The traveler didn’t even have time to take his foot off the arrow, when already a thick black liquid flowed from the beast’s mouth into the transparent water of the ocean. The animal began to wriggle, and removed its tentacles from Omis. Now the predator fought the arrow, having grabbed it with all three of its limbs.
The scout had no time to look at the agony of his enemy: air bubbles had already begun to burst from his lips, he desperately wanted to breathe, and it seemed to him that all the air, right down to the last molecule, had already left his lungs. Omis kept himself from inhaling ocean water with the greatest effort of his will. He even had the idea that victory over the enemy wouldn’t be enough to survive, because he was drowning. The animal had managed to pull him to such a depth that he already heard ringing in his ears. Omis continued to rise, but the bright surface of the ocean remained as far away as before.
The traveler, obeying an irresistible desire, had already begun to open his lips, allowing water to penetrate his respiratory tract, although he understood that he was killing himself. At this last, fatal moment, his face finally felt a light touch of air. The young man immediately breathed in so much of the atmosphere that it nearly tore his lungs.
The next moment Omis did his best to restore his breathing as soon as possible, because he still felt that the predator was chasing him. He didn’t want to stay in the water even for a second more. Glancing around, he was relieved to see that he had surfaced only a meter from the tip of the cape, although still on its western side.
The young man, hastily working with his limbs, headed towards his goal. Quickly reaching the eastern side of the ridge, he found that here, at a height of about half a meter above the almost imperceptible waves, it had a ledge in the form of a shelf which, it seemed to him, went along almost to the coast. A minute later he had already climbed onto it. He lay with his belly on the warm, damp rock and looked at the ocean. His nerves were still experiencing the tension of the underwater battle, and it seemed to him that his skin still felt the touch of the slippery tentacles of the beast.
Nevertheless, over time, one way or another, the tension gradually decreased, and Omis sank into such an indescribably pleasant sense of security as he had never experienced before.
Soon, the scout realized that he had received at least some benefit from this battle—it had brought him closer to land. The young man, according to the rule, named this animal as BOUC-1, because it really was a big, oceanic, underwater predator.
Sitting on the stone, he stared blankly at the waves under which he had just experienced a deadly adventure. Suddenly, a large air bubble appeared on the barely lit surface of the ocean, which burst softly. Soon several more bubbles followed, and after a few seconds the water seemed to boil. Omis guessed that something was happening underwater. Perhaps other predators, following the smell of blood, had swum up and were now eating the animal that he’d injured.
However, the affairs underwater didn’t attract his attention for long. He turned away from the ocean and looked at the land. Ro had already disappeared, but Seler, which had replaced it, wasn’t doing badly either. The young man could clearly distinguish the white foam of the waves falling on the sandy shore, at a distance of about forty meters.
Omis got up and headed there. Partway to the surf, to his disappointment, he discovered that the ledge didn’t extend all the way to the shore. Starting from where he stood, it dropped sharply into the water.
It turned out that he needed to swim again. But Omis couldn’t so easily force himself to enter the water. The image of the underwater beast still loomed too clearly in front of his mind’s eye, and this, in turn, gave rise to the feeling that he was still inhaling salt water.
After a long-drawn hesitation, he stumbled upon the question—if he waited until morning, here on the cliff, would the ocean become safer?
The answer to this question forced Omis to prepare another arrow. He glanced up at Seler and leaped into the ocean with his feet first. This time the trip went without any incident and lasted only a few meters. Then the bottom rose sharply, and Omis quickly left the dangerous environment. However, when he’d almost reached shallow water, he again felt a terrible touch.
This contact had no continuation, but Omis nevertheless ran ashore as if this time the ocean had actually boiled and scalded him. Once on solid ground, the scout walked a dozen steps from the water and sank onto the warm sand. In his native environment, the young man felt truly safe, at last.
Chapter 74
Em, falling into the suddenly formed pit with his face about to hit its edge, straightened his hands instantly in front of him to soften the collision. Although the next moment the young man grasped that his precaution was unnecessary.
He felt a support under his leg; although not quite firm, it was still viscous enough to slow down and then completely stop his further immersion. Now his legs depicted a pair of compasses ready to draw a large circle. The brink of the wet carpet he’d been walking on a second ago had now ended up at the level of his waist.
Em almost took a breath of relief when the stratum of turf beneath his other foot collapsed, too. The traveler resumed his diving, but again not for long. The downward movement first slowed, and then stopped completely when the edge of the pit had aligned with his chest. Now he stood in a well, afraid to move or even breathe, wary of falling to where he couldn’t scramble out. Moreover, it seemed to him as if he was continuing to sink, although imperceptibly.
“What is it?” he heard Bame’s surprised voice from behind him. “Why did you fall?”
Bame had remained slightly behind, because he had stopped to shake a pebble from out of his sandal. Em answered without turning to him, standing still: “The surface we have been walking on has fallen into the mud.”
He looked down, swallowed his saliva, and continued, “No, it is not dirt, I’m standing in water, and it’s rising, almost reaching my ankles, and the distance between it and the grass that we walked on…mmm-m, the gap is about one meter in height.”
He continued to examine the pit and at the same time to describe the situation, “Maybe it is not rising; now I am not sure,” he looked down again. “We marched along…” he cast a glance at the edge of the pit, “a plant mat about twenty centimeters thick, which hangs over this…mud lake. This grass has long, thin roots extending down to this water…or mud.”
“Have we been walking above a bog?” Bame specified.
“Right, really over a bog,” Em remembered the necessary word, and added, “I think you should tear off or find a long branch and hand it to me so that I can grab it and you can pull me out. Meanwhile, I will turn around.”
“First I have to get back onto solid ground,” said Bame, who also stood motionless.
“Walk carefully, and hurry up, it seems to me that I am plunging into this mud again,” Em said with concern.
“I am already moving, but how can I be in a hurry and careful at the same time?” Bame said in perplexity.
He took a few vacillating steps back and felt more relaxed when the orange layer, which swayed like a spring, remained behind him, or rather, in front of him. Once on the ground, Bame went to the nearest plant.
“Why are you going so slowly?” asked Em after he’d managed to turn around in smooth, cautious movements. “Hurry, I am drowning.”
Bame looked at his fellow traveler and continued to walk to the tree without saying anything. At first, Em was surprised at the slowness of his comrade, but then he thought that maybe Bame was acting normally, but in his fraught position his comrade’s movements only seemed slow to him.
These thoughts calmed him a little, and then he watched the work of his ally more patiently. Meanwhile, Bame approached the tree and climbed on it. He reached one relatively thin but long branch, stood on it and began to swing it with the intent to break it off. By then, Em’s dive had finally stopped and he had relaxed even more. Bame, often glancing at the swamp, continued his efforts.
Finally, a crack sounded and the br
anch broke off. Its free end, leaning down, touched the ground. Bame jumped from the tree, grabbed the branch and began to pull it, simultaneously jerking it from side to side. In the end, he tore it completely free and dragged it to the treacherous field. Em became suspicious again. It seemed to him that now, when he was no longer plunging, his comrade was moving faster. Although he explained this new doubt to himself as also having to do with his parlous state.
Meanwhile, Bame lay down on solid ground with his belly down and extended the branch, about three meters long, to his companion. Em grabbed it, but after a brief hesitation he changed his mind and pushed it aside. Gliding carefully with his feet, he moved forward to the edge of the pit and, approaching it, he moved the maser from his shoulder to his back.
Next, Em laid his elbows on the plant canopy and tried to pull himself up enough to lie on it with his chest. He almost did it, but at the last moment the edge of the plant carpet collapsed again and the traveler almost fell with his face down into the mud, although he still managed to stay on his feet. Em felt the bottom go downward again, and he immediately grabbed the rescue branch. To his amazement, it didn’t show any resistance and easily came toward him. So the youth just pulled it to him, instead of hanging on it and thus avoiding further drowning. The edge of the pit quickly reached his chin.
Em was sinking and looking at Bame. The latter, instead of holding the branch tightly and helping him, had released it completely. Em, despite his danger, was again surprised at the behavior of his collaborator. Bame’s face expressed no alarm; he simply seemed to be waiting for something.
Fortunately for Em, under the surface layer the swamp appeared to be even more viscous, and his dive stopped again. His head remained above the thick orange mat. At first, Em instinctively went to its new edge, but then, having stopped, the young man first pulled his maser by the belt, and then removed it from his shoulder. After that, Em took his weapon in his hands, holding it aimed at Bame.
Seeing this, Bame seemed to wake up from his sleep and immediately spoke rapidly, “My mistake. You fell so unexpectedly that the branch slipped out of my hands and I was at a loss. Why do you need a maser? Better return it to your back and grab the branch.”
Em looked down at the weapon in his hands, pondered for a while, and only after that did he return it to its former place. Then he pushed the branch back to Bame.
Having analyzed the result of his previous attempt, Em decided to try to continue to advance in the same way. From this moment on, he first moved to the brink of the pit, and then hung on it with his elbows. As soon as the canopy began to give in, he straightened his legs to soften his landing on the lower layer. The branch stayed always beside him just in case. This path turned out to be quite exhausting, and when he finally got to a safe place, Em felt enormous fatigue. He’d left behind a canal with zigzag edges, which ended abruptly on the shore of this natural trap.
Having reached firm soil, squelching mud in his sandals, he went to a tree a few steps from the swamp and sat there. Leaning against its trunk, he tried to catch his breath and calm down. Bame also collapsed, but near another plant. At first he examined his shoes, then his clothes and, in the end, he examined his weapons. All this time, he carefully avoided looking at Em. After a long silence, Em asked, “In which direction should we go now?”
“After your rest we will go to meet them,” Bame replied.
Em looked at him and remembered, “By the way, you have not told me where and when we will meet with them? How do we know where exactly they will march?”
“Last night while you were in the shower, I asked the satellite to send a record of their route to my UD, to draw a line along which they came to the river, near which communication with them had been lost—”
“I see, it is clear,” Em interrupted him. “Then you selected some point on this line.”
“Yes,” Bame confirmed. “If you remember, not so far north, about one and a half kilometers from the farm, there is a big tree, split in half, possibly by lightning.”
Em frowned for a second, and then spoke, nodding, “Yes, I remember. We will wait for them near that tree, they should pass next to it; the satellite will direct them.”
“Yes,” Bame agreed again.
In response to this, Em asked, “And in what direction is that tree now?”
While Bame pondered on this question, Em added, “We do not know what time it is. It is bad that we do not have our UDs.”
Bame answered, looking at his comrade in bewilderment, “If we had screens, and therefore satellite navigation, how could we say that we had got lost looking for a path through the thorns?”
“But it looks like we really have gotten lost,” Em said.
“Why do you think so?”Bame looked at him, frowning.
“We have no idea where we are,” Em said. “That is the exact meaning of the expression to ‘get lost’.”
“Why do you say that we do not know where we are?” Bame began to speak, but this time not so confidently, “The time is,” he raised his head and looked at the sky,“…noon has already passed—the bog took a lot of time from us.”
He thought a little and finished his speech, “Since we marched so far north, now we should turn to the east, which is on that side,” he showed with his hand, “So, we should go in that direction.”
“I understood.” Em said. “I will wash my sandals and we can go.”
With these words, he got up and headed for the small stream. Here he again used the log through which they crossed to this side. Em sat on it, took off his shoes and washed them. After that, he floundered his feet in the pleasant water until he felt that the dirt had completely washed off from them.
Chapter 75
When Mafkona woke up, first of all, she examined her wound and felt satisfied. The moistened herbal compresses had really helped her. The swelling had noticeably decreased, and the pain had disappeared completely, at least, while she remained motionless.
Leaning on her healthy leg she got up and with one jump on the same limb she got at the window leaf. She looked through it and saw the same deserted meadow as yesterday.
The girl came up with three explanations for this: either animals rarely came here, or they quenched their thirst in another place, or her tent scared them.
Having examined the surroundings, Mafkona jumped to the entrance. She carefully unfastened the Velcro and stuck her head out. After another thorough inspection of the environs, she, went outside, extremely collectedly. Ro had just risen, but the morning had already erased all traces of the previous night. The forest surrounding this place impeded the free movement of air, and therefore stuffiness had accumulated in the field.
Mafkona looked around once more and, when she again saw nothing suspicious, the girl headed to the mouth of the stream. She considered these five steps harmful to her bruise, and therefore she overcame this distance by jumping on one leg. During these bounds she felt dew drops on the orange carpet under her foot.
At first she drank some water, trying to do something with her annoying hunger. As before, the liquid didn’t help, and her stomach, to prove it, rumbled even worse. To distract herself from this unpleasant feeling the girl glanced at the lake. Its surface looked like polished glass, and showed signs of life only in the place where the spring bothered it.
Seeing this, Mafkona remembered yet another method of suppressing her appetite. She had used it in her early childhood, when they’d learned to quickly obey the rules. At that time, being punished by deprivation of dinner and suffering from the burning in her stomach, she’d done gymnastics. Warming herself in this way, the little girl could temporarily or completely forget about her hunger, especially if she managed to exhaust herself so much that she quickly fell asleep.
Now she intended to do something like that gymnastics, namely, she wanted to swim. Mafkona began to reason: after Ama’s leaving, at least five hours remained before Ro’s setting, and during this long period she’d seen no living being here. That
night, she’d heard the sound of an animal only once, but now she wondered if that had merely happened in her dreams.
So, somehow or other, the animals’ population here looked scarce, or the big alien thing created by strange biped animals had really frightened them. In addition, the thing sometimes vibrated like a living one. Perhaps in this den or nest, who knew how they perceived the tent, danger was hidden?
How else could one explain such an emptiness in this place? Therefore, there was nothing dangerous in bathing; after all, she want to stay in the water for only a few minutes. And this would not harm her health. Mafkona, in her striving to justify her intent, found one more argument—according to Archimedes’ law, in water, the load on her sore leg would be much less. This would give her the opportunity to test the performance of her limb in lightened conditions.
Mafkona stripped naked and entered the pond. A few steps later, during which she very carefully used her diseased limb, she lay on the surface of the lake and swam. The immersion into the cool, clear water, after she’d sweated many times over the previous day, gave her an unexpectedly great pleasure. She felt a sticky layer of sweat and dust gradually dissolve in the water and wash off her skin.
Slowly approaching almost to the middle of the pool, she looked at the opposite bank. Yesterday, Mafkona had already noticed small pink flowers growing there on the bushes. Now the girl wanted to examine them from close range, but hesitated. That didn’t last long, and she decided that slow swimming for another thirty meters or so would allow her to better test her leg, which so far hadn’t shown any signs of pain.
She looked around again and, making sure that everything remained safe, continued to move. Mafkona swam until her hand touched the clay bottom of the lake. As soon as she felt it, the girl carefully lowered her legs and straightened. She was about to leave the water when she heard a rustle among the bushes. She quickly backed away, not forgetting, however, to step carefully on her injured leg. Then she lay on her back in the water and swam without releasing the shore from her field of vision.
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