The chance came some time later when Geean signalled she wanted a drink and went through the entrance fold into the habitat. Myrah indicated to Lennar that she would like to go inside as well and he nodded his permission. She found Geean clinging to the net near the intake pump, her mouth wide open as she gulped from the flow of air. The chin strap of her bubble cage was undone.
“What’s wrong, Geean?” she said. “Are you in pain?”
Geean started violently at the sound of her voice, but relaxed a little when she turned and saw Myrah. “I’m trying not to cough,” she said, keeping her voice low to avoid being heard by the swimmers outside. “And it hurts. It’s hurting me, Myrah.”
Myrah’s first and instinctive thought was for her own safety. “Has there been any blood?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“It’ll be all right,” Geean whispered, coming towards Myrah. “I’ve brought some bags with me. Look. I won’t let anything get away.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Myrah said accusingly. “In some places it only takes one drop to get into the water, and…. You didn’t tell me you were this bad.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t help.” Myrah stared angrily into the childish, doomed face which looked so incongruous within the metal frame of a hunter’s bubble cage, and suddenly her sense of the enormity of their situation returned in full force. She tried to smile, and opened her arms. Geean embraced her and they floated through the air in a slow rotation, their naked bodies clinging together in a fervour which had elements of sexuality. Myrah stroked the moisture-beaded skin of the younger woman’s back and was shocked to realise just how little of her there was. It dawned on her that the very act of facing up to the daily life of the Clan with such inadequate physical resources called for a kind of courage she did not understand.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said in a quiet voice.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“I’ll do everything I can for you.”
“I knew you would. I wish I could be like you, Myrah.” Geean pulled the bubble cage off her head and kissed Myrah on the breast and navel.
“No.” Myrah caught her and drew her upright. The people of the Clan had no taboos against homosexual love, and Myrah experimented with it when in certain moods, but the idea of congress with the immature and ailing girl was repugnant to her, especially as Geean had misunderstood her words of reassurance. She caught the bubble cage in its slow flight towards the exhaust pump, slipped it back on to Geean’s head and began fastening the chin strap.
“I promised I’d do all I could for you,” she said gently. “And that means getting you back to the Home as soon as possible. I’ll have to tell Lennar.”
“You wouldn’t! Anyway, there’s nothing anybody can do now.”
“We can split up the group. One of the men can take you back.”
Geean caught Myrah’s wrists. “I couldn’t swim that far without a place to rest.”
“I’m sorry, but you and Lennar will have to work that out between you.” Myrah moved to free her hands, but Geean held on with surprising tenacity and a struggle developed. Losing her patience, Myrah applied her superior strength and was prising Geean’s fingers open when there was a warning cry outside the habitat. The man’s voice, travelling partly in water and partly in air, was unrecognisable, but Myrah had no difficulty in understanding the single, dreadful word. Geean immediately released her grip and floated back, eyes and mouth wide open. Myrah snatched their two spears from the adhesive pad near the entrance and pushed one towards Geean.
“Come on,” she snapped. “Outside.”
Geean shook her head. “But it’s the Horra.”
“We still have to go out.” Myrah was turning towards the entrance when she heard the unmistakable churning sound produced by a big Horra swimming at maximum speed. An instant later the side of the habitat burst inwards and its interior was filled with a dark conical body, threshing tentacles, whorls of water, fantastically stretched air bubbles and ribbons of netting. Myrah was hurled into the netting by the impact and the rush of water through her bubble cage stripped it of air. She held her breath and fought clear of the clinging mesh.
The Horra had lost momentum with its destruction of the habitat and it was twisting to bring its tentacles into a position in which they could encircle her. Myrah saw at once that its huge, calm eyes were out of her reach and she knew that if she was going to have any hope at all of surviving she would have to use the cold-blooded fighting technique developed by generations of the Clan’s hunting family.
She identified the Horra’s sexual arm by its almost total lack of suckers and grasped it with her left hand, at the same time allowing the other tentacles to snake around her body and draw her towards the beaked central mouth. At the last possible moment she brought her spear up level, instinctively positioning its blunt end in the special cup on her belt and guided the point into the Horra’s mouth. The theory was that the harder the Horra tried to pull her in, the further it would drive the spear into its own stomach; but putting it into practice called for quick reflexes and strong arms. Myrah fought desperately to fend off the sexual arm and at the same time to brace the spear with her right hand.
She was dimly aware of Geean screaming nearby and of the sound of other struggles, but most of her attention was taken up with the realisation that the tubular metal of the spear was bending with every contraction of the Horra’s tentacles. It had only to buckle in the middle and she was certain to die—and it seemed that this particular Horra was powerful enough to ensure that she did. She twisted the spear, hoping to force its point through the tough wall of the monster’s stomach and into more sensitive regions of its body, but her efforts were having no useful effect, and a pounding in her chest told her that she had to have air very soon.
She forced her head back against one of the loathsome coils, managed to capture a bubble, and then made an even more startling discovery—the Horra was not trying to kill her.
The mind-numbing proximity of the creature made it difficult for her to think rationally, but it became apparent that the Horra was not behaving in a manner normal to its kind. It was not thrusting with its sexual arm and was no longer forcing her towards its mouth, even though its tentacles were still wrapped around her body. Belatedly, Myrah also realised that it had not used its pads to exert the fierce suction which could lift skin and flesh from a human body. It was almost as if—and she found the thought subtly more terrifying than the prospect of immediate death—the creature had set out to make her a prisoner.
Myrah moved her head again, taking more air, and for the first time had a chance to witness the complexity and confusion of the battleground. It appeared that the group had been attacked by at least twelve Horra working in unison. Two of the latter had been mortally wounded and were drifting with aimless twitches of their tentacles amid clouds of black fluid. Geean and Treece and the three men were in same plight as Myrah—each of them held fast by a Horra, in the hideous likeness of a huge fist—but all seemed to be alive and unharmed. The supply pack and the remnants of the habitat were tumbling slowly away, and as an extra bizarre touch one of the pumps had been torn free of the habitat and was swimming off into the gloom, industriously propelling itself by its exhaust, like a strange cylindrical fish. Several Horra—those without captives—were slowly circling the central group, pulsing along with regular spreading movements of their tentacles.
In spite of the evidence of her eyes, Myrah was unable to accept the idea of the Horra suddenly beginning to display human-like intelligence. They had always been dangerous adversaries, but their cunning had invariably been animalistic. For example, it had never been known for one of them to release its grip on a hunter and thereby avoid having a spear driven through its vitals. The thought led to a further notion that perhaps the Horra had learned to avoid that form of destruction and were trying a new battle technique of their own. Myrah strove to hold fast to her spear, then observed that Geean and Dan had lost their weapons and therefore were completely at the mercy of their captors—yet the Horra were making no move to dispatch them.