Free Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 by The Dark Destroyers (v1.1)

not come.
                 Instead,
he felt the touch of those palmlike tentacle-ends upon his legs and body. They
took hold of him, hard and elastic and facile. He was being lifted, moved, carried . No attack as yet. Maybe he did not seem alive to
them. Completely encased in leather breeches, jacket, moccasins and gloves,
with the hood and goggles and scarf to hide his face and head, he might have
been some sort of image or effigy, something that would excite only mystified
curiosity.
                 He
was passed from one creature to the next, and from that one to the one beyond,
like a bucket in the hands of a line of amateur firemen. Out through the
hatchway he was bodily shoved. Looking upward, he could see nothing but a pale
ceiling that had a frosty gleam to it—crystals of ice, he supposed—and he could
hear nothing at all. More tentacles received him. He did fancy that it was
colder, if anything, outside the ship than inside. Then he was flung down
roughly, like a bale of clothing, upon the doubled fabric of that palm-leaf
sail. He dared to peer stealthily about.
                 The
ship, he could see, had settled into'a great chamber with a flat floor, smooth
curved sides and a ceiling that was made in two pieces, like jaws, that could
open and shut. Over floor, sides, and ceiling was a sheath of hard, white frost
crystals. Hooded lamps gave radiance, showing him that in all directions opened
the mouths of tunnels, darker than the chamber itself. Nowhere could he see the
source of that green ray that had captured him and drawn him down-perhaps it
was emitted by some apparatus that could be moved. In the center of the floor
was the ship, and at the hatchway were a dozen of the Cold People, eagerly
giving their attention to what was going on inside.
                 More
things were being passed out from the cabin. There came Darragh's saber. This
drew more attention than had any single discovery up to now. All of the
observers gathered around their companion who held the saber, then hunched over
to where lay the two dead bodies. No doubt but that they
connected that gleaming, well-sharpened blade with the fatal stab in the body
of the pilot.
                 It
was high time to get away, anywhere, while for a moment there was no
observation toward his position. Darragh rose suddenly to his knees, gave a
great spring, found his feet, and darted into the nearest of the passageways.
                 Commotion
boiled up behind him, a great slapping and wriggling of swift, heavy bodies.
Something shot gleamingly past him—a cold, narrow streak of the colorless
explosion-ray. It missed him, but the wall it grazed seemed to fluff away in
sudden steam, and a buffet like that of a sudden gust of high wind almost
hurled Darragh flat.
                 He
floundered to keep his feet under him, turned and plunged into a side opening,
and made a turn around the curve beyond. That was the way to dodge their cursed
murdering rays—keep angling away, even into the interior of this unthinkable
frozen hive. If they should catch him in a straightaway tunnel or an open
space, they could bring their rays to bear. He would be done for, like a
scrambling bug under a showering spray of insecticide.
                 He
was tired and confused, but his strong, long legs made swift leaping strides.
The tunnel widened as he ran along it, then brought him out into a great
courdike opening with a luminous ceiling high overhead. A row of machines
whirred here, like a battery of looms, with Cold Creatures pottering here and
there among the spinning wheels and hurrying dark belts. Darragh did not stop, he slowed his pace only long enough to locate the
mouth of another corridor on the far side. Then he crossed the floor past the
bank of machinery in desperate leaps. He reached the new tunnel and flung
himself into it almost before those machinists could turn toward him.