Furious Gulf Read Online Free PDF

animals, he still squeezes the life out of them. Hey boy, you’re getting kinda
     old for those toys. Have to give them up soon.” His mother had said reproachfully, “Oh no, oh no, he’s just a baby still.
     There’s plenty of time for him to have Billy Bear.” Her warmth tenderly brushed his face and her smell was like flowers in
     the spring.
    So long ago. So far.
    Before the Calamity, when the mechs of Snowglade finally tired of pesky human raids on their factories. Before they crushed
     the last human outposts, leaving the Bishops to flee and forage.
    Heavy braking. They came to a stop and Quath released him. Toby spilled into bright space.
Argo
was a distant bulk of shiny curves and green domes. Toby turned—
    And faced a wall of slick jade. The wall heaved, surged.
    
    “
Any
body’d be afraid of you, Quath.”
    
    “I’m more worried about the other way around.”
    
    That seemed easy enough. The far end of the snake was a distant slash of mouth and a mass of working pink tentacles. Toby
     closeupped them and saw that some were eyes, others something like crude hands. It was fascinating, watching them move. Curiosity
     did not make him want to get any closer, though.
    He peered at the shimmering green side of the beast. Then he looked
into
it, through the skin and into the lattice of sliding orange rods, tubes, and sacs that made the sail-snake work.
    “I wonder what’s in those?” He pointed to a big vessel made of what looked like plastic. It held a red fluid.
    
    Toby thought of his mother’s warm breath. So long gone, into that black place where the dead dwell. He had come a long way
     since then. What would she think of him now? Would she be proud?
    “Let’s go see,” he said abruptly.
    He glided over to the wall of green skin. With care he drew his knife from its boot sheath. There is nothing in space more
     dangerous than a sharp edge, and Toby handled the long blade carefully. He measured distances to the skin with his eye and
     cut one quick stroke—then backed off.
    Nothing came rushing out to assault him. Not even a puff of gas, which he had half expected.
    
    “Aw, stuff it. You got us out here. Let’s do the job.”
    Toby thumbed his jets on for just an instant, enough to send him directly through the cut.
    The beast was complicated. Toby kicked off one of the orange lattice struts of the thing’s skeleton. He pushed aside a tangle
     of flexible pipes and reached the red fluid sac.
    
    “You’re too fat to get in here, eyes-on-sticks. Let me take a sample of this stuff.”
    He jabbed a needle probe into the thick-walled sac, let his carrybottle fill with the red liquid, and slapped a patch on the
     hole. No need to let the thing bleed to death, just because he wanted a drop or two.
    He nearly got snarled in the pipes as he made his way out. They seemed to know where he was, and Toby realized this was some
     slow-moving defense. Tangle up the intruder, and wait for some guard to come round him up. Something told him he didn’t want
     to be around that long.
    Quath took the bottle and quickly reported.
    “Can we use it?”
    
    “I can make a passable soup out of anything that won’t kill us.”
    Little fuzz-balls were rolling along the jade skin. They were no bigger than his hand but there were lots of them, coming
     from all along the length of the sail-snake. Several reached the skin just below where Toby hung in free space.
    “Come on—we’ve outlasted our welcome.”
    Just as he said it two fuzz-balls leaped across the gap. They struck his boots and kept going,