02 In the belly of the beast

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘No.’ Hakon said. ‘Let’s explore further. We’ve yet to find anything of real interest.’

He took the lead, leaping lightly over the steaming pools of bile. In the distance Sven thought he could hear a sound much like scuttling, or the clacking of giant pincers. The sound made him think uncomfortably of scorpions. Looking about him he knew the others had heard it too. The sound disappeared, drowned out by the slow thumping of that monstrous heartbeat.

Sven made the sign of the eagle across his chest and tried very hard not to think about the fisherman, Tor, and his sojourn within the innards of leviathan.

NJAL COULD SENSE the mind of the Beast. It was a slow, steady pressure in his head, perceptible as the vessel’s heartbeat or the bellows breathing of the life support systems. He felt its oppressive weight bear down on him, adding to the claustrophobic feel of the long, intestinal corridors with their vile yellow floors and tiny digestive nodes whose acid scarred his armoured boots. He sensed the being’s ancient might and die sheer, incomprehensible alienness of it.

He was caught in the cross-currents of its thoughts as he was caught within the coils of its body. Sometimes strange hungers and longings flickered through his mind and Njal felt himself roused by alien lusts and desires: flashes of bizarre, inhuman memories, views seen through a myriad infra-red receptors, sounds overheard by organic radio antennae, the incommunicable sight-smell of pheromone analysers.

Nausea had filled him. There were times when he felt human, long minutes in which he doubted his sanity. Then micro-second exposures to the alien impressions rocked his being to the core.

The strangest thing was that the thoughts appeared to be coming from all around him. There seemed to be no fixed source of consciousness, no psychic beacon radiating through the eternal night the way the will of the Emperor was said to be visible as the flare of the Astronomicon.

No, what he was picking up was coming from every direction, from myriad points of consciousness. It was like the chatter of many individuals over fhe comm-net. Yet there was a pattern, an organising structure to it. He could sense it but could not comprehend it fully. The thoughts simultaneously seemed to belong to one mind and many - as if thousands of telepathic nodes of consciousness surrounding him seemed to make up a single greater mind.

He caught sight of what he suddenly knew was himself through a tiny eyeball high in the corridor ceiling. He scuttled along the ledge, looking down on himself. At the same time he was aware of himself looking up to see the things scuttling in the shadows. He opened his mouth to scream a warning. He saw himself gazing up into the alien darkness, frozen in terror…

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