Sklar Hast turned his eyes up to the skies, where the constellations already blazed with magnificent ardor. To the south, half up the sky, hung a cluster of twenty-five middlebright stars, from which, so tradition asserted, his ancestors had fled in the Ship of Space, finally to reach the world of water. Eighty-three persons, of various castes, managed to disembark before the ship foundered and sank; the eightythree had become twenty thousand, scattered east and west along fifty miles of floating sea-plant. The castes so jealously differentiated during the first few generations, with the Bezzlers at the top and the Advertisermen at the bottom, had now accommodated themselves to one another and were even intermingling. There was little to disturb the easy flow of life; nothing harsh nor unpleasant-except, perhaps, King Kragen.
Sklar Hast made a sour face and examined those three of his arbors which only two days before had been plucked clean by King Kragen, whose appetite as well as his bulk grew by the year. Sklar Hast scowled westward across the ocean, in the direction from which King Kragen customarily appeared, moving with long strokes of his four propulsive vanes, in a manner to suggest some vast, distorted, grotesquely ugly anthropoid form swimming by means of the breaststroke. There, of course, the resemblance to man ended. King Kragen's body was tough black cartilage, a cylinder on a rectangle, from the comers of which extended the vanes. The cylinder comprising King Kragen's main bulk opened forward in a maw fringed with four mandibles and eight palps, and aft in an anus. Atop this cylinder, somewhat to the front, rose a turret from which the four eyes protruded: two peering forward, two aft. During Sklar Hast's lifetime King Kragen had grown perceptibly, and now measured perhaps sixty feet in length. King Kragen was a terrible force for destruction, but luckily could be placated. King Kragen enjoyed copious quantities of sponges and when his appetite was appeased he injured no one and did no damage; indeed he kept the area clear of other marauding kragen, which either he killed or sent flapping and skipping in a panic across the ocean.
Sklar Hast's attention was attracted by a dark swirl in the water at the edge of the net: a black bulk surrounded by glistening cusps and festoons of starlit water. Sklar Hast ran forward to the edge of the pad, peered. No question about it! A lesser kragen was attempting to break the net that it might plunder the lagoon!
Sklar Hast shouted a curse, shook his fist, turned, ran at full speed across the pad. He jumped into his coracle, crossed the twenty feet of water to the central float. He delayed only long enough to tie the coracle to a stake formed of a human femur, then ran at top speed to the hoodwink tower.
A mile to the west me tower on Thrasneck Float flickered its lamps, the configurations coming with the characteristic style of Durdan Fair, the Thrasneck Master Hoodwink: "… thirteen… bushels… of… salt… lost… when… a … barge… took… water… between… Sumber … and… Adelvine…"
Sklar Hast climbed the ladder, burst into the cupola. He pointed to the lagoon. "A rogue, breaking the nets. I just saw him. Call King Kragen!"
Chaezy Zander instantly flashed the cut-in signal. His fingers jammed down rods, he kicked the release. "Call…
King… Kragen!" he signaled. "Rogue… in… Tranque … Lagoon!"
On Thrasneck Float Durden Fan- relayed the message to me tower on Bickle Float, and so along the line of floats to Sciona at the far west, who thereupon returned the signaclass="underline"
"King… Kragen… is… nowhere… or… hand."
Back down the line of towers flickered die message, returning to Tranque Float in something short of sixty seconds.
Sklar Hast read the message as it left the Bickle Tower. before reaching Thrasneck, and rushed over to the side of the cupola, to peer down into the lagoon.
. Others had now discovered the rogue kragen and set up a shout to the tower "Call King Kragen!" Sklar Hast shouted In return, "He can't be found!" Chaezy Zander, tight-lipped, was already dispatching another message: "To… the… various… intercessors… along… the… line. Kindly … summon… King… Kragen… and… direct… him… to… Tranque… Float."
Sklar Hast pointed and bellowed, "Look! The beast has broken the net! Where is Voidenvo?"
He swung down the ladder, ran to the edge of the lagoon.
The kragen, a beast perhaps fifteen feet in length, was surging easily through the water, a caricature of a man performing the breaststroke. Starlight danced and darted along the disturbed water, and so outlined the gliding black bulk. Sklar Hast cried out in fury: the bnite was headed for his arbors, so recently devastated by the appetite of King Kragen! It could not be borne! He ran to his coracle, returned to his. pad.
Already the kragen had extended its palps and was feeling for sponges. Sklar Hast sought for an implement which might serve as a weapon; there was nothing to hand: a few articles fashioned from human bones and fish cartilage. Leaning against the hut was a boat-hook, a stalk ten feet long, carefully straightened, scraped, and seasoned, to which a hook-shaped human rib had been lashed. He took it up and now from the central pad came a cry of remonstrance. "Sklar Hast! What do you do?" This was the voice of Semon Voidenvo the Intercessor. Sklar Hast paid him no heed. He ran to the edge of the pad, jabbed the boat-hook at the kragen's turret. It scraped uselessly along resilient cartilage. The kragen swung up one of its vanes, knocked the pole aside. Sklar Hast jabbed the pole with all his strength at what he considered the kragen's most vulnerable area: a soft pad of receptor-endings directly above the maw. Behind him he heard Semon Voidenvo's outraged protest: "This is not to be done! This is not to be done! Desist!"
The kragen quivered at the blow, twisted its massive turret to gaze at Sklar Hast. Again it swung up its fore-vane, smashing the pole, slashing at Sklar Hast, who leapt back with inches to spare. From the central pad Semon Voidenvo bawled,
"By no means molest the kragen; it is a matter for the King!
We must respect the King's perquisites."
Sklar Hast stood back in fury as the kragen resumed its feeding. As if to punish Sklar Hast for his assault, it passed close beside the arbors, worked its vanes, and the arbors, sea-plant stalk lashed with fiber, collapsed. Sktar Hast groaned.
"No more than you deserve," called out Semon Voidenvo with odious complacence. "You interfered with the duties of King Kragen; now your arbors are destroyed. This is justice."
" 'Justice'? Bah!" bellowed Sklar Hast. "Where is King Kragen? You, Voidenvo the Intercessor! Why don't you summon the great gluttonous beast?"
"Come, come," admonished Semon Voidenvo. "This is not the tone in which to speak of King Kragen."
Sklar Hast thrust himself and his coracle back to the central float, where now stood several hundred folk of Tranque Float. He pointed. "Look. See that vile beast of the sea. He is plundering us of our goods. I say, kill him. I say that we need not suffer such molestation."
Semon Voidenvo emitted a high-pitched croak. "Are you insane? Someone, pour water on this maniac Hoodwink, who has too long focused his eyes on flashing lights."
In the lagoon the kragen moved to the arbors of the Belrod family, deep-divers for stalk and withe, of the Advertiserman caste and prone to a rude and surly vulgarity. The Belrod elder, Poe, a squat large-featured man, still resilient and vehement despite his years, emitted a series of hoots, intended to distract the kragen. which instead tore voraciously at the choicest Belrod sponges.