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his gaze from that shim-mering palette of life. "How can they live down here,
Milliken, beneath the ice?"
"Perhaps there is vegetation which releases oxygen slowly, or volcanic
production of gases." The teacher shrugged. "Evidently there is enough to
sustain a mul-titude of forms."
"It is very beautiful." Ethan spun. Elfa was stand-ing behind them, peering
almost shyly into the glassy blackness. She smiled hesitantly at Ethan. He
couldn't help but smile back. She was not fully recovered, but she was no
longer in shock.
His gaze traveled to the glistening icicles, false sta-lactites, to the
columns that exploded torchlight into a thousand tiny replicas of its source,
none of which could match for diversity and beauty the swimming bead-shapes of
the water dwellers. How lovely is Hades, he mused, when it is other than one's
own. Why, it was neither hot nor fearsome here, and there was no wind at all.
A whirlpool of luminescent life eddied ecstatically in the pale blue light of
his beamer. He turned it downward, piercing the water to a depth of several
meters. It was as if the beamer were a vacuum, suck-ing up ever more delirious
dancers from the depths below.
The water erupted, sent them stumbling or falling backward.
Ethan saw a mouth. Rubies and emeralds, tormalines and topazes, ozmidines,
ferrosilicate crystals mirror-
bright decorated the cavern within a cavern. Stalac-tites and stalagmites of
vitreous, transparent teeth lined the jaws. Around it was a face wide and fat
like a toad's, with a single searchlight of a mad vermilion eye above the
bejeweled mouth. Black, slick flesh rip-pled in folds around eye and mouth, a
pulpy envelope to hold organs loosely in place.
Whatever it was, it had been drawn from familiar depths by Ethan's bright
beam. Brave as they were some of the sailors fainted in place. Others forgot
dis-cipline and command in their rush to squeeze them-selves back up the
tunnel.
September and Williams already were firing at the apparition with beams
tighter and more deadly than
Ethan's, while he strove frantically to readjust the set-ting on his own. Each
time a blue beam touched the creature's flesh the hallucination-made-real
produced a gargantuan grunt. The humans fired as they re-treated back toward
the tunnel.
Mouth and eye rose roof high above the water and hunched after them. Several
more bolts struck it. The tumorous shape came down on the ice beach with a
crash that echoed energetically 'round the cavern, gen-erating a low
splintering sound. It lay still and unmov-ing, quartz teeth shining in the
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torchlight, the single round eye with its absurdly small black pupil staring
blindly at them.
Screaming still sounded from up the tunnel, how-ever, Hunnar had his sword out
and was trying to force his way through the panicked mob.
"Cowards of Sofold! The daemon is dead, slain by the light knives of our
friends who are half your size!"
The mad rush upward slowed, ceased. Screams be-came anxious or uneasy murmurs.
"When you are fin-ished whimpering, you may rejoin us." He sheathed his sword
and deliberately chivaned downward at top speed, showing blatant disregard for
what might await him within the cavern.
Gradually the sailors drifted after. They spread out below the tunnel mouth to
gaze in delicious horror at the hellbeast resting on the ice. It was no less
fear-some and not the least bit comical for having a body that was one-third
head.
Displaying utter indifference to post-dying reflexes, September strode up to
the creature which Eer-
Meesach had already dubbed
Kalankatht
(which translates from the Tran roughly as "beast-which-is-all-
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(1979)[v1].html (76 of 166) [10/15/2004 12:52:51 PM]
Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin teeth-and-no-tail") and stuck his head
into the gaping mouth. Frozen open, the upper jaw was still a meter above his
hooded head.
Though two meters long on average, the transpar-ent teeth were no thicker
around than a man's finger.
There were hundreds in the chamber-sized maw. Short, delicate-looking fins
projected from back and sides, while the blunt tail was flattened vertically
for swimming and steering. It could not be very fast in pursuit of its prey,
but it could bite at a lot of ocean. Williams was examing the corpse with fine
scien-tific detachment, though as a strong believer in the lingering
independence of certain muscular functions he chose not to stray so near the
jaws as had Septem-ber. "Eye, mouth, and stomach. No waste space or organs."
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