"It hasn't moved for 15 minutes." "There's movement on the edge." "Rising and falling regularly." "Could be its breathing organs." "The pump chamber!" "Here comes the verdict." "The Great One condemns the prisoners to die by the seventh holy ritual of the Old Book." "Seven's my lucky number!" "Take them to the place of execution." "Ranquin!" "Silence!" "Wasting his breath." "I want to know why we're being executed." "This one knows what he has done." "You, dryfoot, have aroused the wrath of the Great One by denying him his promised victim." "He's not the Great One." "He's the Insignificant One!" "If you're going to have someone imitate Kroll, it ought to be more convincing." "When the servants of Kroll appear in his guise, they are part of him, doing as he bids them." "They're simply keeping a myth alive." "None of you here has ever seen Kroll." "You weren't even born at the time of the third manifestation." "Kroll rose before us at dawn today." "We were waiting to kill the dryfoots when the Great One appeared and drove them away." "What?" "Enough talk." "Take them away." "So Kroll's on the move." "I've less time than I thought." "Harg!" "Shut down the main flow valve!" "What's going on in here?" "Harg has just been sucked out by the monster!" "One of the creature's tentacles was right inside the main pipeline!" "He was doing a manual inspectro, then we heard screams." "Careful." "He just crushed the life out of him." "Look at this, 80-gauge colondin just ripped to cardboard!" "We're abandoning the station!" "In no circumstances." "Not while I am Director here!" "It was just a tentacle, sir, the equivalent of one of my fingers!" "Imagine what's going to happen if that creature decides to attack us!" "We've put far too much into this project to abandon it now." "There's only one thing to do." "That is to find this creature and kill it before it kills us!" "We've got a broken pipeline." "That doesn't give us much time, does it?" "Well, use a secondary line and pump to half capacity until you've fixed it!" "I don't remember that last night." "Early Samoan influ..." "Interesting how traces of old cultures survive, isn't it?" "I'm rather more interested in surviving myself." "That's understandable at your age." "Still, I prefer it to Gothic perpendicular." "Varlik." "Varlik?" "What is this seventh ritual?" "It is the slowest of all." "I knew it." "I tried to persuade Ranquin that only Rohm-Dutt deserved to be punished by the seventh ritual and that you others should die by the first." "That's very easy." "They just throw you down the pit and drop rocks on you." "Oh, thank you." "It's nice to know who your friends are." "Ranquin says that your crimes are too serious." "Kroll will only be appeased by extending your death agonies." "You know, that window's quite out of place." "It's not in character at all." "Will you stop babbling about the architecture?" "We're having a serious conversation about death." "Well, architecture's quite a serious subject." "Skart, where did that window come from?" "What window?" "That window up there." "It was brought from Delta Magna when the temple was first built." "I'd have sacked him!" "Who?" "The architect." "Look, are you trying to take my mind off something?" "Because you're almost succeeding." "Did I tell you about the time when I was a child..." "I don't want to hear!" "It was just about..." "I don't want to hear!" "How long does this take?" "To die?" "Depends on the sun." "Skart, what has the sun got to do with it?" "As the creepers dry, it shortens them." "It pulls the plank." "Ah!" "And snaps our spines!" "How ingenious!" "Now I know the purpose of the window." "You'll be able to die happy, won't you?" "What is..." "What?" "I'm sorry this has to happen, but if Kroll's not appeased, he will not help the People of the Lakes." "Well, he didn't do much for you last time, did he?" "Killing the high priest and swallowing the Symbol of Power." "Is all prepared?" "All is prepared." "Great Kroll..." "Great Kroll, defender and saviour, these despoilers and profaners of the temple are condemned to die according to the seventh holy ritual of the Old Book." "May their torments avert thy wrath from the People of the Lakes, thy only true followers and believers." "O most powerful one, so let it be." "Before your deaths, if you have anything to say to the servant of Kroll, let it be said." "Why don't you just let the whole thing drop, Ranquin?" "You've made your point." "Foolish levity." "Leave." "You're not leaving!" "Aren't you going to stay and watch?" "We're not savages." "Suffering is unpleasant to witness." "It's even more unpleasant to experience." "Ranquin, what was the secret of Kroll's power?" "What do you know of that, dryfoot?" "I've read about it somewhere." "Kroll had the power of the Symbol." "He sees all." "Yes, I know Kroll has it now, but what was it?" "The Symbol was a holy relic brought here by our ancestors at the time of the settlement." "Yes, but what was the power?" "He who holds the Symbol can see the future." "The power revealed how the dryfoots would destroy Delta Magna with their fighting and their greed and the evil of their great cities." "That is why my people came to settle here." "Your people were evicted from their homeland, Ranquin." "You had no choice." "What do these questions matter to you who are already dying?" "I like to get things straightened out." "Must you use expressions like that?" "Your mind is bent, dryfoot." "It's well that you die." "He's got narrow, little eyes." "You can't hypnotise people with narrow, little eyes." "Oh, that's what you were trying to do." "Yes, trying to persuade him to untie us." "Our only chance." "How long have we got?" "I don't know the contraction rates of creeper, or the breaking point of bones and ligament." "I can feel it dragging already." "Sorry you didn't stay on Delta Magna now, eh?" "Who paid you to bring the natives guns?" "Thawn." "He wanted an excuse to wipe 'em out." "And who do they think brought them?" "I told them the guns were sent by the Sons of Earth." "I got a signed receipt, too, for Thawn to use to discredit them." "Why the Sons of Earth?" "Do you have to keep asking questions at a time like this?" "No, no, no." "Why did Thawn want to discredit the Sons of Earth?" "They're a crank organisation." "They support these primitives." "They want Thawn's company to pull out." "Why do they call themselves the Sons of Earth?" "Not that I care that much." "No, no, no." "That's a good question." "After all, none of them can ever have seen the Earth." "Mother Earth, they call it." "They believe colonising the planets is a mistake." "They want us all to return to the Earth and starve." "My ankles are breaking!" "Imagination." "What's its estimated distance?" "Six hundred yards." "From the end of its tentacles, that makes it..." "It must be nearly a mile across!" "Not far off." "The central mass is a quarter of a mile in diameter by about 140 feet high." "That radar doesn't show enough detail." "I've counted 30 tentacles on one side alone." "Well?" "Anything fresh?" "It still hasn't moved." "Probably doesn't need to move much." "We were just trying to decide what it would look like out of the water." "Very big and very ugly." "What do you think it looks like?" "The pump chamber's clear now if you want to start the furnace." "Good." "I want you to fix that pipeline as soon as possible." "But killing this creature's got to be our first priority." "These depth charges of yours, how many do you intend to use?" "Twenty five." "It should be enough, but delivery is the main problem." "We've got to hit it with a cluster all at the same time." "That's why you've got to go dangerously near." "Exactly." "It might help if you knew exactly what it was." "There's nothing like it on Delta Magna." "I suppose we could always send to Delta Magna for a missile strike." "No, because it'd take at least eight hours for it to arrive." "If we showed them the target position now, it would certainly have moved by the time the strike arrived." "Yeah, it would have to be a low-intensity strike as well, otherwise we should all get the blast." "These depth charges of yours..." "What if we packed them into a separate tank, floated it over and then sank it when it was directly above the creature?" "How would you fire the depth charges?" "Pressure detonators." "That's easy enough." "Yes, but how would you sink the tank into the right place?" "Fix a small charge to the bottom of the tank and then fire it by remote control." "But with pressure detonators the whole lot would go up, so you're back to square one!" "That's more or less what I said in the beginning." "It's too dangerous!" "The mega-head's building up, if anybody's interested." "Oh, that's all we need." "Anybody want a drink?" "Put the conductors up." "By the speed this one's forming, it's going to be a daddy!" "I can't breathe!" "Don't give up." "Don't give up." "How are you doing, Rohm-Dutt?" "Oh, my back's breaking." "Stretching's good for the spine." "Well, up to a point." "I think I'm past the point." "I think we're in for a storm!" "Oh, no." "No, no." "Electrical storms on planetary satellites can be quite spectacular." "What a pity we can't sit up and watch it." "Just relax your muscles." "It's not my muscles I can't relax, it's my vertebrae." "They feel like beads on a piece of elastic." "They are not from the refinery, Ranquin." "They are dryfoots." "Well, so are the Sons of Earth and we need their support on Delta Magna." "We no longer need their support, Varlik." "We have Kroll." "Do we?" "I begin to wonder." "Have a care, Varlik." "Kroll is our god and protector." "Kroll killed Mensch." "Is that protection?" "If he's our God, why has he attacked us in the past?" "He punishes us when we displease him." "And he punishes those who displease his servants, Varlik!" "Here it comes." "Yes, as you said, it looks like a really big daddy." "The rain's so solid, it's just blotting everything out on these scanners." "Put the lightning conductors up." "We're going to need them." "All checked." "Okay." "All hatches battened?" "Every single one." "All secured." "Here we go." "Hold tight because there's gonna be more." "Let's hope the attack from that creature didn't cause any structural weaknesses." "Right." "If this wind gets inside, it could blow us all apart." "Listen to that rain." "I pity anybody out in that lot." "What we need are hailstones big as bricks." "It's not that bad yet." "I'll try a pitch higher." "What?" "Nellie Melba's party piece." "Though she could only do it with wine glasses." "The tension." "It's easing already." "Come on." "Pull, Rohm-Dutt, pull!" "We've got to stretch these creepers while they're still wet." "Come on." "Pull." "Pull!" "Another foot!" "Come on!" "Come on, you, too, Romana." "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "There you are." "Now you all know what it's like to be within an inch of death." "Doctor..." "Patience, patience." "Another minute won't hurt." "Feet out!" "My nose has stopped itching." "All the time I was tied..." "This is no time to start talking about noses!" "Yes, I know, but it's just that it's a textbook example of displacement anxiety!" "If it's an anxiety you want, look, the storm will be easing shortly and the Swampies will be coming out from under their umbrellas." "Let's get out of here." "Come on!" "The mega-head's breaking up." "It's dropped four points already on the Diemster scale." "A few billion volts in that one." "It touched Force 20." "It's the worst I've seen." "It does happen to be the season for storms, Dugeen." "Anyone out in the baygule wouldn't have stood a chance." "Well, there's not likely to be anyone out in the baygule, is there?" "Not with the Jemima prowling around." "Which it is." "Look." "It's heading for shore." "It's going fast, too." "It's about six knots." "Right, you keep tracking it, because I want a very good look at that thing when it does surface." "Right." "They've gone." "The sacrifices have gone!" "Come quickly!" "Kroll has been here." "No, it's not possible." "There would have been more damage." "Someone must have helped them." "They could not have freed themselves." "Yes, well, nobody here would help them." "Are you sure of that, Varlik?" "What?" "You argued they should be freed." "You where the one who wanted to stop the ritual of Kroll." "I asked you to stop the ritual, Ranquin, that's all I did." "I swear that!" "By the powers I hold, I shall learn the truth." "But if the dryfoots are not found and sacrificed according to the holy ritual, then all my people will suffer the anger of Kroll!" "They cannot have gone far, Ranquin." "No dryfoot knows the secret paths through the swamps." "Go after them and find them!" "Can't we go any faster?" "They're gaining on us." "One slip here and you're up to your neck." "Next bit of firm ground's there." "We'll have to jump." "Are you sure?" "Well, there's no other way!" "I mean, are you sure it's firm?" "No." "Here." "It still hasn't shown up." "Where is it?" "It's gone right off the screen now." "It just ploughed straight on." "Must be somewhere under the swamp by now." "Can't you get a track on it?" "At a viscosity level of 40% solids, this box goes blind." "The incredible thing is, it didn't even slow down." "Seems to be able to move as easily through swamp as through water." "It was on a bearing of 97 degrees." "Hmm." "Do you know where that's taking it?" "Where?" "Straight to the settlement." "It could just be a coincidence, Fenner." "Yes, it could've headed off in any direction." "It so happens, it's heading for the settlement." "So the Swampies have some problems." "Well, how could it possibly know there's anything there?" "The settlement's two miles away." "How did it know that Harg was in the pump chamber?" "It seems to have a highly sensitive mechanism for detecting food." "In which case, the Swampies most certainly do have some problems!" "You know, I don't particularly like the Swampies, but I can't say I really hate them." "Oh, I don't hate them, Fenner." "I just want them removed, permanently." "I spent many years persuading the Company to back this project, and now that we're on the verge of success," "I'm not going to be stopped by lily-livered sentimentalists wailing about the fate of a few primitive savages." "Not much further now." "What's that?" "We're being hunted." "Hunted?" "Freeze." "Don't even move an eyebrow." "Horrible." "Well, I told him not to move." "It hunts by surface vibrations." "Primarily a vegetarian, of course, but, over the years, it's learnt that anything that moves is wholesome." "What's that?" "Come on." "Doctor!" "Hold tight." "Look!" "Freeze."