Read Online Out Of The Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis - Free Book Online Page B

the mere oddity of the prospect was swallowed up in the fantastic sublime. Here, he understood,
was the full statement of that 'perpendicular' theme which beast and plant and earth all
played on Malacandra - here in this riot of rock, leaping and surging skyward like solid jets
from some rock fountain, and hanging by their own lightness in the air, so shaped, so elongated,
that all terrestrial mountains must ever after seem to him to be mountains lying on their sides.
He felt a lift and lightening at the heart.
    But next moment his heatt stood still. Against the pallid background of the mountains and
quite close to him - for the mountains themselves seemed but a quarter of a mile away - a
moving shape appeared. He recognized it instantly as it moved slowly (and, he thought,
stealthily) between two of the denuded plant tops - the giant stature, the cadaverous leanness,
the long, drooping, wizard-like profile of a 'sorn'. The head appeared to be narrow and
conical; the hands or paws with which it parted the stems before it as it moved were thin,
mobile, spidery and almost transparent. He felt an immediate certainty that it was looking
for him. All this he took in in an infinitesimil time. The ineffaceable image was hardly
stamped on his brain before he was running as hard as he could into the thickest of the forest.
    He had no plan save to put as many miles as he could between himself and the sorn. He prayed
fervently that there might be only one perhaps the wood was full of them - perhaps they had
the intelligence to make a circle round him. No matter - there was nothing for it now but
sheer running, running, knife in hand. The fear had all gone into action; emotionally he was
cool and alert, and ready - as ready as he ever would be - for the last trial. His flight
led him dowhill at an ever-increasing speed; soon the incline was so steep that if his body
had had terrestrial gravity he would have been compelled to take to his hands and knees
and clamber down. Then he saw something gleaming ahead of him. A minute later he had emerged
from the wood altogether; he was standing, blinking in the light of sun and water, on the
shore of a broad river, and looking out on a flat landscape of inter-mingled river, lake,
island and promontory - the same sort of country on which his eyes had first rested in
Malacandra.
    There was no sound of pursuit. Ransom dropped down on his stomach and drank, cursing a world
where cold water appeared to be unobtainable. Then he lay still to listen and to recover his
breath. His eyes were upon blue water. It was agitated. Circles shuddered and bubbles danced
ten yards away from his face. Suddenly the water heaved and a round, shining, black thing
like a cannonball came into sight. Then he saw eyes and mouth - a puffing mouth bearded with
bubbles. More of the thing came up out of the water. It was gleaming black. Finally it splashed
and wallowed to the shore and rose, steaming, on its hind legs - six or seven feet high and
too thin for its height, like everything in Malacandra. It had a coat of thick black hair,
lucid as sealskin, very short legs with webbed feet, a broad beaver-like or fish-like tail,
strong fore-limbs with webbed claws or fingers, and some complication halfway up the belly
which Ransom took to be its genitals. It was something like a penguin, something like an otter,
something like a seal; the slenderness and flexibility of the body suggested a giant stoat.
The great round head, heavily whiskered, was mainly responsible for the suggestion of seal;
but it was higher in the forehead than a seal's and the mouth was smaller.
    There comes a point at which the actions of fear and precaution are purely conventional, no
longer felt as terror or hope by the fugitive. Ransom lay perfectly still, pressing his body
as weil down into the weed as he could, in obedience to a wholly theoretical idea that he
might thus pass unobserved. He felt little emotion. He