The Blue World by Jack Vance Read Free Book Online Page B

“Poison exists! Find me poison, I will fix a
capsule to a stick and push it into the creature’s maw!”
    Elmar Pronave gave
a sardonic bark of laughter. “Agreed; poisons exist, hundreds of
them, derived from various sea-plants and animals—but which
are sufficiently acrid to destroy this beast? And where is it to be
had? I doubt if there is that much poison nearer than Lamp Float.”
    Phocan’s Cauldron,
rising into the sky, revealed the kragen in fuller detail. Sklar Hast
examined the four blind-seeming eyes in the turret, the intricate
construction of the mandibles and tentacles at the maw. He touched
the turret; peered at the dome-shaped cap of chitin that covered it.
The turret itself seemed laminated, as if constructed of sacked rings
of cartilage, the eyes protruding fore and aft in inflexible tubes of
rugose harsh substance.
    Others in the group
began to crowd close; Sklar Hast jumped forward, thrust at a young
Felon float-builder, but too late: The kragen flung out a palp,
seized the youth around the neck. Sklar Hast cursed, heaved, tore;
the clenched palp was unyielding. Another curled out for his leg;
Sklar Hast kicked, danced back, still heaving upon the felon’s
writhing form. The kragen drew the felon slowly forward, hoping, so
Sklar Hast realized, to pull him within easier reach. He loosened his
grip, but the kragen allowed its palp to sway back to encourage Sklar
Hast, who once more tore at the constricting member.
    Again the kragen
craftily drew its captive and Sklar Hast forward; the second palp
snapped out once more and this time coiled around Sklar Hast’s leg.
Sklar Hast dropped to the ground, twisted himself around and broke
the hold, though losing skin. The kragen petulantly jerked the felon
to within reach of its mandible, snipped off the young man’s head,
tossed body and head aside.
    A horrified gasp
came from the watching crowd. Ixon Myrex bellowed, “Sklar Hast,
a man’s life is gone, due to your savage obstinacy! You have much to
answer for! Woe to you!”
    Sklar Hast ignored
the imprecation. He ran to the warehouse, found chisels and a mallet
with a head of dense sea-plant stem brought up from a depth of two
hundred feet [2] .
    The chisels had
blades of pelvic bone ground sharp against a board gritted with the
silica husks of foraminifera. Sklar Hast returned to the kragen, put
the chisel against the pale lamellum between the chitin dome and the
foliations of the turret. He tapped; the chisel penetrated; this, the
substance of a new layer being added to the turret, was relatively
soft, the consistency of cooked gristle. Sklar Hast struck again; the
chisel cut deep. The kragen squirmed. Sklar Hast worked the chisel
back out, made a new incision beside the first, then another and
another, working around the periphery of the chitin dome, which was
approximately two feet in diameter. The kragen squirmed and
shuddered, whether in pain or apprehension it alone knew. As Sklar
Hast worked around to the front, the palps groped back for him, but
he shielded himself behind the turret and finally gouged out the
lamellum completely around the circumference of the turret.
    His followers
watched in awe and silence; from the others who watched came somber
mutters, and occasional whimpers of superstitious dread from the
children.
    The channel was
cut; Sklar Hast handed chisel and mallet back to Elmar Pronave. He
mounted the body of the kragen, bent his knees, hooked fingers under
the edge of the chitin dome, heaved. The dome ripped up and off,
almost unbalancing Sklar Hast. The dome rolled down to the pad, the
turret stood like an open-topped cylinder; within were coils and
loops of something like dirty gray string. There were knots here,
nodes there, on each side a pair of kinks, to the front a great
tangle of kinks and loops.
    Sklar Hast looked
down in interest. He was joined by Elmar Pronave. “The
creature’s brain, evidently,” said Sklar Hast. “Here the
ganglions terminate. Or perhaps they