"What's that?"
"A dry chimney, in spelunking terms. Vertical channels formed by water flow. Water dried up, so we don't call it a chimney anymore. Look over there." To the left were a series of rounded steps, as flat as fish scales, each a half-dozen meters across, like a badly skewed stack of silver dollars or a stage for a Vegas musical.
"Called ‘gours.' Formed as carbonate is precipitated from turbulent water. Miskatonic must have been higher... more likely, it gets higher later in the year. Come on." Andy waved his light towards a widely arched opening. "I want to take a look back in the shadows. It might have crawled up there to die."
"Or get well."
"Come on, Jerry. No confidence in your soup? Hell, that stuff would have killed a dozen monsters."
Jerry followed Andy's lead. The side chamber was larger than the main cave they'd been in. Onyx and sparkling rocks glittered in the light of his flash. It was almost peaceful down here, and Jerry brought himself up short: that kind of thinking could easily get them both killed.
Another of the blind fish brushed past him. This one's eyes were pasty white, staring lifelessly in a broad face. Its mouth was crowded with needlelike teeth, and it nosed in for an experimental nip.
He knocked it away with the tip of his speargun.
"Looks like a dead end," Andy said. "I'll check out the far side." He kicked his bulky frame through the murk with surprising grace.
Andy went up, and up. He said, "Hey—"
And then his entire body just levitated from the water, whipped out as if vacuumed up with a suction pump.
What? Had he climbed out? Or pulled himself out?
"Andy?"
Andy's body smashed down into the water almost atop Jerry. Just his body: the head was gone. Black clouds jetted from the raggedly torn stump on his neck. They fogged the light. Hordes of blind fish streaked into the cloud, tussling and snapping at each other.
Jerry's chest froze, and he backpedaled frantically. There would come a lethal moment of water pressure, the single instant of warning before horror swooped out of the cloud of blood. In that instant he might have to trigger the spear gun into its grinning, gaping mouth...
Then he was through, into the other chamber. He scrambled backward up over the gours, the grooved stone surface scraping at his hands and legs.
His voice was a squeak into the throat mike. "Danger. Mayday! This is Jerry. I... we found it. Andy is dead. Repeat, Andy is dead. Converge on left tunnel at once. Repeat. We have located animal. It is alive and deadly."
Arnie Donovan and Jill Ralston joined him at the water's edge.
Together the three of them backed to the wall, spear guns at the ready.
Shit. He had seen those things kill before, but this... what in the world? Why had it killed Andy? And then thrown the body back almost disdainfully?
Whatever a man might hunt on Earth, there were other men to tell him how to do it. Thinking like the prey is an old game, hundreds of thousands of years old. The first shamans who propitiated the spirits of antelopes might have got it wrong, hundreds of thousands of years back, but the need was there. You cannot hunt what you cannot understand.
With this creature there was nobody to ask.
Carlos popped up in the water, and in a few moments Kokubun and two others joined them. Then Cadmann appeared, striding huge and implacable from the dark of the river, spear gun at the ready.
"What happened?"
Jerry slowed his trip-hammer breathing. His teeth chattered. "Andy and
I went into th-the cave. He surfaced, and that was it. He went straight up. He didn't even have a chance to scream."
"Volunteers," Cadmann said. Carlos raised his hand immediately, and four of the others. "Fine. The rest of you—wait ten seconds and follow us in. Jerry?"
"I'm right behind you."
Cadmann nodded and slipped into the water.
Jerry was the last in. Suddenly the water felt slimy to him. Fear constricted his chest, and he couldn't breathe. The water surface was silver above him.
Andy had gone up, arms and legs thrashing, and back down without his head.
A flash of light ripped the darkness from the water. A moment later the shock wave hit, and the numbing, thunderous roar of sound.
Jerry surfaced.
"Dear God in heaven..."
The cave was smaller than the one he had just left, with a broad shelf of gours to the left. On it the creature was whirling, spinning like a top with something dark and hideously limp in its mouth. It took Jerry a moment to realize that it was a human leg, ripped from its owner's body like a twig from a sapling. Andy's leg; for Andy's headless corpse had been thrown clear across the cavity and was sliding down from near the ceiling.
The creature froze for an instant. Jerry had just time to make out its squat monitor shape, the spiked tail thrashing restlessly, the gaping mouth lined with daggers. Then with a blur it was among them, churning in a circle, frothing the water with blood.
Human and reptilian screams mingled. One of the spears exploded against the rock wall, one against the ceiling, another in the water with a blinding flash. The monster's tail whipped twice, then slammed down on a diver's head, driving it under.
There was horrific crunch, and a man flew from the water, smashing into a heap on the shore.
Cadmann tore out his mouthpiece and screamed at it, "Over here, you bastard! Here!" He whistled as loudly as he could, then put his mouthpiece back fast.
The water whirled as if whipped by a centrifuge. The creature righted itself and jetted straight for Cadmann, too quickly, too damned quickly. Jerry didn't have time to scream warning, or even blink: the creature had changed paths and was streaking—
Cadmann fired. The spear hit the monster precisely in the throat, and the explosion nearly decapitated it. Blood and bone and bits of flesh foamed from the water and showered on them. The water smoked as the shattered body rolled twice, then sank.
For a long moment there was silence. Jerry couldn't help shining his flashlight in Cadmann's face. There was an expression that frightened him there. Satisfaction, and vindication, and something else. Something primal, and terribly strong. Then it faded, and Cadmann was himself again.
He spoke slowly. "All right. All clear. We need a net in here, and medical care. Who's got a med kit?"
Mits raised a weary arm.
"Good. All right. Let's get it moving."
Cadmann pulled himself out of the water and sat on the shelf, feet dangling. His breath rasped in the throat mike. Cadmann slipped a re-breather cartridge from his backpack and clicked it into the front unit. He turned to look at Jerry, and his expression was indecipherable.
"Are you all right?" Jerry asked. Why am I nervous?
Cadmann smiled almost paternally. There was an edge to that smile, cold and sharp.
"Never better."
Chapter 20
AUTOPSY II
To stand still on the summit of reflection is difficult, and in the natural course of things, who cannot go forward steps back.
GAIUS VELLEIUS PATERCULUS (20 BC to 30 AD)
The corpse stretched almost fourteen feet from the tip of a rounded snout to the spiked ankylosaur tail. Its bulk filled two veterinary tables: its sour wet smell hung in the air like a curtain of flies. Its grayish-green hide was rent in a score of places. Ribs poked through in rows of stained ivory, denser and more roughly surfaced than human bone. Its webbed feet were torn and broken. The eyes, once golden, shone dull copper in the unwavering overhead light.
Sylvia noticed half a dozen gawking colonists still crowded in the door. Triumph. They weren't there. They laughed at Cadmann. Now they gloat. Unfair, and she knew it, but she savored the taste of malice. You have your triumphs. I have mine. She looked to the corner where Cadmann stood erect, not bothering to lean against the wall. Cadmann has both. It was his radio message—