_2. A MAN ESCAPES_
It was near to sunset. Burl had never seen the sun, so it did not occurto him to think of the coming of night as the setting of anything. Tohim it was the letting down of darkness from the sky.
The process was invariable. Overhead there was always a thick andunbroken bank of vapor which seemed featureless until sunset. Then,toward the west, the brightness overhead turned orange and then pink,while to the east it simply faded to a deeper gray. As nightfallprogressed, the red colorings grew deeper, moving toward mid-sky.Ultimately, scattered blotches of darkness began to spot that reddeningsky as it grew darker in tone, going down toward that impossibleredness which is indistinguishable from black. It was slowly achievingthat redness.
Today Burl watched as never before. On the oily surface of the river thecolors and shadings of dusk were reflected with incredible faithfulness.The round tops of toadstools along the shore glowed pink. Dragonfliesglinted in swift and angular flight, the metallic sheen of their bodiesflashing in the redness. Great, yellow butterflies sailed lightly abovethe stream. In every direction upon the water appeared the scrap-formedboats of a thousand caddis-flies, floating at the surface while theymight. Burl could have thrust his hand down into their cavities to seizethe white worms nesting there.
The bulk of a tardy bee droned heavily overhead. He saw the longproboscis and the hairy hind-legs with their scanty load of pollen. Thegreat, multi-faceted eyes held an expression of stupid preoccupation.
The crimson radiance grew dim and the color overhead faded toward black.Now the stalks of ten thousand domed mushrooms lined the river-bank.Beneath them spread fungi of all colors, from the rawest red to palestblue, now all fading slowly to a monochromatic background as thedarkness deepened.
The buzzing and fluttering and flapping of the insects of the day dieddown. From a million hiding places there crept out--into the night--thesoft and furry bodies of great moths who preened themselves and smoothedtheir feathery antennae before taking to the air. The strong-limbedcrickets set up their thunderous noise, grown gravely bass with theincreasing size of the noise-making organs. Then there began to gatheron the water those slender spirals of deeper mist which would presentlyblanket the stream in fog.
Night arrived. The clouds above grew wholly black. Gradually the languidfall of large, warm raindrops--they would fall all through thenight--began. The edge of the stream became a place where disks of coldblue flame appeared.
The mushrooms on the river bank were faintly phosphorescent, shedding aghostly light over the ground below them. Here and there, lambent chillyflames appeared in mid-air, drifting idly above the festering earth. Onother planets men call them "Will-o'-the-wisps," but on this planetmankind had no name for them at all.
Then huge, pulsating glows appeared in the blackness: fireflies thatBurl knew to be as long as his spear. They glided slowly through thedarkness over the stream, shedding intermittent light over Burl crouchedon his drifting raft. On the shore, too, tiny paired lights glowedeagerly upward as the wingless females of the species crawled to wheretheir signals could be seen. And there were other glowing things.Fox-fire burned in the night, consuming nothing. Even the water of theriver glowed with marine organisms--adapted to fresh waterhere--contributing their mites of brilliance.
The air was full of flying creatures. The beat of invisible wings camethrough the night. Above, about, on every side the swarming, feverishlife of the insect world went on ceaselessly, while Burl rocked back andforth upon his unstable raft, wanting to weep because he was beingcarried farther away from Saya whom he could picture looking for him,now, among the hidden, furtive members of the tribe. About him soundedthe discordant, machine-like mating cries of creatures trying to servelife in the midst of death and the horrible noises of those who metdeath and were devoured in the dark.
Burl was accustomed to such tumult. But he was not accustomed to suchdespair as he felt at being lost from Saya of the swift feet and whiteteeth and shy smile. He lay disconsolate on his bobbing craft for thegreater part of the night. It was long past midnight when the raftstruck gently, swung, and then remained grounded upon a shallow in thestream.
When light came back in the morning, Burl gazed about him fearfully. Hewas some twenty yards from the shore and thick greenish scum surroundedhis disintegrating vessel. The river had widened greatly until theopposite bank was hidden in the morning mist, but the nearer shoreseemed firm and no more full of dangers than the territory inhabited byBurl's tribe.
He tested the depth of the water with his spear, struck by the multipleusefulness of the weapon. The water was no more than ankle-deep.
Shivering a little, Burl stepped down into the green scum and made forthe shore at top speed. He felt something soft clinging to his barefoot. With a frantic rush he ran even faster and stumbled upon the shorewith horror not at his heels but on one. He stared down at his foot. Ashapeless, flesh-colored pad clung to the skin. As he watched, itswelled visibly, the pink folds becoming a deeper shade.
It was no more than a leech, the size of his palm, sharing in theenlargement nearly all the insect and fungoid world had undergone, butBurl did not know that. He thrust at it with the edge of his spear,scraping it frantically away. As it fell off Burl stared in horror,first at the blotch of blood on his foot, then at the thing writhing andpulsating on the ground. He fled.
A short while later he stumbled into one of the familiar toadstoolforests and paused, uncertainly. The towering toadstools were notstrange to Burl. He fell to eating. The sight of food always producedhunger in him--a provision of nature to make up for the lack of anyinstinct to store food away. In human beings the storage of food has tobe dictated by intellect. The lower orders of creatures are not requiredto think.
Even eating, though, Burl's heart was small within him. He was far fromhis tribe and Saya. By the measurements of his remotest ancestors, nomore than forty miles separated them. But Burl did not think in suchterms. He'd never had occasion to do so. He'd come down the river to afar land filled with unknown dangers. And he was alone.
All about him was food, an excellent reason for gladness. But beingsolitary was reason enough for distress. Although Burl was a creature towhom reflection was normally of no especial value and, therefore, notpracticed in thought, this was a situation providing an emotionalparadox. A good fourth of the mushrooms in this particular forest wereedible. Burl should have gloated over this vast stock of food. But hewas isolated, alone; in particular, he was far away from Saya,therefore, he should have wept. But he could not gloat because he wasaway from Saya and he could not mourn because he was surrounded by food.
He was subject to a stimulus to which apparently only humankind canrespond: an emotional dilemma. Other creatures can respond to objectivesituations where there is the need to choose a course of action: flightor fighting, hiding or pursuit. But only man can be disturbed by notknowing which of two emotions to feel. Burl had reason to feel twoentirely different emotional states at the same time. He had to resolvethe paradox. The problem was inside him, not out. So he thought.
He would bring Saya here! He would bring her and the tribe to this placewhere there was food in vast quantity!
Instantly pictures flooded into his mind. He could actually see old Jon,his bald head naked as a mushroom itself, stuffing his belly with thefood which was so plentiful here. He imagined Cori feeding her children.Tama's complaints stilled by mouthfuls of food. Tet and Dik, stuffed torepletion, throwing scraps of foodstuff at each other. He pictured thetribe zestfully feasting.--And Saya would be very glad.
It was remarkable that Burl was able to think of his feelings instead ofhis sensations. His tribesmen were closer to it than equally primitivefolk had been back on Earth, but they did not often engage in thought.Their waking lives were filled with nerve-racked physical responses tophysical phenomena. They were hungry and they saw or smelled food: theywere alive and they perceived the presence of death. In the one casethey moved toward the sensory stimulus of food; in the othe
r they fledfrom the detected stimulus of danger. They responded immediately to theworld about them. Burl, for the first significant time in his life, hadresponded to inner feelings. He had resolved conflicting emotions bydevising a purpose that would end their conflict. He determined to dosomething because he wanted to and not because he had to.
It was the most important event upon the planet in generations.
With the directness of a child, or a savage, Burl moved to carry out hispurpose. The fish still slung about his neck scraped against his chest.Fingering it tentatively, he got himself thoroughly greasy in theprocess, but could not eat. Although he was not hungry now, perhaps Sayawas. He would give it to her. He imagined her eager delight, the imagereinforcing his resolve. He had come to this far place down the riverflowing sluggishly past this riotously-colored bank. To return to thetribe he would go back up that bank, staying close to the stream.
He was remarkably exultant as he forced a way through the awkward aislesof the mushroom-forest, but his eyes and ears were still open for anypossible danger. Several times he heard the omnipresent clicking of antsscavenging in the mushroom-glades, but they could be ignored. At bestthey were short-sighted. If he dropped his fish, they would becomeabsorbed in it. There was only one kind of ant he needed to fear--thearmy ant, which sometimes traveled in hordes of millions, eatingeverything in their path.
But there was nothing of the sort here. The mushroom forest came to anend. A cheerful grasshopper munched delicately at some dainty it hadfound--the barrel-sized young shoot of a cabbage-plant. Its hind legswere bunched beneath it in perpetual readiness for flight. A monsterwasp appeared a hundred feet overhead, checked in its flight, andplunged upon the luckless banqueter.
There was a struggle, but it was brief. The grasshopper strainedterribly in the grip of the wasp's six barbed legs. The wasp's flexibleabdomen curved delicately. Its sting entered the jointed armor of itsprey just beneath the head with all the deliberate precision of asurgeon's scalpel. A ganglion lay there; the wasp-poison entered it. Thegrasshopper went limp. It was not dead, of course, simply paralyzed.Permanently paralyzed. The wasp preened itself, then matter-of-factlygrasped its victim and flew away. The grasshopper would be incubator andfood-supply for an egg to be laid. Presently, in a huge mud castle, asmall white worm would feed upon the living, motionless victim of itsmother--who would never see it, or care, or remember....
Burl went on.
The ground grew rougher; progress became painful. He clambered arduouslyup steep slopes--all of forty or fifty feet high--and made his waycautiously down to the farther sides. Once he climbed through a tangledmass of mushrooms so closely placed and so small that he had to breakthem apart with blows of his spear in order to pass. As they crumbled,torrents of a fiery-red liquid showered down upon him, rolling off hisgreasy breast and sinking into the ground.
A strange self-confidence now took possession of Burl. He walked lesscautiously and more boldly. He had thought and he had struck something,feeling the vainglorious self-satisfaction of a child. He picturedhimself leading his tribe to this place of very much food--he had noreal idea of the distance--and he strutted all alone amid thenightmare-growths of the planet that had been forgotten.
Presently he could see the river. He had climbed to the top of ared-clay mound perhaps a hundred feet high. One side was crumbled wherethe river overflowed. At some past flood-time the water had lapped atthe base of the cliff along which Burl was strutting. But now there wasa quarter-mile of space between himself and the water. And there wassomething else in mid-air.
The cliffside was thickly coated with fungi in a riotous confusion ofwhite and yellow and orange and green. From a point halfway up the cliffthe inch-thick cable of a spider-web stretched down to anchorage on theground below. There were other cables beyond this one and circling abouttheir radial pattern the snare-cords of the web formed a perfectlogarithmic spiral.
Somewhere among the fungi of the cliffside the huge spider who had builtthis web awaited the entrapment of prey. When some unfortunate creaturestruggled frenziedly in its snare it would emerge. Until then it waitedin a motionless, implacable patience; utterly certain of victims,utterly merciless to them.
Burl strutted on the edge of the cliff, a rather foolish pink-skinnedcreature with an oily fish slung about his neck and the draggledfragment of moth's wing draping his middle. He waved the long shard ofbeetle armor exultantly above his head.
The activity was not very sensible. It served no purpose. But if Burlwas a genius among his fellows, then he still had a great deal to learnbefore his genius would be effective. Now he looked down scornfully uponthe shining white trap below. He had struck a fish, killing it. When hehit mushrooms they fell into pieces before him. Nothing could frightenhim! He would go to Saya and bring her to this land where food grew inabundance.
Sixty paces away from Burl, near the edge of the cliff, a shaft sankvertically into the soil of the clay-mound. It was carefully rounded andlined with silk. Thirty feet down, it enlarged itself into a chamberwhere the engineer and proprietor of the shaft might rest. The top ofthe hole was closed by a trap-door, stained with mud and earth toimitate the surrounding soil. A sharp eye would have been needed todetect the opening. But a keener eye now peered out from the crack atits edge.
That eye belonged to the proprietor.
Eight hairy legs surrounded the body of the monster hanging motionlessat the top of the silk-lined shaft. Its belly was a huge misshapen globecolored a dirty brown. Two pairs of mandibles stretched before itsmouth-parts; two eyes glittered in the semi-darkness of the burrow. Overthe whole body spread a rough and mangy fur.
It was a thing of implacable malignance, of incredible ferocity. It wasthe brown hunting spider, the American tarantula, enlarged here upon theforgotten planet so that its body was two feet and more in diameter. Itslegs, outstretched, would cover a circle three yards across. Theglittering eyes followed as Burl strutted forward on the edge of thecliff, puffed up with a sense of his own importance.
Spread out below, the white snare of the spinning-spider impressed Burlas amusing. He knew the spider wouldn't leave its web to attack him.Reaching down, he broke off a bit of fungus growing at his feet. Wherehe broke it away oozed a soupy liquid full of tiny maggots in a deliriumof feasting. Burl flung it down into the web, laughing as the black bulkof the watchful spider swung down from its hiding place to investigate.
The tarantula, peering from its burrow, quivered with impatience. Burldrew nearer, gleefully using his spear as a lever to pry off bits oftrash to fall down the cliffside into the giant web. The spider belowmoved leisurely from one spot to another, investigating each new missilewith its palpi and then ignoring it as lifeless and undesirable prey.
Burl leaped and laughed aloud as a particularly large lump of putridfungus narrowly missed the black-and-silver shape below. Then--
The trap-door fell into place with a faint sound. Burl whirled about,his laughter transformed instantly into a scream. Moving toward himfuriously, its eight legs scrambling, was the monster tarantula. Itsmandibles gaped wide; the poison fangs were unsheathed. It was thirtypaces away--twenty paces--ten.
Eyes glittering, it leaped, all eight legs extended to seize the prey.
Burl screamed again and thrust out his arms to ward off the creature. Itwas pure blind horror. There was no genius in that gesture. Because ofsheer terror his grip upon the spear had become agonized. Thespear-point shot out and the tarantula fell upon it. Nearly a quarter ofthe spear entered the body of the ferocious thing.
Stuck upon the spear the spider writhed horribly, still striving toreach the paralytically frozen Burl. The great mandibles clashed.Furious bubbling noises came from it. The hairy legs clutched at hisarm. He cried out hoarsely in ultimate fear and staggered backward--andthe edge of the cliff gave way beneath him.
He hurtled downward, still clutching the spear, incapable of letting go.Even while falling the writhing thing still struggled maniacally toreach him. Down through emptine
ss they fell together, Burl glassy-eyedwith panic. Then there was a strangely elastic crash and crackling. Theyhad fallen into the web at which Burl had been laughing so scornfullyonly a little while before.
Burl couldn't think. He only struggled insanely in the gummy coils ofthe web. But the snare-cords were spiral threads, enormously elastic,exuding impossibly sticky stuff, like bird-lime, from between twistedconstituent fibres. Near him--not two yards away--the creature he hadwounded thrashed and fought to reach him, even while shuddering inanguish.
Burl had reached the absolute limit of panic. His arms and breast weregreasy from the oily fish; the sticky web did not adhere to them. Buthis legs and body were inextricably tangled by his own franticstruggling in the gummy and adhesive elastic threads. They had beenspread for prey. He was prey.
He paused in his blind struggle, gasping from pure exhaustion. Then hesaw, not five yards away, the silvery-and-black monster he had mocked sorecently now patiently waiting for him to cease his struggles. Thetarantula and the man were one to its eyes--one struggling thing thathad fallen opportunely into its trap. They were moving but feebly, now.The web-spider advanced delicately, swinging its huge bulk nimbly,paying out a silken cable behind it as it approached.
Burl's arms were free; he waved them wildly, shrieking at the monster.The spider paused. Burl's moving arms suggested mandibles that mightwound.
Spiders take few chances. This one drew near cautiously, then stopped.Its spinnerets became busy and with one of its eight legs, used like anarm, it flung a sheet of gummy silk impartially over the tarantula andthe man.
Burl fought against the descending shroud. He strove to thrust it away,futilely. Within minutes he was completely covered in a coarse silkenfabric that hid even the light from his eyes. He and his enemy, themonstrous tarantula, were beneath the same covering. The tarantula movedfeebly.
The shower ceased. The web-spider had decided they were helpless. ThenBurl felt the cables of the web give slightly as the spider approachedto sting and suck the juices from its prey.
The web yielded gently. Burl froze in an ecstasy of horror. But thetarantula still writhed in agony upon the spear piercing it. It clashedits jaws, shuddering upon the horny shaft.
Burl waited for the poison-fangs to be thrust into him. He knew theprocess. He had seen the leisurely fashion in which the web-spiderdelicately stung its victim, then withdrew to wait with horriblepatience for the poison to take effect. When the victim no longerstruggled, it drew near again to suck out the juices first from onejoint or limb and then from another, leaving a creature once vibrantwith life a shrunken, withered husk, to be flung from the web atnightfall.
The bloated monstrosity now moved meditatively about the double objectswathed in silk. Only the tarantula stirred. Its bulbous abdomen stirredthe concealing shroud. It throbbed faintly as it still struggled withthe spear in its vitals. The irregularly rounded projection was anobvious target for the web-spider. It moved quickly forward. With fine,merciless precision, it stung.
The tarantula seemed to go mad with pain. Its legs struck outpurposelessly, in horrible gestures of delirious suffering. Burlscreamed as a leg touched him. He struggled no less wildly.
His arms and head were enclosed by the folds of silk, but not glued toit because of the grease. Clutching at the cords he tried desperately todraw himself away from his deadly neighbor. The threads wouldn't break,but they did separate. A tiny opening appeared.
One of the tarantula's horribly writhing legs touched him again. With astrength born of utter panic he hauled himself away and the openingenlarged. Another lunge and Burl's head emerged into the open air. Hewas suspended twenty feet above the ground, which was almost carpetedwith the chitinous remains of past victims of this same web.
Burl's head and breast and arms were free. The fish slung over hisshoulder had shed its oil upon him impartially. But the lower part ofhis body was held firm by the viscous gumminess of the web-spider'scord. It was vastly more adhesive than any bird-lime ever made by men.
He hung in the little window for a moment, despairing. Then he saw thebulk of his captor a little distance away, waiting patiently for itspoison to work and its prey to cease struggling. The tarantula was nomore than shuddering now. Soon it would be quite still and theblack-bellied creature would approach for its meal.
Burl withdrew his head and thrust desperately at the sticky stuff abouthis loins and legs. The oil upon his hands kept them free. The silkshroud gave a little. Burl grasped at the thought as at a straw. Hegrasped the fish and tore it, pushing frantically at his own body withthe now-rancid, scaly, odorous mass. He scraped gum from his legs withthe fish, smearing the rancid oils all over them in the process.
He felt the web tremble again. To the spider Burl's movements meant thatits poison had not taken full effect. Another sting seemed to benecessary. This time it would not insert its sting into the quiescenttarantula, but where there was still life. It would send its venom intoBurl.
He gasped and drew himself toward his window as if he would have pulledhis legs from his body. His head emerged. His shoulders--half his bodywas out of the hole.
The great spider surveyed him and made ready to cast more of its silkenstuff upon him. The spinnerets became active. A leg gathered it up--
The sticky stuff about Burl's feet gave way.
He shot out of the opening and fell heavily, sprawling upon the earthbelow and crashing into the shrunken shell of a flying beetle that hadblundered into the snare and not escaped as he had done.
Burl rolled over and over and then sat up. An angry, foot-long ant stoodbefore him, its mandibles extended threateningly, while a shrillstridulation filled the air.
In ages past, back on Earth--where most ants were to be measured infractions of an inch--the scientists had debated gravely whether theirtribe possessed a cry. They believed that certain grooves upon the bodyof the insect, like those upon the great legs of the cricket, might bethe means of making a sound too shrill for human ears to catch. It wasgreatly debated, but evidence was hard to obtain.
Burl did not need evidence. He knew that the stridulation was caused bythe insect before him, though he had never wondered how it was produced.The cry was emitted to summon other ants from its city to help it indifficulty or good fortune.
Harsh clickings sounded fifty or sixty feet away; comrades were coming.And while only army ants were normally dangerous, any tribe of antscould be formidable when aroused. It was overwhelming enough to pulldown and tear a man to shreds as a pack of infuriated fox-terriers mightdo on Earth.
Burl fled without further delay, nearly colliding with one of the web'sanchor-cables. Then he heard the shrill outcry subside. The ant,short-sighted as all its kind, no longer felt threatened. It wentpeacefully about the business Burl had interrupted. Presently it foundsome edible carrion among the debris from the spider-web and startedtriumphantly back to its city.
Burl sped on for a few hundred yards and then stopped. He was shaken anddazed. For the moment, he was as timid and fearful as any other man inhis tribe. Presently he would realize the full meaning of theunparalleled feat he had performed in escaping from the giant spider webwhile cloaked with folds of gummy silk. It was not only unheard-of; itwas unimaginable! But Burl was too shaken to think of it now.
Rather quaintly, the first sensation that forced itself into hisconsciousness was that his feet hurt. The gluey stuff from the web stillstuck to his soles, picking up small objects as he went along. Old,ant-gnawed fragments of insect armor pricked him so persistently, eventhrough his toughened foot-soles, that he paused to scrape them away,staring fearfully about all the while. After a dozen steps more he wasforced to stop again.
It was this nagging discomfort, rather than vanity or an emergency whichcaused Burl to discover--imagine--blunder into a new activity asepoch-making as anything else he had done. His brain had been uncommonlystimulated in the past twenty-some hours. It had plunged him into atleast one predicament because of his conceiving the idea of stabb
ingsomething, but it had also allowed him escape from another even moreterrifying one just now. In between it had led to the devising of apurpose--the bringing of Saya here--though that decision was not sofirmly fixed as it had been before the encounter with the web-spider.Still, it had surely been reasoning of a sort that told him to greasehis body with the fish. Otherwise he would now be following thetarantula as a second course for the occupant of the web.
Burl looked cautiously all about him. It seemed to be quite safe. Then,quite deliberately, he sat down to think. It was the first time in hislife that he had ever deliberately contemplated a problem with the ideaof finding an answer to it. And the notion of doing such a thing wasepoch-making--on this planet!
He examined his foot. The sharp edges of pebbles and the remnants ofinsect-armor hurt his feet when he walked. They had done so ever sincehe had been born, but never before had his feet been sticky, so that theirritation from one object persisted for more than a step. He carefullypicked away each sharp-pointed fragment, one by one. Partly coated withthe half-liquid gum, they even tended to cling to his fingers, exceptwhere the oil was thick.
Burl's reasoning had been of the simplest sort. He had contemplated asituation--not deliberately but because he had to--and presently hismind showed him a way out of it. It was a way specifically suited to thesituation. Here he faced something different. Presently he applied theanswer of one problem to a second problem. Oil on his body had let himgo free of things that would stick to him. Here things stuck to hisfeet; so he oiled them.
And it worked. Burl strode away, almost--but not completely--untroubledby the bothersome pebbles and bits of discarded armor. Then he halted toregard himself with astonished appreciation. He was still thirty-fivemiles from his tribe; he was naked and unarmed, utterly ignorant of woodand fire and weapons other than the one he had lost. But he paused toobserve with some awe that he was very wonderful indeed.
He wanted to display himself. But his spear was gone. So Burl found itnecessary to think again. And the remarkable thing about it was that hesucceeded.
In a surprisingly brief time he had come up with a list of answers. Hewas naked, so he would find garments for himself. He was weaponless: hewould find himself a spear. He was hungry and he would seek food. Sincehe was far from his tribe, he would go to them. And this was, in afashion, quite obviously thought; but it was not oblivious on theforgotten planet because it had been futile--up to now. The importanceof such thought in the scheme of things was that men had not beenthinking even so simply as this, living only from minute to minute. Burlwas fumbling his way into a habit of thinking from problem to problem.And that was very important indeed.
Even in the advanced civilization of other planets, few men really usedtheir minds. The great majority of people depended on machines not onlyfor computations but decisions as well. Any decisions not made bymachines most men left to their leaders. Burl's tribesfolk thoughtprincipally with their stomachs, making few if any decisions on anyother basis--though they did act, very often, under the spur of fear.Fear-inspired actions, however, were not thought out. Burl was thinkingout his actions.
There would be consequences.
He faced upstream and began to move again, slowly and warily, his eyeskeenly searching out the way ahead, ears alert for the slightest soundof danger. Gigantic butterflies, riotous in coloring, fluttered overheadthrough the hazy air. Sometimes a grasshopper hurtled from one place toanother like a projectile, its transparent wings beating frantically.Now and then a wasp sped by, intent upon its hunting, or a bee dronedheavily alone, anxious and worried, striving to gather pollen in anearly flowerless world.
Burl marched on. From somewhere far behind him came a very faint sound.It was a shrill noise, but very distant indeed. Absorbed in immediateand nearby matters, Burl took no heed. He had the limited localviewpoint of a child. What was near was important and what was distantcould be ignored. Anything not imminent still seemed to himinsignificant--and he was preoccupied.
The source of this sound was important, however. Its origin was a myriadof clickings compounded into a single noise. It was, in fact, thefar-away but yet perceptible sound of army ants on the march. Thelocusts of Earth were very trivial nuisances compared to the army antsof this planet.
Locusts, in past ages on Earth, had eaten all green things. Here in thelowlands were only giant cabbages and a few rank, tenacious growths.Grasshoppers were numerous here, but could never be thought of as aplague; they were incapable of multiplying to the size of locust hordes.Army ants, however....
But Burl did not notice the sound. He moved forward briskly thoughcautiously, searching the fungus-landscape for any sign of garments,food, and weapons. He confidently expected to find all of them within ashort distance. Indeed, he did find food very soon. No more than a halfmile ahead he found a small cluster of edible fungi.
With no special elation, Burl broke off a food supply from the largestof them. Naturally, he took more than he could possibly eat at one time.He went on, nibbling at a big piece of mushroom abstractedly, past abroad plain, more than a mile across and broken into odd little hillocksby gradually ripening mushrooms which were unfamiliar to him. In severalplaces the ground had been pushed aside by rounded objects, only thetips showing. Blood-red hemispheres seemed to be forcing themselvesthrough the soil, so they might reach the outer air. Careful not totouch any of them, Burl examined the hillocks curiously as he enteredthe plain. They were strange, and to Burl most strange things meantdanger. In any event, he had two conscious purposes now. He wantedgarments and weapons.
Above the plain a wasp hovered, dangling a heavy object beneath itsblack belly across which ran a single red band. It was the giganticdescendant of the hairy sand-wasp, differing only in size from itsfar-away, remote ancestors on Earth. It was taking a paralyzed graycaterpillar to its burrow. Burl watched it drop down with the speed andsureness of an arrow, pull aside a heavy, flat stone, and descend intothe burrow with its caterpillar-prey momentarily laid aside.
It vanished underground into a vertical shaft dug down forty feet ormore. It evidently inspected the refuge. Reappearing, it vanished intothe hole again, dragging the gray worm after it. Burl, marching on overthe broad plain spotted with some eruptive disease, did not know whatpassed below. But he did observe the wasp emerge again to scratch dirtand stones previously excavated laboriously back into the shaft until itwas full.
The wasp had paralyzed a caterpillar, taken it into the ready-preparedburrow, laid an egg upon it, and sealed up the entrance. In time the eggwould hatch into a grub barely the size of Burl's forefinger. And thegrub, deep underground, would feed upon the living but helplesscaterpillar until it waxed large and fat. Then it would weave itself acocoon and sleep a long sleep, only to wake as a wasp and dig its wayout to the open air.
Reaching the farther side of the plain, Burl found himself threading theaisles of a fungus forest in which the growths were misshapen travestiesof the trees which could not live here. Bloated yellow limbs branchedoff from rounded swollen trunks. Here and there a pear-shaped puffball,Burl's height and half his height again, waited until a chance touchshould cause it to shoot upward a curling puff of infinitely fine dust.
He continued to move with caution. There were dangers here, but he wentforward steadily. He still held a great mass of edible mushroom underone arm and from time to time broke off a fragment, chewing itmeditatively. But always his eyes searched here and there for threats ofharm.
Behind him the faint, shrill outcry had risen only slightly in volume.It was still too far away to attract his notice. Army ants, however,were working havoc in the distance. By thousands and millions, myriadsof them advanced across the fungoid soil. They clambered over everyeminence. They descended into every depression. Their antennae wavedrestlessly. Their mandibles were extended threateningly. The ground wasblack with them, each one more than ten inches long.
A single such creature, armored and fearless as it was, could beformidable enough to an unarmed and naked man li
ke Burl. The better partof discretion would be avoidance. But numbering in the thousands andmillions, they were something which could not be avoided. They advancedsteadily and rapidly; the chorus of shrill stridulations and clickingsmarking their progress.
Great, inoffensive caterpillars crawling over the huge cabbages heardthe sound of their coming, but were too stupid to flee. The blackmultitudes blanketed the rank vegetables. Tiny, voracious jaws tore atthe flaccid masses of greasy flesh.
The caterpillars strove to throw off their assailants by writhings andcontortions--uselessly. The bees fought their entrance into the monsterhives with stings and wing-beats. Moths took to the air in daylight withdazzled, blinded eyes. But nothing could withstand the relentless hordesof small black things that reeked of formic acid and left the groundbehind them empty of life.
Before the horde was a world of teeming life, where mushrooms and otherfungi fought with thinning numbers of cabbages and mutant earth-weedsfor a foothold. Behind the black multitude was--nothing. Mushrooms,cabbages, bees, wasps, crickets, grubs--every living thing that couldnot flee before the creeping black tide reached it was lost, torn tobits by tiny mandibles.
Even the hunting spiders and tarantulas fell before the black host. Theykilled many in their desperate self-defense, but the army ants couldoverwhelm anything--anything at all--by sheer numbers and ferocity.Killed or wounded ants served as food for their sound comrades. Only theweb spiders sat unmoved and immovable in their collossal snares, securein the knowledge that their gummy webs could not be invaded along theslender supporting cables.