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 are merely the termini of muscles."
Elmar Pronave took the mallet and with the handle prodded at a node. The kragen gave a furious jerk. "Well, well," said Pronave. "Interesting indeed." He prodded further: here, there. Every time he touched the exposed ganglions the kragen jerked. Sklar Hast suddenly put out his hand to halt him.
"Notice. On the right, those two long loops; likewise on the left. When you touched this one here, the fore-vane jerked."
He took the mallet, prodded each of the loops in turn; and in turn each of the vanes jerked.
"Aha!" declared Elmar Pronave. "Should we persist, we could teach the kragen to jig."
"Best we should kill the beast," said Sklar Hast. "Day is approaching and who knows but what…" From me float sounded a sudden low wail, quickly cut off as by the constriction of breath. The group around the kragen stirred; someone vented a deep sound of dismay. Skiar Hast jumped up on the kragen, looked around. The population on the float were staring to sea; he looked likewise, to see King Kragen. He floated under the surface, only his turret above water. The eyes stared forward, each a foot across; lenses of tough crystal behind which flickered milky films and pale blue sheen. King Kragen had either drifted close down the trail of Phocan's Cauldron on the water, or approached subsurface.
Fifty feet from the lagoon nets he let his bulk come to the surface; first the whole of his turret, then the black cylinder housing the maw and the digestive process, finally the great flat sub-body: this, five feet thick, thirty feet wide, sixty feet long. To the sides protruded the propulsive vanes, thick as the girth of three men. Viewed from dead ahead King Kragen appeared a deformed ogre swimming the breaststroke. His forward eyes, in their hom tubes, were turned toward the float of Sklar Hast, and seemed fixed upon the hulk of the mutilated kragen. The men stared back. muscles stiff as sea-plant stalk. The kragen which they had captured, once so huge and formidable, now seemed a miniature, a doll, a toy.
Through its after-eyes it saw King Kragen, and gave a fluting whistle, a sound completely lost and desolateSklar Hast suddenly found his tongue. He spoke in a husky urgent tone. "Back. To the back of the pad. Swim to the float."
From the main float rose the voice of Semon Voidenvo the Intercessor. In quavering tones he called out across the water:
"Behold, King Kragen, the men of Tranque Float! Now we denounce the presumptuous bravado of these few heretics!
Behold, this pleasant lagoon, with its succulent sponges, devoted to the well-being of the magnanimous King Kragen-"
The reedy voice faltered as King Kragen twitched his great vanes and eased forward. The great eyes stared without discernible expression, but behind there seemed to be a leaping and shifting of pale pink and pale blue lights. The folk on the float drew back as King Kragen breasted close to the net.
With a twitch of his vanes, he ripped the net; two more twitches shredded it. From the folk on the float came a moan of dread; King Kragen had not been mollified.
King Kragen eased into the tagoon, approached Sklar Hast's pad, which now was deserted except for the helpless kragen.
The bound beast thrashed feebly, sounded its fluting whistle.
King Kragen reached forth a palp, seized it, lifted it into the ^ air, where it dangled helplessly. King Kragen drew it contemptuously close to his great mandibles, chopped it quickly into slices of gray and black gristle. These he tossed away, out into the ocean. He paused to drift a moment, to consider.
Then he surged on Sklar Hast's pad. One blow of his forevane demolished the hut, another cut a great gouge in the pad. The after-vanes thrashed among the arbors; water, debris, broken sponges boiled up from below. King Kragen thrust again, wallowed completely up on the pad. which slowly crumpled and sank beneath bis weight.
King Kragen pulled himself back into the lagoon, cruised : back and forth destroying arbors, shredding the net. smashing 148 Jack Vcmce the huts of all the pads of the lagoon. Then he turned his attention to the main float, breasting up to the edge. For a moment he eyed the population, which started to set up a terrified keening sound, then thrust himself forward, wallowed up on the float, and the keening became a series of hoarse cries and screams. The folk ran back and forth with jerky scurrying steps.
King Kragen bulked on the float like a toad on a lilypad.
He struck with his vanes; the float split. The hoodwink tower, the great structure so cunningly woven, so carefully contrived, tottered. King Kragen lunged again, the tower toppled, falling into the huts along the north edge of the float.
King Kragen floundered across the float. He destroyed the granary, the bushels of yellow meal laboriously scraped from sea-plant pistils streamed into the water. He crushed the racks where stalk, withe and fiber were stretched and flexed; he dealt likewise with the ropewalk. Then, as if suddenly in a hurry, he swung about, heaved himself to the southern edge of the float. A number of huts and thirty-two of the folk, mostly aged and very young, were crushed or thrust into the water and drowned.
King Kragen regained the open sea. He floated quietly a moment or two, palps twitching in the expression of some unknowable emotion. Then he moved his vanes and slid off across the calm ocean.
Tranque Float was a devastation, a tangle, a scene of wrath and grief- The lagoon had returned to the ocean, with the arbors reduced to rubbish and the shoals of food-fish scattered- Many huts had been crushed. The hoodwink tower lay toppled. Of a population of four hundred and eighty, fortythree were dead, and as many more injured. The survivors stood blank-eyed and limp, unable to comprehend the full extent of the disaster which had come upon them.
Presently they roused themselves, and gathered at the far western edge where the damage had been the least. Ixon Myrex sought through the faces, eventually spied Sklar Hast sitting on a fragment of the fallen hoodwink tower. He raised his hand slowly, pointed. "Sklar Hast! 1 denounce you- The evil you have done to Tranque Float cannot be uttered in words. Your arrogance, your callous indifference to our pleas, your cruel and audacious villainy-how can you hope to expiate them?"
Sklar Hast looked off across the sea.
"In my capacity as Arbiter of Tranque Float. I now declare you to be a criminal of the basest sort, together with all those who served you as accomplices, and most noteworthy Elmar Pronave! Elmar Pronave, show your shameful face! Where do you hide?"
But Elmar Pronave had been drowned and did not answer.
Chaezy Zander limped across the area to stand beside Ixon Myrex.**! likewise denounce Sklar Hast and declare him Assistant Master Hoodwink no longer. He has disgraced his caste and his calling: I hereby eject him from the fellowship of both!"
Semon Voidenvo the Intercessor rose to speak. "Denunciations are not enough. King Kragen, in wreaking his terrible but just vengeance, intended that the primes of the deed should die. I now declare the will of King Kragen to be death, by either strangulation or bludgeoning, of Sklar Hast and all his accomplices."