“I know that I cannot read another person’s emotions as well as you can,” it said slowly, “but from your words and actions here and on our searchsuit, I think—no, I believe—that you feel a deep concern for Jasam’s welfare, and mine. Is this so?”
“Yes,” he said, trying to keep himself awake.
“On Trolann this question would be considered an insult, it went on, “implying as it would a disgusting mental aberration am* perversion. But I think… Are you feeling the same depth of concern for the safety of the druul-like healer Murchison, as you do for Jasam?”
“Yes,” said Prilicla again.
CHAPTER 24
The glider pilots carrying their folded aircraft were the first to mount the boarding ramp, followed by Murchison’s bearer party and with the watchful spiders who carried only weapons bringing up the rear.
The ramp, she saw, was wide, surprisingly long, and formed a gently sloping bridge over the wavelets and wet sand at the water’s edge. It stretched between the large opening in the ship’s bow and the dry area farther up the beach. It was an incredible idea, but she wondered if the spiders were sailors who didn’t like getting their feet wet.
Inside the ship she was moved along a corridor whose roof was so low that if she hadn’t been lying flat on her back in a hammock, she would have scraped her face against the rough, fibrous surface of the ceiling. Positioned at deck level about twenty meters apart were lamps that flickered and, she thought, sniffing analytically, smelled of some kind of vegetable rather than mineral oil. Each lamp floated in a large wooden pan of water and there were two larger containers, one filled with water and the other, sand, placed close by. She wondered if the spiders were afraid of fire as well as water, then remembered that in the wooden-sailing-ship days on Earth, fire had been a servant that had to be kept under tight control.
After what seemed an endless scrolling-down of dark, fibrous ceilings, her hammock was lowered to the deck in a compartment that was about six meters square and high enough to allow her to kneel upright if they untied her.
Plainly that was their intention, because three of them lifted and turned her face-downwards while the fourth opened its mouth and began to do something which softened and loosened the strands around her body. Then they rolled her over and over slowly while the fourth spider made delicate, slurping noises as the continuous strand was sucked back into its body.
When it was finished, the others left the room and it remained to wrap one of her ankles in a band of thick, soft material, which was obviously padding because around it was tied very tightly the end of another rope. It was thin, tough, and seemed to be woven from plant fiber rather than originating inside a spider. The captor’s grotesque, insectile head bent over her ankle and it spat something at the rope which hardened within a few seconds and covered the knot in a solid, transparent seal. Then it tied the other end, which was long enough to enable her to move anywhere inside the room and a little way beyond it, to a structural support by the doorway and sealed it in similar fashion. It turned to look at her for a moment before pointing with the nearest limb towards a corner of the room at what looked like two low handrails with a flat wooden lid set into the floor between them.
The spider moved across to it, raised and pushed aside the lid, and indicated the square hole beneath it before waving her forward and moving back itself.
The lighting in the room was too subdued to show deep inside the opening, but even before Murchison heard the regular, gurgling wave action of water at the bottom she knew what it was—the body-wastes disposal facility. To show that she understood, but without actually giving a full demonstration, she ; rasped the rails, one in each hand, and hunkered down for a moment before replacing the lid. Apparently satisfied, the spider was pointing at the contents of a shelf in the opposite corner of the compartment.