It seemed like only moments later that those shapes were all suddenly expanding, stretching out and grabbing at the atmosphere with their great, dark-ribbed wings. 974 Praf kicked away from his back and fell separately, wings half extended.
Uagen could see detail on the upper surface of the dirigible behemothaur beneath; scars and gouges on the forests of the creature’s back and tattered fins a hundred metres tall trailing strips of gauzy material for kilometres behind in the crea- ture’s languid slipstream. Some fins were missing altogether, and towards the rear of the enormous shape a huge chunk appeared to have been scooped away, as though bitten out by something even larger.
‘Looks pretty chewed up, doesn’t it?’ Uagen shouted to 974 Praf.
She turned her head slightly towards him, tacking slowly towards him as she said, ‘The Yoleus believes that such damage is unprecedented in living memory.
Uagen just nodded, then recalled that dirigible behemothaurs lived for tens of millions of years, at least. That was a fairly long time to be without precedent.
He looked down. The scarred, curved back of the unnamed behemothaur rose up to meet them. There was a lot of activity there now, Uagen saw. The dying creature had been discov- ered by more than just one diving human-simian and a few falficores.
It had been like a horrific cross between cancer and civil war. The entire ecosystem that was the dirigible behemothaur Sansemin was tearing itself apart. Now others were joining in.
They had discovered its name through description. 974 Praf had flown round it, recording any distinguishing marks not altered or obliterated by the destruction taking place, then landed on the little hummock of naked envelope skin high on its back where the raptor scout troupe had established its primary base. The Interpreter had communicated its findings via the giant seed-shaped signalling pod in the centre of the hastily established compound. The pod’s infrared light had found Yoleus, tens of kilometres above, and then received the reply a little later. According to the library memories Yoleus shared with its kind, the dying behemothaur was called Sansemin.
Sansemin had always been an outsider, a renegade, almost an outlaw. It had disappeared from polite society thousands of years ago and was presumed to be haunting the less hospitable and less fashionable volumes of the airsphere, perhaps alone, possibly in the company of the small number of other misfit behemothaurs known to exist. There had been a few hazy, unconfirmed sightings of the creature over the first several centuries of its self-imposed exile, but nothing for the last few.
Now it had been rediscovered, but it was at war with itself and about to die.
Flocks of falficores surrounded the giant in squabbling clouds, feeding off its foliage and outer skins. Smerines and phuelerids, the largest winged creatures in the airsphere, divided their time between the living flesh of the behemothaur and the swarming clusters of falficores driven to recklessness by the sheer glut of food on offer. The sleekly bulbous bodies of two ogrine disseis – a rare form of lithe behemothaur only a hundred metres in length and the world’s largest predator – swam through the air in tremendous sinuous flicks, dipping to tear pieces from the body of Sansemin and snapping up handfuls of careless falficores and even the occasional smerine and phuelerid.
Tendon-strutted fragments of behemothaur skin fell into the blueness below like dark sails torn from cyclone-struck clippers; puffs of gas made brief, dispersing vapour clouds in the air as the colossal creature’s outer ballonets and gas sacs were ruptured; the torn bodies of falficores, smerines and phuelerids tumbled in bloody cart-wheeling spirals into the abyss, their screams fright- eningly close in the compacted depth of air yet nearly drowned out in the vast noise of frenzied feeding going on all about.
The raptor scouts, cloud attackers, envelopian defenders and other creatures which were part of Sansemin’s dispersed self and that would normally easily have kept such aggressors at bay were nowhere to be seen. The remains of a few had been discovered where they had fallen and been picked clean by others. The most telling pair of skeletons had been found with their jaws clamped around the other’s neck.
Uagen Zlepe stood on the seemingly solid surface of the dirigible behemothaur’s vast back, looking out over a land- scape of tattered, withered skin foliage being torn apart by falficore flocks. He stood beside the seven-metre-wide bulk of the signalling pod. It was anchored to the envelope’s surface by a dozen small hooks made from falficore talons and tended to by a handful of Deciders nearly identical to 974 Praf.
Spread in a circle about them were a hundred of Yoleus’ raptor scouts, forming a living defensive barrier which was patrolled from above by another fifty or sixty of the creatures, flying slow circuits. So far they had repelled all attacks and had not lost any of their number; even one of the ogrine disseisors, obviously intrigued by the activity round the signalling pod, had turned tail when confronted by twenty of the raptor scouts in attack formation and returned instead to the easier pickings on offer all over the dying behemothaur’s surface.
Two hundred metres away across Sansemin’s back, near the knobbled ridge of a longeron spine, a smerine swooped down, scattering the smaller creatures in a blizzard of piercing cries; it thudded into a giant wound in the behemothaur’s skin; Uagen saw the flesh around the tear ripple under impact. The predator flapped its twenty-metre wings and dipped its long head, flaying the exposed tissue.
A gas sac, severed from its supporting structure, wobbled out of the spreading wound and into the air. It began to climb. The smerine looked up but let it go; the falficore flock above attacked it, screeching, until it punctured and jetted slowly off, deflating in a long exhaling scream of gas and scattering enraged falficores behind it.
There was a thud at his feet. Uagen jumped. ‘Oh, Praf,’ he said as the Interpreter stowed its wings. It had gone with a dozen of the raptor scouts to investigate the interior of the behemothaur. ‘Find anything?’ he asked.
974 Praf watched the distant gas sac as it finally fell deflated into the foliage forest near Sansemin’s upper fore-fins. ‘We have found something. Come and look.’
‘Inside?’ Uagen asked nervously.
‘Yes.’
‘Is it safe? Umm, in there?’
974 Praf looked up at him.
‘Umm. I mean, umm. The central gas bladders. The hydrogen core. I thought there was a possibility those might, that is, it might. Umm.’
‘An explosion is possible,’ 974 Praf said in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘This would be of a catastrophic nature.’
Uagen felt himself gulp. ‘Catastrophic?’
‘Yes. The dirigible behemothaur Sansemin would be destroyed.’
‘Yes. And. Umm. Us?’
‘Too.’
‘Too?’
‘We too would be destroyed.’
‘Yes. Well, then.’
‘This outcome will grow more likely with delay. Therefore delay is not wise. Expedition is advisable.’ 974 Praf shuffled its feet. ‘Extremely advisable.’
‘Praf,’ Uagen said, ‘do we have to do this?’
The creature rocked back on its heel talons and squinted up at him. ‘Of course. It is duty to the Yoleus.’
‘And if I say no?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What if I refuse to go inside and look at whatever it is you’ve found?’ ‘Then our investigations will take longer.’ Uagen stared at the Interpreter. ‘Longer.’ ‘Of course. ‘What have you found?’ ‘We do not know.’ ‘Then-’ ‘It is a creature.’ ‘A creature?’ ‘Many creatures. All dead but one. Of an unknown type.’ ‘What sort of unknown type?’ ‘That is what is unknown.’ ‘Well, what does it look like?’
‘It looks a little like you.’
The creature looked like an alien child’s doll, thrown against a barbed wall and left hanging there. It was long, with a tail that was half its body length. The head was broad, furred and – he thought – striped, though in the darkness, using only his IR sense, he couldn’t tell what colours its pelt might be. The creature’s big, forward-facing eyes were closed. It had a thick neck, broad shoulders, two arms about the size of a large human s but with very wide, heavy hands which looked more like paws. Only a dirigible behemothaur or one of its acolytes would have imagined it looked much like Uagen Zlepe.
It was one of twenty similar forms strung out along one wall of the chamber. All the others were dead and rotting.
Below the creature’s arms, supported by a second, still wider set of shoulders, rested what at first appeared to be a giant flap of furred skin. Looking closer, Uagen realised this was a limb. A dark pad of toughened skin extended across its end in an 8 shape, and stubby hints of toes or claws dotted the perimeter of the pad. Below the torso, two powerful-looking legs hung from a broad set of hips. A furred mound probably concealed genitals of some sort. The tail was striped. One of the root-cables Uagen had seen attached to the raptor scout in the similar chamber in Yoleus led from the back of the creature’s head and into the ribbed wall behind.