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But above all Blade was now a cunning human animal. Survive. There was sure to
be danger. Isolate it, identify it, cope with it. Survive.
The slight pain in his head vanished. Blade lay on dirty brown sand. He could
smell salt water and could hear the faint sound of waves. He was near the sea.
Then a new sound a feral clicking sound, a gnashing, menacing sound that was
very close by.
Blade watched them closing in on him. A ring of crabs.
They had dull brown backs and yellow bellies and they were as big as wolf
hounds. They clashed and skittered and watched him with nasty gleaming eyes.
They formed a circle and gradually they crept inward.
Blade leaped to his feet. The giant crabs scuttled back in hasty sidewinder
movement, clashing great pincers at him. Blade stood in the circle and watched
them, at the same time casting about for a weapon.
There were a dozen of the crabs and if they all attacked at once his stay in
this new dimension would be brief.
The crabs stopped retreating. They watched him, weighing and considering, and
he could read intelligence in the cruel eyes. These were no ordinary crabs,
quite apart from size. These monsters could think!
There was a good sized rock buried in the sand at Blade's feet. He began to
dig it out even as he made a rapid survey of the place. To his left a sea
lapped in placidly. The water had a purple tinge to it.
Patches of yellow fog drifted here and there. To his right he could see sere
brown mountains in the distance.
Scattered up and down the beach, as far as he could see in either direction,
were stout poles set into the. sand. From each pole hung a skeleton, some of
them gleaming fresh and blue-white, some of them old and bleached. The crabs
ate well.
They were hungry again. They began to tighten the circle about Blade. He
picked up the rock, his big muscles straining, and raised it high over his
head. The leader crab, a bit forward of his fellows, paused and the little
eyes stared at Blade.
Blade measured the distance carefully. He took a step and heaved the rock. The
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crab scuttled back, but not in time. There was a nasty liquid sound, as though
one had stepped on an enormous cockroach.
The carapace shattered and a bloody ooze leaked out. A fetid smell filled the
air. Blade felt sick. The remaining crabs fell on their dying leader like a
pack of wolves.
Blade ran, vaulted the line of crabs and kept running. At full tilt down the
long beach, naked and more than a little afraid, and under a sky as leaden as
his spirits. It was a bad beginning in this new
Dimension X.
He paused to examine one of the fresher skeletons lashed to the poles. The
crabs had left nothing but gnawed bones.
Blade grimaced. What crime could the man have committed, to be so horribly
punished?
It had been a small man, judging from the skeleton, and he had died as naked
as Blade was now. No sign of cloth or metal or leather. Blade passed on to the
next skeleton. Another small man.
He reached the end of the line of poles. The brown beach stretched away into
mist. The purple sea, polka dotted with fog, made lonely sounds on the sand.
Arid mountains looked inland. Lonely. Desolate.
Only skeletons for company. Blade glanced behind him. The crabs were following
him.
The cry came faint and forlorn from somewhere ahead of him. Blade stared down
the beach. Nothing there. The crabs were getting closer.
Again the cry. A moaning sound filled with anguish and longing and fear. Blade
shivered, though he was not cold. There was nothing out there. He moved on
down the beach, keeping his distance from the pursuing crabs.
Once more the cry. Blade halted and stared. It was a human sound, what was
left of it, and now it came from nearby. But where? He squinted through fog
now rolling in from the purple sea.
"Help me! For the love of Bek, help me!"
Blade spotted it. A dark splotch on the sand. It could have been a melon or a
ball, a mossy rock. It was a head. A head that moved feebly and a mouth that
gaped and cried. "Help me for the love of
Bek, help me!"
The big man glanced back. The crabs were closer now. He ran toward the dark
blob on the sand.
The man was buried to his neck in the sand. When he opened his mouth to cry
out sand fell into his mouth.
Blade knelt beside the man. Long dark eyes stared up at him in anguish. The
head was long and narrow, bald except for a dark babyish fuzz. The eyes
implored.
The mouth said: "Save me, master. In Bek's name save me."
Blade looked over his shoulder. The crabs were coming along at a rapid pace.
Blade began to dig with his hands. Slow going. He found a shell and began
scooping. Sweat popped out on him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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