Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 by The Dark Destroyers (v1.1) Read Free Book Online Page A

teeth together lest they chatter, and considered hunching
the sail a bit closer. But surely that would be noticed by one of the Cold
Creatures hunched so close to him, perhaps by both. While he wondered what to
do, it grew colder, degree by degree. The temperature, if he were able to read
whatever the Cold Creatures employed as a thermometer, must already be close to freezing.
                Well, he had to get the garments, that was certain. He had to reach them, drag them
unobserved into his hiding, and there pull them over his suffering nakedness. A
shiver threatened to convulse his body, to make it thrash like a jumping-jack.
Desperately he fought it down. He wrapped both arms around himself in a
half-instinctive gesture to shut out the cold, and his left hand touched the
hilt of his saber, still slung over his shoulder.
                 That
suddenly gave him new hope. He dragged the weapon around to his front, and
began to draw the weapon, an inch at a time, down there under the sail. When at
last it was free of the scabbard, he pushed the fold of fabric a little wider.
His breath made a steamy cloud in the red-lighted air of the cabin.
                 Neither
of the Cold Creatures seemed to notice. One was paying close attention to the
controls; the other lounged lumpily at a port as though observing the night
outside. Darragh extended his arm into the open, and touched the bundle of
deerskin clothing with the point of his saber.
                 Painstakingly
he worked the blade under a strand of the rawhide that bound the package. As he
had done when leaving the dugout to explore on the shore of Haiti, Darragh
repeated a prayer to himself, but this time it was a prayer of deep and devout
thanks. Gendy he began to twitch the prize near to him.
                 At
that very instant, the Cold Creature at the port turned itself around with
ponderous smoothness, facing in his direction.
                 It
was impossible that the thing could not perceive. Darragh did not move, his hand with the saber and his arm from the elbow
downward in the open. Perceiving, the creature did not quite understand. Mildly
mystified, it began to hunch its bulk closer.
                 Darragh
lay huddled as though the chill of the air had indeed frozen him stiff. He
dared not unclasp his stiffened fingers from the saber hilt or turn betrayingly
under the palm fiber cloth; the least motion would have given him away
entirely. The monster inched toward him until it towered above the wadded sail
and the bundle of leather and the saber. Its strange sensory powers, whatever
they were, plainly were concentrated upon this curiosity. Darragh, crouching
where he was—like a mouse under a napkin—could
see through its transparent armoring drapery the glow and pulsation of its
central organ.
                 Now
it was observing that naked hand that emerged from the sail's depths. No doubt
but that it was aware what sort of creature owned such an extremity. A tentacle
reached down to twitch away the concealing sail; another fell down toward a pouch that hung to the armor fabric, a pouch that held some sort of weapon.
                 A ray-thrower, perhaps.
                Darragh told himself not to die
quiedy. His lips dragged themselves from his clenched teeth as he quickly rose
to his knees and made a slashing cut with his saber.
                 The
thing divined the move and tried to sidle backward, but not in time. The point
of Darragh's saber snagged the protecting cloak and sliced a great smooth rent in it. And that was all the saber needed to do.
                 Staring,
Darragh saw the creature's tentacles relax, quiver and sag, saw a slumping of
the great gross pyramidal shape of gelatinous tissue that was the body. The afr
that to Darragh seemed torturingly cold was rushing through that slit he had
made in the armor, like a blast of