“I think the thing’s showing some reaction,” Jao said.
The face-legs, liberated from their box, swung idly to and fro. There was something about the stick-creature’s stance. It seemed to lower itself a few inches and become utterly still.
Encouraged, the Cuddly made another little hop forward.
There was a blur of motion so fast that Bram saw it only as an afterimage. The masklike face of the alien split vertically, and a long scooplike lip tipped with teeth flicked out and captured the little furry beast.
The hinged lip, longer than a man’s arm, snapped back, bearing the ensnared Cuddly to a barbed mouth. There was a single high-pitched squeal, and then with two crunches, the Cuddly was gone. The lobes of the toothed structure folded over to become a mask again.
The hum of human conversation in the chamber stopped abruptly. People stood frozen. Every Cuddly in sight streaked for a hiding place and disappeared. The insect-being stood preening itself with its hooked facial limbs. Its fellows paused in their rambles and turned their jelly-domed heads in its direction.
In the stunned silence, Jorv stood with dropped jaw, breathing hard. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Odonata!” and before Bram could stop him, he stepped up to the immobilized creature for a close look at its face.
There was another blurred movement as the creature seized Jorv with its facial limbs and bit his head off.
A woman screamed. People came out of their trances. The creature calmly continued crunching its way through Jorv’s neck and shoulder. Jao grabbed one of the picks that the archaeologists had left lying around. Bram found a steel pry bar. Several others joined them, and they ran to recover what was left of Jorv’s body from the leggy horror that was chomping its way through it.
It wouldn’t let go. A couple of men had Jorv’s body by the feet and were trying to pull it away. Bram grabbed the creature by one of its facial palps and tried to lever its jaws open with the pry bar. A hooked leg came up and raked him across the ribs. There was a sound of ripped cloth and a searing pain, but he held on. Jao swung his pick handle and smashed one of the bulging green eyes.
Even then it wouldn’t let go. It rotated in injured circles, still munching, lashing out at the struggling men with its barbed legs. The long abdomen whipped around and a man screamed as its horned pincers tore at his flesh.
Bram went berserk. He beat at the armored hide with his steel bar while Jao, grunting, labored with his pickax at the ruined jelly of the head. The thing refused to die. The limbs slashed blindly at the air. But it dropped its grisly meal, and the long toothed lip struck out again and again, looking for prey. Finally someone got a sharpened pole—one the diggers used for soundings—and ran the creature through, repeatedly, till it stopped moving.
Bram stood wearily, drenched in blood and gore, holding the slippery pry bar. He couldn’t tell how much of the blood was his own and how much had spilled from Jorv.
Shouts and screams echoed through the huge arena. The other insect-creatures, as if by a common signal, had gone on the attack. On a high balcony, the tragedy of Jorv was repeated as a stick-being pursued a fleeing woman and caught her with its facial snare. People came running, too late, to her aid. They beat and stabbed at the creature with whatever came to hand. One of the rescuers was flung away, disemboweled by a stroke of a hind claw. The tattered body tumbled slowly through the air toward the distant floor below.
Elsewhere, one of the spindly horrors ran at a group of people and emerged with a screaming victim in its mouth. It ran off with its prize, munching as it went, dropping a trail of arms and legs behind it.
Two more of the insect-beings bore down on the group of shaken people gathered around Jorv’s headless body. They were a terrifying sight, but no one ran. An extensible lip shot out and clasped someone’s leg in its prehensile hooks, but two quick-witted people threw themselves on the victim and prevented him from being dragged back. Men and women with poles, shovels, axes—anything that could be used as a weapon—converged on the monster from both sides. It loosed its grip, leaving a mangled leg that would have to be regenerated if the victim lived, and swung its three-lobed head at its tormentors. The lip raked across one victim, tearing flesh, and another man went down under the onslaught of the barbed head-legs. But other people harried it from behind, and when it swiveled its killing apparatus around to deal with them, a brave woman with a pole leaped high into the air and jabbed at a globular eye from above.
Meanwhile Bram saw the other creature rushing straight at him. The facial limbs were already extended for grasping. He knew he would be no match for the lightning thrust of the feeding apparatus—it surpassed his reach, even with the iron bar in his hand.
He dropped the bar and wrenched one of the heavy display tables from the ground. He put his whole back into it, swiveling from the hips. It was a massive piece of rough carpentry, twelve feet long, laden with rock and metal fragments that the archaeologists had not bothered to pack up. In the infinitesimal gravity, he could have lifted a weight ten times as heavy, but speed was the problem, and he needed all his muscular strength to overcome the inertia.
The table became his shield as the creature’s lip struck. There was a sound of splintering wood, and Bram felt himself being driven back by the thrust. A rain of jagged stone and metal pelted his adversary. Bram shoved back, hard, and the weight of the table helped him; his feet were braced against the ground, while his opponent, losing contact, clung to the table as Bram ran it at full speed into the wall.
Three or four people ran to help him keep the creature pinned against the wall while somebody finished it off with an ax.
They stood around panting. “We’re monkeys, monkeys,” Ame sobbed beside him, and he became aware that she was one of the people who had helped him keep the creature pinned. “I thought we were human, but we knew in our bones how to gang up on them.”
“All the rocks and junk confused it for a minute,” Jao said. “Just long enough.”
That gave Bram an idea. “Throw things at them!” he shouted.
The carnage on the floor was terrible. The insects had better reach with their legs and facial snares than the humans did with their shovels and axes, and they were very quick.
Jao was the first to react. He scooped up an armful of archaeological detritus from one of the big tables and sent a hail of missiles at another of the spindly creatures that was heading in their direction. It veered off. A sharp fragment caught it in one eye. Its lip shot out reflexively to find an enemy.
People were quick to get the idea. There were plenty of sharp objects to throw: shards from the long tables, cast-off equipment, and rubble from the floor itself. A barrage of missiles peppered the creatures from ground level and pelted them from the balconies. They came from all directions, thunking into the stiff hides, finding pulpy spots. There was no way for the creatures to avoid them, as marvelous as their eyesight was and as quick as their reflexes were. Every time they made a dash at a group of people, they were met by a volley of hurled objects.
Not that they were always turned aside. Sometimes they barged into a group, knocking people over and lacerating them, and carried someone off. They seemed to have no concept that they were outnumbered.
And then some brainy person reinvented the spear.
It was only a kitchen knife lashed hastily to a pole, but its-owner—maybe losing his nerve about running it into an enemy personally—flung it at an insect-thing as it passed him. The blade hit a soft spot, and the creature ran by with the pole sticking out of it. Another person threw another improvised pike, then everybody who had a sharp stick seemed to join in. The wounded creature began to run in circles, snapping at the skewers in its hide, then grew weaker and less purposeful, sinking to its four skeleton knees. When the surrounding people saw that it was safe to approach it, they hacked it to pieces.