Ishmael could not see it, but he suspected that a grayish line coming from the back of each creature was attached at the other end to the hanging strand. It seemed likely that the line was coiled inside the thing's body and could be controlled for the distance needed for the deadly swing at its prey on the floor. The creatures did not drop; they seemed paralyzed by the torchlight.
But there must be many others outside the light who were not frozen by it.
For some reason, through some complex of interactions, uncoiling from their instincts, which were habits formed and fossilized millions of years ago, they dropped at thirty-second intervals. Something passed through them, releasing them at stated intervals like so many wooden cuckoos.
Ishmael told the crew in a low voice that they were to run. But they should imitate him, and when he leaped to one side, they must do so too. And when he dropped to the floor, they must do the same.
He set out immediately, starting his count at fifteen, which was his rough estimate of the time it had taken him to give his orders. At thirty he threw himself on the floor, reaching out at the same time to seize the fallen torch, which had landed about thirty feet from where he had cast it.
The gray six-legged thing arced over him and into the darkness.
Ishmael got up, counting under his breath, and ran forward. At the count of thirty, he gave two tremendous leaps to the left, and the torches showed a dark body hurtling through the light and on up.
The next time he slashed upward, and his spearhead, though it missed the creature, severed the line from its back. It was just starting the upward swing and so flew out of sight. But a moment later, having dashed ahead, Ishmael saw it. It was staggering around, two of its thin legs bent outward. Even so, it scuttled away and would have been lost if a sailor had not thrown a torch after it. The brand hit the floor, bounced, cartwheeling, and its flaming end struck the thing. An odor of burned flesh was wafted to them; the thing folded its unbroken legs to its body and died, or pretended to die. Ishmael made certain with his spear.
The next room did not reveal to the thrown torch anything like they had just left. It seemed to be nothing except a black emptiness. That did not mean the room was bare: the light had not reached the ceiling or the walls.
Ishmael looked back toward the doorway through which they had escaped, hoping to see the doorway on the other side of the room, the first they had entered, still limned with faint light. It would be a sort of lighthouse, assuring him that they were not in a universe which had gone eternally dark.
He did see the rectangle, or its ghost, far off.
He also saw something else. Rather, he saw the lack of something.
"Where is Pamkamshi?" he said.
The others looked back too. Then they looked at each other.
"He was behind me a moment ago," Goonrajum, a sailor, said.
"I thought he was carrying a torch," Ishmael said. "But you have one now. Did he give you his?"
"He asked me to hold it for a moment," Goonrajum said.
And now Pamkamshi was gone.
Ishmael and the others, keeping close together, retraced their path until they were close to the doorway. This was again covered by a web.
Ishmael led them away from the door but on a winding path calculated to cover territory at random. Nowhere was there any sign of Pamkamshi.
Again Ishmael threw his torch high into the air. He saw nothing, except... But he could not be sure. He picked up the torch and threw it once more, putting every bit of force he had into the throw.
The torch, just before beginning its downward arc, illuminated palely something that might or might not be two bare feet.
"Listen!" Namalee said.
They were quiet. The torches sputtered and flickered. Ishmael could hear his own blood singing. And he could hear another sound, very faintly.
"It sounds like somebody chewing," Namalee said.
"Chomping," Karkri said.
At Ishmael's request, Karkri took the torch and cast it upward. Though he was shorter and lighter in weight than Ishmael, he still had spent half of his life throwing a harpoon. The torch sailed up higher than when Ismael had thrown it, and it showed a pair of bare feet hanging in the air. They were moving slowly away from the men below.
Namalee gasped, and some of the men uttered prayers or curses.
"Something snatched Pamkamshi into the air when nobody had their eyes on him," Ishmael said. "Something up there."
He felt cold, and his stomach muscles were contracting.
"Shoot up in that direction," he said to Avarjam, who had a bow. "Don't worry about hitting Pamkamshi. I think he is dead. His feet weren't moving by themselves. Something is carrying him off across the room."
Avarjam shot an arrow into the darkness above them. The string thrummed, and then there was a thudding noise. The arrow did not clatter on the floor ahead of them.
"You hit something," Ishmael said, wondering if it was Pamkamshi. Perhaps the arrow had driven into a man who was only unconscious, not dead. But he could not help that. The safety of the greater number and of the mission was paramount.
"He's lower than he was," Ishmael said, and then there was a loud thump ahead of them. They hurried forward and saw in the torchlight the body of Pamkamshi. His bones were broken and his flesh burst open. But it was not the fall that had killed him. Around his neck was a broad purplish mark, and his eyes bulged out and his tongue protruded. Something had eaten his scalp and ears and part of his nose.
"Everybody put one hand up by their necks and keep them there until I say to do otherwise," Ishmael said.
"What did the arrow hit?" Namalee said.
She looked up and yelled, forgetting Ishmael's orders to keep quiet, and jumped back. They looked too, and they jumped away, opening out.
The creature that fell onto the stone floor by Pamkamshi was pancake-shaped and bore a great suction pad on its back and on the other side a coil of purplish hue by a great mouth with many small teeth. The arrow had run half its length through it and probably pinned it to the ceiling after its death had released the huge suction pad.
The beast had dropped its long tentacle nooselike around the neck of Pamkamshi and snatched him into the upper darkness. Whether it had selected the man because he was being unobserved by the others or whether it was by accident, Ishmael did not know. But he suspected that the beast possessed some organs of perceptions not apparent to those unfamiliar with the creature.
He also suspected that the ceiling was crowded with the beasts and that he and his band were in deadly peril. If this was true, however, something was preventing the beasts from making a mass attack. Did there exist among them, as he suspected there did among the creatures of the room they had just quitted, a communal mind? Or, if not a mind, some sort of common nervous system? And this allotted to each in its turn a chance to try for a victim? Or did the hypothesized common agreement insist that any beast could attack when it was safe for one to do so? And what was the safety rule? That one of the prey should be unobserved momentarily by his fellows?
If this was the rule, then the creatures were vulnerable in some respect; otherwise they would not care whether or not the intended victim was isolated from his group.
Ishmael leaned over the thing to study the effects of the arrow. A pale green fluid had spread out from the wound, which was centered on a lump in the body about the size and shape of an ostrich egg. Ishmael thought that this could be one of its vital organs.