Nightmare Planet

desperately accurate special knowledge of the mannersand customs of the insects they could not defy. And on this specialmorning they concluded that they were doomed. They were going to bekilled. They stood shivering in the open, waiting for it to happen.

  It was not exactly news. They had had warning days ago, but they coulddo nothing about it. Their home valley, to be sure, would have made anycivilized human being shudder merely to look at it, but they hadconsidered it almost paradise. It was many miles long, and a fair numberwide, and a stream ran down its middle. At the lower end of the valleythere was a vast swamp, from which at nightfall the thunderouslydeep-bass croaking of giant frogs could be heard. But that swamp hadkept out the more terrifying creatures of that world. The thirty-footcentipedes could not cross it or did not choose to. The mastodon-sizedtarantulas which ravaged so much of the planet would not cross it savein pursuit of prey. So the valley was nearly a haven of safety.

  True, there was one clotho spider in its ogre's castle nearby, and therewas a labyrinth spider in a minor valley which nobody had ever venturedinto, and there were some--not many--praying-mantises as tall asgiraffes. They wandered terribly here and there. But most members ofinsect life here were absorbed in their own affairs and ignored thehumans. There was an ant-city, whose foot-long warriors competed withthe humans as scavengers. There were the bees, trying to eke out alivelihood from the great, cruciform flowers of the giant cabbage-plantsand the milkweeds when water-lilies in the swamps did not bear theirfour-foot blooms. Wasps sought their own prey. Flies were consumers ofcorruption, but even the flies two feet in length would shy away from aman who waved his arms at it. So this valley had seemed to these peopleto be a truly admirable place.

  But a fiend had entered it. As the gray light grew stronger theshivering folk looked terrifiedly about them. There were only twenty ofthe people now. Two weeks before there had been thirty. In a matter ofdays or less, there would be none. Because the valley had been invadedby a great gray furry spider!

  * * * * *

  There was a stirring, not far from where the man-folk trembled. Small,inquisitive antennae popped into view among a mass of large-sizedpebbles. There was a violent stirring, and gravel disappeared. Smallblack things thrust upward into view and scurried anxiously about. Theyreturned to the spot from which they had emerged. They were ants,opening the shaft of their city after scouting for danger outside. Theyscratched and pulled and tugged at the plug of stones. They opened theant-city's artery of commerce. Strings of small black things camepouring out. They averaged a foot in length, and they marched off ingroups upon their divers errands. Presently a group of huge-jawedsoldier-ants appeared, picking their way stolidly out of the opening.They waited stupidly for the workers they were to guard. The workerscame, each carrying a faintly greenish blob of living matter. Thecaravan moved off. The humans knew exactly what it was. The green blobswere aphids--plant lice: ant-cows--small creatures sheltered and guardedby the ants and daily carried to nearby vegetation to feed upon its sapand yield inestimable honeydew.

  Something reared up two hundred yards away, where the thin mist that layeverywhere just barely began to fade all colorings before it dimmed alloutlines. The object was slender. It had a curiously humanlike head. Itheld out horrible sawtoothed arms in a gesture as of benediction--whichwas purest mockery. Something smaller was drawing near to it. Thecolossal praying mantis held its pose, immovable. Presently it struckdownward with lightning speed. There was a cry. The mantis rose erectagain, its great arms holding something that stirred and struggledhelplessly, and repented its unconsonanted outcry. The mantis ate itdaintily as it struggled and screamed.

  The humans did not watch this tragedy. The mantis would eat a man, ofcourse. It had. The only creatures immune to its menace were ants, whichfor some reason it would not touch. But it was a mantis' custom afterspotting its prey to wait immobile for the unlucky creature to comewithin its reach. It preferred to make its captures that way. Only if athing fled did the mantis pursue with deadly ferocity. Even then itdined with monstrous deliberation as this one dined now. Still, mantisescould be seen from a distance and hidden from. They were not the terrorwhich had driven the humans even from their hiding-places.

  It had been two weeks since the giant hunting-spider had come through amountain pass into this valley to prey upon the life within it. It wasgigantic even of its kind. It was deadliness beyond compare. The firsthuman to see it froze in terror. It was disaster itself. Its legsspanned yards. Its fangs were needle-sharp and feet in length--andpoisoned. Its eyes glittered with insatiable, insane blood-lust. Itscoming was ten times more deadly to the unarmed folk than a Bengal tigerloose in the valley would have been.

  It killed a man the very first day it was in the valley, leaving hissucked-dry carcass, and going on to destroy a rhinoceros-beetle and acricket--whose deep-bass cries were horrible--and proceeded down thevalley, leaving only death behind it. It had killed other men and womensince. It had caught four children. But even that was not the worst. Itcarried worse, more deadly, more inevitable disaster with it.

  Because, bumping and bouncing behind its abdomen as it moved, fastenedto its body with cables of coarse and discolored silk, thehunting-spider dragged a burden which was its own ferocity many timesmultiplied. It dragged an egg-bag. The bag was larger than its body,four feet in diameter. The female spider would carry thisburden--cherishing it--until the eggs hatched. Then there would be fourto five hundred small monsters at large in the valley. And from theinstant of their hatching they would be just such demoniac creatures astheir parents. They would be small, to be sure. Their legs would span nomore than a foot. Their bodies would be the size of a man's fist. Butthey could leap two yards, instantly they reached the open air, andtheir inch-long fangs would be no less envenomed, and their ferocitywould be in madness, in insanity and in stark maniacal horror equal thegreat gray fiend which had begot them.

  The eggs had hatched. Today--now--this morning--they were abroad. Thelittle group of humans no longer hid in the mushroom-forests because thesmall hunting-spiders sought frenziedly there for things to kill.Hundreds of small lunatic demons roamed the valley. They swarmed amongthe huge toadstools, killing and devouring all living things large andsmall. When they encountered each other they fought in slavering,panting fury, and the survivors of such duels dined upon their brothers.Small truffle-beetles died, clicking futilely. Infinitesimal grubs,newly hatched from butterfly eggs and barely six inches long, furnishedthem with tidbits. But they would kill anything and feast upon it.

  A woman had died yesterday, and two small gray devils battledmurderously above her corpse.

  Just before darkness a huge yellow butterfly had flung itself agonizedlyaloft, with these small dark horrors clinging to its body, feasting uponthe juices of the body their poison had not yet done to death.

  And now, at daybreak, the humans looked about despairingly for their owndeaths to come to them. They had spent the night in the open lest theybe trapped in the very forests that had been their protection. Now theyremained in clear view of the large gray murderer should it pass thatway. They did not dare to hide because of that ogreish creature's young,who panted in their blood-lust as they scurried here and there andeverywhere.

  As the day became established, the clouds were gray--gray only. Thenight-mist thinned. One of the younger women of the tribe--a girl calledSaya--saw the huge thing far away. She cried out, choking. The otherssaw the monster as it leaped upon and murdered a vividly coloredcaterpillar on a milkweed near the limit of vision. The milkweed was thesize of a tree. The caterpillar was four yards long. While the enormousvictim writhed as it died, not one of the humans looked away. Presentlyall was still. The hunting-spider crouched over its victim in obsceneabsorption. Having been madness incarnate, it now was the very exemplarof a horrid gluttony.

  Again the humans shivered. They were without shelter. They were withouteven the concept of arms. But it was morning, and they were alive, andtherefore they were hungry.
Their desperation was absolute, butdesperation to some degree was part of their lives. Yet they shiveredand suffered. There were edible mushrooms nearby, but with the deadlysmall replicas of the hunting-spider giant roaming everywhere, anymovement was as likely to be deadly as standing still to be found andkilled. The humans murmured to one another, fearfully.

  But there was the young man called Burl, who had been lost from histribe and had found it again. The experience had changed him. He hadfelt stirrings of atavistic impulses in recent weeks--the moreespecially when the young girl Saya looked at him. It was not normal, inhumans conditioned to survive by flight, that Burl should feelpreviously unimagined hunger for fury--a longing to hate and do battle.Of course men sometimes fought for a particular woman's favor, but notwhen there were deadly insects about. The carnivorous insects were notonly peril, but horror unfaceable. So Burl's sensations were verystrange. On this planet a courtship did not usually involve displays ofvalor.