When she edged around the bole, she saw the tarm immediately where she had judged it would be—flattened out on the branch, the head end of the big worm body turned toward her. A great lidless pale eye disk seemed fixed on the bole. Something thick and lumpy—the mass of retracted tentacles—stirred along the side. There was a deceptively sluggish heavy look about the thing.
Nile glanced back and down along her immediate line of retreat. Then she took the UW from its holster and stepped out on a branch jutting from the massive trunk. Weaving tips lifted abruptly from the tarm’s clumped tentacles. Otherwise it didn’t move. Nile pointed the gun at the center of the horny eye lens and held down the trigger.
The tarm’s body rose up. Nile snapped the gun into the holster, slipped back around the bole. Turned and sprang.
There was a sound of something like tons of wet sand smashing against the far side of the bole as she darted through a thicket thirty feet down. She swung out below the thicket, dropped ten feet, dropped twenty-five feet, dropped again, descending a stairway of air. . . .
A deep howling swept by overhead, more like the voice of the storm than that of an animal. Nile turned, saw the tarm, contracted almost to the shape of a ball, hurtle through smashing growth a hundred feet above, suspended from bunched thick tentacles. She pulled out the UW and held the beam centered on the bulk, shouting at the top of her lungs. The awesome cry cut off and the big body jerked to a stop, hung twisting in midair for an instant, attached by its tentacles to fifty points of the floatwood. Then the tarm had located her and swiftly came down. Nile slipped behind a trunk, resumed her retreat.
She was in and out of the tarm’s sight from moment to moment, but the next series of zigzagging downward leaps did not draw her away from it again. She heard its crashing descent, above and to this side or that, always following, cutting down distance between them—then stench and noise exploded about. Strain blurred her vision, but there was a wide opening among the branches below and she darted toward it. A horizontal branch came underfoot—a swaying narrow bridge, open space all about and beneath. Sea-haval stink roiled the air. Heavy stirrings below, angry rumble. . . .
A great thump behind her. The branch shook violently. The tarm’s howl swelled at her back, and furious bellowings replied. The branch creaked. Ahead to the right were the waving thickets she remembered—
Nile flung herself headlong off the branch into the growth, clutching with arms and legs. An explosively loud crack, not yards away—another. Then, moments later, a great thudding splash below.
Then many more sounds. Rather ghastly ones. . . .
Nile scrambled farther into the thicket, found solid foothold and stood up, gripping the shrubbery. She fought for breath, heart pounding like an engine. The racket below began to settle into a heavy irregular thumping as the beaks of the sea-havals slammed again and again into the rubbery monster which had dropped into their rookery, gripping a branch of floatwood . . . a branch previously almost cut through at either end by the beam of Nile’s gun. The tarm was finished; the giant kesters wouldn’t stop until it had been tugged and ripped apart, tossed in sections about the evil-smelling rookery, mashed to mud under huge webbed feet.
Nerves and lungs steadying gradually, Nile wiped sweat from her eyes and forehead, then looked over her gear to make sure nothing of importance had been lost in that plunging chase. All items seemed to be on hand.
And now, unless she ran into further unforeseen obstacles on the way, she should be able to get her oilwood fire started. . . .
There were no further obstacles.
* * *
For the fourth or fifth time Nile suddenly came awake, roused perhaps by nothing more than a change in the note of the wind. She looked about quickly. A dozen feet below her, near the waterline, an otter lifted its oval head, glanced up. It was the wild female, taking her turn to rest while her mate and Sweeting patrolled.
“Is nothing, Nile . . . ” The otter yawned, dropped her head back on her forelegs.
Nile turned her wrist, looked at her watch. Still about two hours till dawn. . . . She’d been dozing uneasily for around the same length of time at the sea edge of the forest, waiting for indications of Parrol’s arrival. Current conditions on the island had the appearance of a stalemate of sorts. On the surface, little happened. The Parahuans had withdrawn into their installations. An occasional boat still moved cautiously about the lagoon, but those on board weren’t looking for her. If anything, since the last developments, they’d seemed anxious to avoid renewed encounters with the Tuvela. There was underwater activity which appeared to be centered about the ship beneath the lagoon floor. If she’d had a jet rig, she would have gone down to investigate. But at present the ship was out of her reach; and while the otters could operate comfortably at that depth, their reports remained inconclusive.
In spite of the apparent lull, this remained an explosive situation. And as she calculated it, the blowup wouldn’t be delayed much longer. . . .
It must seem to the Voice of Action that it had maneuvered itself into an impossible situation. To avoid the defeat of its policies, it had, by its own standards, committed a monstrous crime and dangerously weakened the expeditionary force’s command structure. Porad Anz would condone the slaughter of the opposed Great Palachs and Palachs only if the policies could be successfully implemented.
And now, by the Voice of Action’s own standards again, the policies already had failed completely to meet the initial test. The basis of their argument had been that Tuvelas could be defeated. Her death was to prove it. With the proof at hand, the fact at last established, the attack on the planet would follow.
Hours later, she not only was still alive but was in effect disputing their control of the upper island areas. They must have armament around which could vaporize not only the island but the entire floatwood drift and her along with it. But while they remained here themselves, they couldn’t employ that kind of armament. They couldn’t use it at all without alerting the planet—in which case they might as well begin the overall attack.
Their reasoning had become a trap. They hadn’t been able to overcome one Tuvela. They couldn’t expect then that an attack on the Tuvelas of the planet would result in anything but failure. But if they pulled out of Nandy-Cline without fighting, their crime remained unexpiated, unjustified—unforgivable in the eyes of Porad Anz.
Nile thought the decision eventually must be to attack. Understaffed or not, their confidence shaken or not, the Voice of Action really no longer had a choice. It was simply a question now of when they would come to that conclusion and take action on it.
There was nothing she could do about that at present. At least she’d kept them stalled through most of the night; and if the Sotira racer had caught her warning, the planet might be growing aware of the peril overhanging it. Nile sighed, shifted position, blinking out through the branches before her at the sea. Starshine gleamed on the surging water, blended with the ghostly light of the luminous weed beds. Cloud banks rolled through the sky again. Fitful flickering on the nearby surface was the reflection of the oilwood. If Parrol would only get here . . .
She slid back down into sleep.
Something very wet was nuzzling her energetically. She shoved at it in irritation. It came back.
“Nile, wake up! Spiff’s here!”
Grogginess vanished instantly. “Huh? Where are—”
“Coming!” laughed Sweeting. “Coming! Not far!”
She’d picked up the tiny resonance in the caller receiver which told her Spiff was in the sea, within three miles, homing in on her. And if Spiff was coming, Parrol was with him. Limp with relief, Nile slipped down to the water’s edge with the otter. Almost daybreak, light creeping into the sky behind cloud cover, the ocean black and steel-gray, great swells running before the island.
“Which way?”
Sweeting’s nose swung about like a compass needle, held due south. She was shivering with excitement. “Close! Close! We wait?”
“We wait.” Nile’s voice was shaky. “They’ll be here fast enough . . . ” Parrol had done as she thought—read the oilwood message from afar, set his car down to the south, worked it in subsurface toward the floatwood front. He’d be out of it now with Spiff, coming in by jet rig and with equipment.
“Where are your friends? Has anything been happening?”
“Heh? Yes. Two ships under lagoon now. Big one.”