by Don Wilcox
I was relieved to note that the curved top—the “spine”, so to speak—was so gradually rounded that there could be no danger of anyone’s falling off. Its immensity had to be seen to be appreciated.
As to its length, I took the word of Tomboldo and others. It was endless. It wound around the whole planet like a fifty-thousand mile serpent that had swallowed its own tail. An unbroken rope of life, forever crawling.
A gigantic creature? A gargantuan vine? A living thing! I should not say that it was more animal than plant. When I asked Tomboldo’s counsellors, Was it animal or vegetable, their answer was, Yes. Yes, what? Yes, it was animal or vegetable. They stressed the OR. Must it be one and not the other? Evidently the Kao-Wagwattl was not to be compared, not to be classified, but to be accepted—and utilized.
For this wandering tribe it was a means of escape from enemies, and a mode of travel. With the coming of daylight, they went to work.
Crude cranes. Swinging baskets. Hoists. One group after another was tossed up into the rubbery purplish-gray scales that covered the Kao-Wagwattl’s spine.
No one cried out. The landing was soft. And harmless. The speed of the crawl was not great. It must have averaged not more than ten or fifteen miles an hour. But there were variations, to be taken advantage of. The outsides of a curve moved swiftly. Foresighted Tomboldo had selected the inside of a curve for our mounting, where the movement was sluggish. Younger members could leap across from an overhanging platform. Once safely in the folds of the surface, they could climb the rounded wall at their leisure.
Three or four hours were required for the entire tribe to get aboard. This meant that a long line was formed. Over a span of many miles this headless, tailless serpent became inhabited with tiny human fleas, figuratively speaking.
Among the stragglers who boarded last were a few older persons who had to be coaxed and pampered before they would get into the swinging basket.
Then, too, there was Omosla, looking very pretty and thoroughly frightened. She caused a slight delay at the very last by deciding it was time for her to have her baby.
9.
Finally we were all aboard, and the mighty Kao-Wagwattl, unaffected by this addition of a few specks of human dust, moved on at its dogged pace through the mountain valleys.
No lives had been lost. No one had been seriously injured. Tomboldo was the heroic leader. I went forward over the lumpy slabs of scales, to find him and congratulate him. He said, “The glad feelings are to be shared,” and he spoke with high praise of my own help and that of my friend Campbell. “But we are not yet out of danger. Pass the word.”
Pass the word. Keep down. Out of sight. For several days we would be crawling through the lands of savages.
Vauna found me. She had made sure that Omosla and the baby would have the best of care, and now she meant to look after me. “My dear one,” she called me.
“Here, my dear one. I have your valuable coat. Come out of sight. The enemy must not see you.”
I glanced up the long curved spine of Kao, moving steadily through the sunshine. Little groups of Benzendellas could be seen ahead, as far as the eye could reach. The young children of the party had never had such a trip before, and the older ones found it a strenuous game to keep them down out of sight. Following Tomboldo’s order, they rapidly ducked down into hiding. The great rubber-like scales resembled up-ended boxes, set in criss-cross rows. The deep flexible crevices thus formed were ideal for hiding.
I needed my radio. I must talk with Campbell. Vauna had taken my coat.
She called to me. “Come, my dear one.” She slipped down into a crevice a little to one side of the crest. “Come, I hear the voice of your friend Campbell in the box.”
“I’m coming. Speak to him, Vauna. Tell him to wait.”
“Shall I tell him the news?”
I didn’t answer. The vertical surfaces of the scales folded together, parted, folded again, with the motions of the great creature, and for a moment I lost sight of Vauna. But I could hear her voice as I fought my way down to her hiding place. She was talking through the radio with Campbell.
“You are safe on the big silver ship? . . . Yes, we are on Kao-Wagwattl. I have been looking after Omosla . . .
I could hear the eagerness in Campbell’s voice as he asked about Omosla. Vauna answered him in accents of joy. “She has had her baby . . . A little girl! Very beautiful. Already she looks like you. She has precious little lines of hair on her eyelids, and above her eyes, just like yours.”
The damage was done! There was no point in my lying to Campbell to spare his feelings. Her words were the simple innocent truth. She was happy and proud to tell the wonderful news. Her words implied that Campbell would of course come and join us when his work was done, so he could be Omosla’s husband, as all the Benzendellas expected.
About all I could say to Campbell was, “What she says is true, Split. It’s a beautiful baby. Any father should be proud. I have nothing to add.”
For hours afterward I could think of nothing else. I sat hidden among the deep soft scales, listening. Now and then the gentle movement would cause the crevices around me to gape open, wide enough to reveal a strip of sky. I wondered if sometime I might catch sight of a space ship bolting off into the blue. The only sounds I heard were the faint muffled rumblings of the Kao-Wagwattl moving along, like gentle thunder echoing up from somewhere down in the earth. It lulled me into relaxation, yet I could not dispel the mental image of Campbell sitting there in the ship, alone, brooding over the news. And tempted, no doubt, to touch the controls and leave this planet behind him.
Later I talked with him again, but we did not mention Omosla. He said he was busy with his scientific findings. I relayed to him descriptions of the Kao-Wagwattl—the “inside” story, from one who was concealed within its scales. We were back to our original assignment, now. For days and days to come, we pursued the scientific facts, comparing notes by radio.
At air-cruise speed, Campbell made trips around the planet, and completed his charts and maps. He reported that the beautiful land toward which we were moving was indeed a land of promise. But he gave slower estimates of the Kao-Wagwattl’s speed, and he estimated that it would take us the larger part of a year to reach our destination. However, he managed to get an inside view of the larger Benzendella tribes who dwelt there. They were truly waiting for old Tomboldo’s return, and were firm in their faith that the rope of life, Kao-Wagwattl, would bring him.
Such were the scientific and ethnological studies that Campbell and I were to share, by radio, in the weeks and months to come . . .
Now Vauna was beside me. We, like the others, were settled down for the long journey.
Innocent Vauna! She was trying so hard to please me. She sat very close, whispering to me.
I listened, and smiled, and tried to take my thoughts away from the image of Campbell, his honor shattered by her recent words to him about the baby—a baby with eyelashes—a baby that resembled him.
If I remained silent, Vauna would tease me into talking with her. “Do my words displease you, Captain?”
“Your words please me very much.”
“You do not look at me. You only look away. Do you want me to sit close beside you?”
I drew her in my arms and held her. In silence I thought a thousand thoughts that I had brought with me across millions of miles of space.
Later I said to her, “Your arms are warm. Why don’t you take these fur things off your elbows, to be more comfortable?”
She smiled, and kissed me as I had taught her to kiss. “You want me to?” And she removed the furry white elbow ornaments. It was very strange . . . While we hovered close, she whispered to me of the secrets of life on this planet, unlike any other world I had known. And there were curious legends of Kao-Wagwattl, things she had carried in her heart to tell me if such a time as this should ever come.
As she talked, the pressure of the scale walls around us increased. The great Kao-Wagwattl wa
s evidently moving through a dip, so that its upper surfaces were compressed. There was no lack of air for breathing, but the darkness and the pressure added strangeness to the sensation. The tightness of Vauna’s arms against my own caused my head to spin. Perhaps it was the fever returning from my recent illness. My arms felt the stinging sensation of being penetrated by needles. My thoughts flicked back to something Split Campbell had once told me . . .
Later, when the Kao curved over a summit, and the patches of sunlight dashed in, I suggested that Vauna go forward to see about her father. She answered me with a curious smile. I snuggled deeper into the shade of the scales and slept. Hours later, when I awakened, she was again beside me.
10.
If Omosla’s baby had been a boy, I believe that old Tomboldo would have named it for the highest honor in the Benzendella world. He was searching for a successor. Not among the grown-up warriors and counsellors. Among the infants. He sought a child favored by nature. Omosla was a beauty and a court favorite, even though she had been a servant. And Campbell, who was considered to be her mate, (though marriage had been delayed by circumstances) was of course a renowned hero. If the child had only been a boy!
I was kept busy reporting the reasons for Campbell’s absence. He had stayed with our ship to guarantee Benzendella safety. Yes, it was true that he could fly through the air and catch up with us. But there were duties which kept him away.
My excuses wore thin. Vauna and her father begged me to tell him, over the radio, that Omosla was growing into a person of sorrow. The shadow of tragedy hovered over her.
I complied. I talked, by radio, with Campbell. He was in another part of the land, now, pursuing the purposes for which we had come. My mention of Omosla’s plight aroused his defiance. He said he would rather be a deserter than serve a captain who did not accept his word. “For the last time, Captain Linden, I repeat that I am not the mate of Omosla. Do you believe me?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” I said.
His radio clicked off.
Vauna and her father and I secluded ourselves among the scales and talked. My one question was, Could there have been any other person among them who had come from another planet?
“You and Campbell. No others.”
“How can you be sure?” I pursued. “Suppose someone from my world wished to pass for a native. Suppose he should pluck the hairs from his eyelids and cut away his eyebrows.
Would you know him to be an outsider?”
“Come,” Vauna said. “We’ll walk from one end of the tribe to the other.”
While the great endless Kao-Wagwattl carried us on, through deep valleys and across wide plains, Vauna and I went about, day by day, studying the looks of each male member of the tribe.
I scrutinized the eyes of each. I listened to the native enunciations.
I got acquainted with each man by name and personality. Vauna’s friendship to all was a help. Through her I began to gain a bond of affection for all these people, deep and solid. Their ways became natural to me. In the night their sleep-singing could be heard, welling up softly through the scales within which they rested. In the mornings one could see the parties of agile ones gathering food and liquid fruits that rolled within reach along the sides of the moving Kao.
We crossed a series of islands. For long spaces there would be danger of dips under the surfaces of waters. We would close ourselves tightly within the Waterproof interstices until the danger had passed. Later, when the slimy surfaces of the scales had dried off, we would emerge.
And now, out of a chance conversation, I learned of another danger which had been with us all along. Gravgak was also on the Kao-Wagwattl.
“How did you know this?” I asked Vauna sharply.
“Didn’t my father tell you? I received a warning soon after we began the journey.”
“Warning—from whom?”
“From Leeger.”
“Leeger! I thought he was missing.”
“He reappeared. He had known of our plan. He had boarded, somewhere. He was back there, beyond the end of our party. He shouted the warning to me. That is why you and I moved up the line, and have kept ourselves hidden.”
“He shouted a warning to you—”
“That Gravgak is also on board, looking for me.”
11.
Weeks earlier, a search party had given up. It had all happened quietly. Tomboldo had kept a few of his top scouts on the job (as I now learned) and for months after our journey had begun they had scoured the scaly surfaces of Kao-Wagwattl, looking in vain for Gravgak.
Could we rest assured, then, that Gravgak had been bluffed out? That he had given up his purpose of trying to take Vauna? That he had long since climbed off the Kao-Wagwattl and gone back home?
We hoped so. Nevertheless we moved cautiously as our searches took us back through the long line of Benzendellas.
Then, without warning, we suddenly came upon Leeger. He saw us from a distance of fifty yards or less. We had come to the end of our tribe’s settlement—evidently beyond the end; for in the last quarter of a mile we had found no persons dwelling among the scales.
“He motioned to us,” Vauna said. “I’m sure it was Leeger.”
But Leeger had disappeared from view. Back of us now was the wilderness of scales, their curved surface glistening and alive with color as the endless crawling spine followed us out of the distant blue haze. Miles of Kao-Wagwattl, and nothing showing on the surface.
We were down, now, almost out of sight, yet peering over. Suddenly the form of Leeger bobbed up again, only a few feet from us.
“Go back!” Leeger cried, flinging a hand at us. “Go back! He’s coming!”
It all happened in less time than it can be told. Leeger rose up to warn us. We saw the knife fly through the air at him. He fell with the blade through his throat.
On the instant we saw the dark muscular form of Gravgak rearing up among the scales. The green-and-black diamond-shaped markings on his arms and legs glinted in the light. He had hurled his knife true. Triumph shone in his murderous eyes. He had killed the man who had stalked him to protect Vauna and Tomboldo. And now he must have believed that one of his prizes was within easy reach.
His arm flashed upward. It held one of those rockstrung clubs that the savages used so skillfully.
The weighted club whizzed through the air. I swung Vauna off her feet. I’ll swear the rolling movement of Kao-Wagwattl helped me or I wouldn’t have succeeded. We tumbled into the crevice.
Then I scrambled upward. Another glimpse of Gravgak. He dived down among the crevices, moving in our direction. A moment of darkness. The scale-tops closed out the light. When they opened, he was there, coming at us.
I locked with him. We fought. The movement of the surfaces gave us an upward thrust. I kicked and tumbled to the surface. He caught my wrist, but the upthrust of the Kao favored me and I jerked him upward, onto the top of the scales.
We fought in the open. The rubbery footing was deadly, but it played no favorites. I struck a heavy blow that made the green-and-black lined arms shudder. Gravgak’s eyes flashed as he plunged back at me. I struck him again, with the full force of my body. He bounced and tumbled. He rolled out of sight. But not for long. It was an intentional trick. He disappeared in the crevice where Leeger had fallen. When he came up, the bloody knife was in his hand. I heard Vauna’s warning cry.
I leaped down into the crevice. She was trying to get my coat. She knew there were explosives in it, if she could only get them into my hands.
No time for that. Gravgak leaped down at me. The knife was rigid from his hand, coming down with a plunge. I kicked back, floundering against the tricky walls of the scales, and Gravgak fell down deep where I had been. I saw it happen. A sight I never expect to see repeated.
His descent to the base of the scales, where the walls joined, might have been a harmless fall. Yet who knows how sensitive is the material of the vast living thing called Kao-Wagwattl? The knife plunged
into deep Kao flesh beneath our feet. The flesh opened. Gravgak whirled, tried to escape the opening. His arm twisted under him. And went down. As if something drew it. His back—his whole body, from hips to shoulders—was caught in the gaping hole that he had seemingly opened with a plunge of the knife blade. It closed on him. It severed him. Part of him was gone. Before our eyes there remained his legs, cut clean away. And his head, and part of one shoulder.
The rest of him? It would not return to sight. Kao-Wagwattl was a living thing. When it wished it could devour.
Many of the tribe came back to this spot to examine what remained of the traitorous guard. I too observed him closely. I examined his eyes with a glass. Also the eyes of the murdered Leeger. Neither showed any traces of eyelashes or eyebrows.
12.
The tribe rode on tranquilly. There would be new legends of Kao-Wagwattl, after what had occurred. Many were the stories, and I relayed them to Campbell, at the ship, who faithfully recorded them all.
There was a tragedy to be added. It could not have been otherwise. For some months the news of Omosla and her little daughter had been vague. It was the Benzendella tradition that weddings should not be delayed for long after the arrival of the first-born child. It was rumored that this young mother now faced the shame of having been left without a mate. It was hard to get exact information. Even though Vauna and I had always sought an understanding between us, some things were not talked about freely. Deepest, most important truths in new worlds are often the most elusive. Now I questioned Vauna closely, and I learned of the tragic end of Omosla.
