Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

The Gamers broke into a run. The lake swelled up in their sight surrounded by reeds and tall grass. Before they went too many more steps, Grant stopped them. “Wait! Something’s wrong here.”

Orson wasn’t the only one who groaned. But Kevin ran up puffing to the front of the sled, freckled face burning with curiosity. “Something like what?” His nose twitched as he scanned the lake ahead. He puffed out his chest, and glanced sideways at Trianna.

“I can feel something wrong. I don’t know how.”

Snow Goose knelt down, took a closer look at the ground. “Something scary big has moved through here, and recently.”

The group gathered at the lip of the hill, gazing down as the wind blew thinly around them. Yeah, the ground had a roiled look, but wouldn’t melting and refreezing frost do that? Snow Goose chewed on her lip, then shook her head. The waters of the lake reflected the sun, choppy wind-blown swells rolling up to lap at the shallows and the reeds.

“Oh, nuts,” Grant said finally. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

The surface of the lake erupted, and fifteen tons of madness intruded on their world.

It burst up, spouting, whistling like a blue and white nuke missile. It hung in the air an impossible moment, a thousand gallons of water raining from its back. With a roar that shook the earth, it slammed back into the lake.

Max’s mind worked at Mach speed, trying to correlate. This is a joke. This is a freakin’ joke! You don’t find orcas in lakes, f’ chrissakes!

Water splashed away from the immense blue and white mass.

The killer whale lunged again, but forward. The thud shook the earth. The whale had beached itself.

With motions reminiscent of a legless, armless man crawling toward a hated enemy, the whale pulled itself out of the water and humped up onto dry land. Wait: there were arms! A gnarled pair of tree-trunk-sized human arms projected from the body of the beast. Fingers as thick as thighs gouged furrows in the ground as it lifted its head and bellowed in rage.

“Jesus Christ!” Grant screamed, and tumbled off his sled as it slid down almost into the orca’s mouth. The sled dogs howled their terror. They tried to run in different directions. The reins held them in place.

The creature was on Red Bear and Otter in a moment, grinning and deadly, its rows of lethal teeth gleaming.

The refugees were scattered across the slope as the beast finished making puppy chow out of the huskies. Eviane had her gun up and firing faster than anyone else. Blood and water sprayed from the beast’s hide. Shucking his paralysis, Grant yelled:

“Dammit! Fire at will!”

He dropped to one knee and began placing careful shots into the whale as it made a bloody mess of the last of the pilot’s huskies.

It noticed him.

It came straight at the pilot with dreadful, unanticipated speed, humping across the ground on its stubby, grotesquely muscled human arms. Captain Grant stood his ground. Those who still had rifles began to fire, and more red splotches opened up on the whale’s flank. It twitched but didn’t slow.

Hippogryph was running toward it, zigzagging. His flintlock would only have one bullet.

Then the whale had reached the pilot, thirty times his size with a mouthful of razors. Grant shrieked as the teeth closed on him, ripped him into pieces, and swallowed him in an eternity that couldn’t have lasted more than six seconds.

The guns were useless. Snow Goose pulled at Max’s arm. “Harpoon! Use your harpoon!”

He had almost forgotten that he held it. If rifles didn’t work, why would a harpoon?

Because it’s magic, you idiot. He hefted the twisted spear and tried to find a balance. What had he ever done that could prepare him for this? Pitch softball? Throw darts maybe?

The beast’s next action ended his hesitancy. It reared about, managed somehow to give the impression of turning a neck that wasn’t there, and heaved itself directly at him.

Max let fly as the creature came within single-lunge distance.

The spear impacted in the dome of its head.

Instead of charging, the creature screamed in palpable agony. It flinched back. The other refugees howled their encouragement and let fly with their weapons. Spears and war clubs sailed true, and barbed the monster’s hide until it ran with blood. As it turned broadside Hippogryph fired point-blank. The beast shuddered and howled its misery, spraying black fluid from its spout-hole.

It fled for the safety of its lake. It rolled once in an attempt to rake the spears from its body. Weapons came free, clattering to the ground covered in whale blood. The spears and spiked clubs, baptized in combat, glowed with power. They sparkled green and red, colors arcing from weapon to weapon like tame auroras.

The land whale smashed back into the water. A huge wave expanded outward. When it subsided the creature was gone. Red boiled to the surface, and dissipated, and left the water clear.

Quietly at first, they walked dazedly over the site of the combat and gathered up the weapons. Max found his harpoon in the rubble, and hoisted it. It seemed different somehow. It tingled to the touch, and the white glow crawled down the length of the spear and onto his arm. The tingling grew more intense.

Bowles was the first to scream in triumph, lifting his war club to the sky. His voice was drowned in a dozen others.

“We did it!” Orson cried. He brandished a glowing spear: longer than Max’s harpoon, with a smaller, flatter head.

“I don’t get it,” Snow Goose said.

Orson looked around, irritated. Snow Goose was a guide: she was supposed to get it. “Now what?”

“That was a land whale. We should be dead now. All we had were Daddy’s talismans, and they were the leftovers, the weakest of the lot. Why aren’t we…” She paused, puzzling darkly.

Orson grinned. “We’ve got our own talismans. When you said that a good talisman gets its magic from-wup!”

They were dancing, falling. The land shuddered and roared. Max was on his hands and knees, but he saw the earth split and a shaggy, writhing wormlike shape rise questing into the light not twelve feet away.

Snow Goose’s face paled. She murmured, “Now, just a damn-” then changed her mind and screamed, “Kogukhpuk!”

Max stalked it, spear held ready. The snake wasn’t big; no more than three meters were showing. Pythons came larger than that.

Then the worm-shape trumpeted with pachydermic fury. The ground roared and crumbled above a great shaggy skull. The creature heaved the ground up and away with such ease that it seemed capable of shouldering the very heavens aside. Tiny eyes glared. The rest of it climbed free of the earth, twelve feet tall and twenty feet long, shaggy brownish fur almost draping the ground, worn and cracked tusks curling up and around like the bow of a sousaphone.

“A mammoth! A goddamned mammoth! But-” was all that the Guardsman had time to say, and then it was on him and — and past. It shuddered as if in agony, twitching and throwing its head back and forth. Trumpeting, it ignored the Guardsman and went straight for Eviane.

She was firing steadily. At the last instant she turned to run. The beast reared up and landed on her with both front feet. She disappeared in a thundering avalanche of dust, and was just gone.

For two or three seconds the mammoth stood like a stop-motion model, and shimmied. Max could almost hear gears hum but Max was in motion, running to get past the great shield of its head, then screaming as he hurled his harpoon into its side, behind the short ribs, aimed at the heart.

The spear went through it, sailed out the other side, and clattered audibly to the ground.

The mammoth flickered back and forth as if incapable of making up its mind. Other Adventurers were attacking. Bowles whacked effortlessly through its leg with a war club… and suddenly it was in motion again. It flailed at Bowles with its trunk, then, with blood streaming from a dozen wounds, it crumpled to the ground and lay sagging like a half-empty rag doll.