humans, he knew, were often predators as well as bony—and they were certainly intelligent. Might Aristocles think, in consequence, that human intelligence was “perverted”? Did Lumen, perhaps, agree with him? Might Aristocles think that human intelligence was doubly perverted, predatory tendencies adding a further twist to endoskeletal ones? Did the alleged perversion of predatory intelligence consist of a general tendency to violence and rapaciousness, or was it something more complex and less obvious? Might it, perhaps, be the domestication of other species to relieve the necessity of hunting?
He had, of course, no way to think all this save for subvocalization, but Lumen prudently refrained from comment on the suspicion that he might be in accord with Aristocles on at least some matters concerning the nature of humankind.
Thomas found himself pushed into close proximity with Raleigh. “How are you feeling, Walter?” he asked.
“Numb and tired,” Raleigh confessed, “but fit for travel, I thank you for what you did, by the way, even if I owe my life to the monsters that healed me.”
“It was a brave act, Captain Digges,” Field added, doubtless aware of the contrasting nature of his own reaction.
“I wish now that I’d been permitted to wear my sword,” de Vere put in, while there was still time for one last remark. “Useless as it might be against the kind of natural armor so many of these creatures have, I’d feel a sight more comfortable.”
Thomas was nudged forward then, as if to lead his crew on a journey far longer than the one they had already undertaken. He allowed himself to be shuffled to the designated spot, and looked up into the bowels of the machine towering above him—but he had no opportunity to study its internal anatomy in any detail.
He felt suddenly nauseous, as if he were being turned inside out. Then, without any perceptible interval at all, he felt giddy, as if he were being righted again. He wished that the two effects could have cancelled one another out, but in fact their combination seemed to redouble them both. He staggered away from his mark, blinking his eyes against sudden tears, and had to be caught by strong insectile “hands” before he fell. He was still collecting himself when Francis Drake was able to put out a hand to help steady his friend.
Thomas accepted the support, but was eager to look around. He had half-expected to find himself on a surface as bleak and bare as the moon’s, but this was a very different kind of world. What surrounded him was not so much a forest—although it certainly bore some resemblance to one—but an infinite confusion of mast-like structures. It was as if a vast fleet of galleons had been gathered together, so tightly packed that there was no space left between their decks and gunwales, and their rigging extended into a single coherent network stretching from vessel to vessel and horizon to horizon...save that the “decks” were so far below him that he could not be sure that they actually constituted a single surface, that the “masts” were very unequal in height, and that the “rigging” was rigid and metallic....
The most remarkable thing of all, Thomas thought, as he steadied his runaway imagination, was that the “sailors” manning the mast-like structures and their rigging-like connections bore hardly any resemblance to insects, or even crabs. They seemed to be made of metal, and many had wheels as well as—or
