Lawler stared at it with distaste. “What is it?”
But Struvin was unable to put a name to it. Neither could Delagard. It was just an anonymous denizen of the sea, hideous, monstrous, your basic floating king-sized horror wandering by to see if the little convoy offered anything worth ingesting. It drifted slowly past, its mouths chomping steadily away. After it, some twenty minutes later, the ships entered a zone thick with big orange-and-green-striped jellyfish, soft graceful shining umbrellas as big as a man’s head from which cascades of coiling red fleshy strands, finger-thick and apparently several metres long, were hanging. The jellyfish looked vaguely benign, even clownish, but the surface of the sea in their vicinity bubbled and steamed as though they were giving off a powerful acid. They were so tightly packed in the water that they came right up against the ship’s hull, jamming into it, bumping against the sea-finger plants that were growing on it, bouncing off with little sighing protests.
Delagard yawned and disappeared down the stern hatch. Lawler, standing by the rail, looked down in wonder at the massed jellyfish just below. They were quivering like a horde of plump breasts. He could almost reach over and scoop one out, they were so close. Gospo Struvin, heading past him down the deck along the port rail, said suddenly, “Hey, who left this net here? Neyana, was it you?”
“Not me,” Neyana Golghoz said, without bothering to look up. She was busy swabbing down the deck, farther toward the bow. “Talk to Kinverson. He’s the one with the nets.”
The net was an intricate tangle of moist yellow fibres lying in a sloppy crumpled mass by the rail. Struvin kicked at it as though it were so much trash. Then he muttered a curse and kicked again. Lawler glanced across the way and saw that the net had become tangled somehow around one of Struvin’s booted legs. The captain stood with his leg in the air and was kicking repeatedly as if trying to free himself of something sticky and very persistent. “Hey,” Struvin said. “Hey!”
One part of the net was halfway up his thigh, suddenly, and wrapped tightly around it. The rest of it had slithered up the side of the rail and was beginning to crawl over the far side toward the water.
“Doc!” Struvin bellowed.
Lawler ran toward him, with Neyana just behind. But the net moved with unbelievable swiftness. No longer a messy jumble of fibrous cords, it had straightened itself out to reveal itself as some kind of openwork life-form about three metres long, and it was rapidly pulling Struvin over the side of the ship. The captain, kicking and yelling and struggling, hung suspended over the rail. One leg was in the grip of the net and he was trying to brace himself against the gunwale with the other to keep from going into the water; but the creature seemed quite willing to pull him apart at the crotch if he continued to resist its tug. Struvin’s eyes were practically popping. They glazed with astonishment, horror, disbelief.
In the course of almost a quarter of a century of medical practice Lawler had seen people in extremity before, many times, too many times. But he had never seen an expression like that in anyone’s eyes.
“Get this thing off me!” Struvin yelled. “Jesus! Doc—please, doc—”
Lawler lunged and clutched at the part of the net that was nearest to him. His hand closed on it and instantly he felt a fierce burning sensation, as though some stinging acid had cut through his flesh to the bone. He tried to let go, but it was impossible. His skin was sticking to it. Struvin was already hanging well over the side, now. Just his head and shoulders were still in view, and his desperate clutching hands. He called out once again for help, a hoarse, horrifying cry. Lawler, forcing himself to ignore the pain, slung one end of the net over his shoulder and tugged it back toward the middle of the deck, hoping to bring Struvin up with it. The effort required was tremendous, but he was fuelled by mysterious energies, rising under stress from he knew not where. The thing was searing the skin of his hands and he could feel its cauterizing touch on his back and neck and shoulder, right through his shirt. Son of a bitch, he thought. Son of a bitch. He bit down hard on his lip and took a step, another one, another, tugging against Struvin’s weight and the resistance of the net-creature, which had slithered well down the outside of the hull by this time and was heading purposefully for the water.
Something was starting to go in the middle of Lawler’s back, where overstrained muscles were jigging and leaping around. But he seemed actually to be succeeding in dragging the net up on board again. Struvin was almost to the top of the rail.
And then the net broke—or, more likely, divided of its own accord. Lawler heard one final terrible wail and looked back to see Struvin drop back over the side and fall into the bubbling, steaming sea. The water immediately began to thresh around him. Lawler saw movement just below the surface, soft quivering things coming from all sides like darts. The jellyfish didn’t look benign and clownish any more.
The other half of the net remained on the deck, snarling itself around Lawler’s wrists and hands. He found himself contending with some fiery mesh-like creature that squirmed and wriggled and adhered to him wherever he touched it. He knelt and smashed the net-thing against the deck again and again and again. The stuff was tough and resilient, like cartilage. It seemed to weaken a little but he couldn’t get rid of it. The burning was becoming intolerable.
Kinverson came running up and brought the heel of his boot down on one corner of the net-thing, pinning it; Neyana jammed her mop into its middle; and then Pilya Braun, emerging suddenly from somewhere, crouched over Lawler and pulled a bone blade from a scabbard at her hip. Furiously she set about cutting through the quivering rubbery meshes. Shining metallic-looking blood, deep blue in colour, spurted from the net, and the strands of the creature coiled back crisply from the blade. In a moment Pilya had hacked away the section that was stuck to Lawler’s hands, and he was able to rise. Evidently the piece was too small to sustain life; it shrivelled and shrank away from his fingers and he managed to toss it aside. Kinverson was still stomping on the other section of the net, the remainder of the piece that had stayed on board after Struvin had been carried over the side.
In a dazed way Lawler lurched toward the rail with some blurry intention of going into the sea to rescue Struvin. Kinverson seemed to understand what was in his mind. He reached one long arm toward him, catching him by the shoulder and pulling him back.
“Don’t be crazy,” he said. “There’s God knows what swimming around down there waiting for you.”
Lawler nodded uncertainly. He stepped away from the rail and stared at his blazing fingers. A bright imprinted network of red lines stood out brilliantly on his skin. The pain was phenomenal. He thought his hands were going to explode.
The whole incident had taken perhaps a minute and a half.
Delagard emerged now from the hatch. He came running toward them, looking annoyed and perturbed.
“What the hell’s going on? Why all the yelling and screaming?” He paused and gawked. “Where’s Gospo?”
Lawler, breathing hard, his throat parched, his heart pounding, could barely speak. He gestured toward the rail with a toss of his head.
“Overboard?” Delagard said incredulously. “He fell in?”
He rushed to the side and looked over. Lawler came up beside him. All was quiet down there. The jostling hordes of jiggling jellyfish were gone. The water was dark, smooth, silent. There was no sign at all of Struvin or of the net-creature that had taken him.
“He didn’t fall,” Kinverson said. “He got pulled in. This thing’s other half got him.” He indicated the broken, ragged remains of the part of the net that he had stomped. It was nothing more now than a greenish smear on the yellow wood of the deck floor.