_4. A KILLER OF MONSTERS_
The night wore on, while the creatures above the firelight danced anddied, their numbers ever reinforced by fresh arrivals. Burl sat tenselystill, his eyes watching everything while his mind groped for anexplanation of what he saw. At last the sky grew dimly gray, thenbrighter, and after a long time it was day. The flames of the burninghills seemed to dim and die as all the world became bright. After a longwhile Burl crawled from his hiding-place and stood erect.
No more than two hundred paces from where he stood, a straight wall ofsmoke rose from the still-smouldering fungus-range. Burl could see thesmoke rising for miles on either hand. He turned to continue on his way,and saw the remains of one of the tragedies of the night.
A great moth had flown into the flames, been horribly scorched, andfloundered out again. Had it been able to fly, it would have returned toits devouring deity; but now it lay upon the ground, its antennaehopelessly seared. One beautiful wing was nothing but gaping holes. Theeyes had been dimmed by flame. The exquisitely tapering limbs laybroken and crushed by the violence of landing. The creature was helplesson the ground, only the stumps of its antennae moving restlessly and theabdomen pulsating slowly as it drew pain-racked breaths.
Burl drew near. He raised his club.
When he moved on there was a velvet cloak cast over his shoulders,gleaming with all the colors of the rainbows. A gorgeous mass of softblue moth-fur was about his middle, and he had bound upon his foreheadtwo yard-long fragments of the moth's magnificent antennae.
He strode on slowly, clad as no man had been clad in all the ages beforehim. After a while another victim of the holocaust--similarly blunderedout to die--yielded him a spear that was longer and sharper and muchmore deadly than his first. So he took up his journey to Saya lookinglike a prince of Ind upon a bridal journey--though surely no mere princeever wore such raiment.
For many miles, Burl threaded his way through an extensive forest ofthin-stalked toadstools. They towered high over his head, colorful,parasitic moulds and rusts all about their bases. Twice he came uponopen glades where bubbling pools of green slime festered in corruption.Once he hid himself as a monster scarabeus beetle lumbered by threeyards away, clanking like some mighty machine.
Burl saw the heavy armor and inward-curving jaws of the monster. Healmost envied him his weapons. The time was not yet come, though, whenBurl and his kind would hunt such giants for the juicy flesh within itsarmored limbs. Burl was still a savage, still ignorant, stillessentially timid. His only significant advance had been that where atfirst he had fled without reasoning, now he paused to see if he needflee.
He was a strange sight, moving through the shadowed lanes of the forestin his cloak of velvet. The fierce-toothed leg of a fighting beetlerested in a strip of sinew about his waist, ready for use. His new spearwas taller than himself. He looked like a conqueror. But he was still afearful and feeble creature, no match for the monstrous creatures abouthim. He was weak--and in that lay his greatest hope. Because if he werestrong, he would not need to think.
Hundreds of thousands of years before, his ancestors had been forced todevelop brains as penalty for the lack of claws or fangs. Burl was sunkas low as any of them, but he had to combat more horrifying enemies,more inexorable dangers, and many times more crafty antagonists. Hisancestors had invented knives and spears and flying missiles, but thecreatures about Burl had weapons a thousand times more deadly than theones that had defended the first humans.
The fact, however, simply put a premium on the one faculty Burl hadwhich the insect world has not.
In mid-morning he heard a discordant, deep-bass bellow, coming from aspot not twenty yards from where he moved. He hid in panic, waiting foran instant, listening.
The bellow came again, but this time with a querulous note. Burl heard acrashing and plunging as of some creature caught in a snare. A mushroomtumbled with a spongelike sound, and the thud was followed by atremendous commotion. Something was fighting desperately againstsomething else, but Burl did not know what creatures were in combat.
He waited, and the noise died gradually away. Presently his breath camemore slowly and his courage returned. He stole from his hiding-place andwould have made away, but new curiosity held him back. Instead ofcreeping from the scene, he moved cautiously toward the source of thenoise.
Peering between two cream-colored stalks he saw a wide, funnel-shapedsnare of silk spread out before him, some twenty yards across and asmany deep. The individual threads could be plainly seen, but in the massit seemed a fabric of sheerest, finest texture. Held up by tallmushrooms, it was anchored to the ground below and drew away to a smallpoint through which a hole led to some as yet unseen recess. All thespace of the wide snare was hung with threads: fine, twisted threads nomore than half the thickness of Burl's finger.
This was the trap of a labyrinth spider. Not one of the interlacingstrands was strong enough to hold any but the feeblest prey, but thethreads were there by thousands. A cricket had become entangled in thesticky maze. Its limbs thrashed out and broke threads with every stroke,but each time became entangled in a dozen more. It struggled mightily,emitting at intervals--again--its horrible bass roar.
Burl breathed more easily. He watched with fascinated eyes. Mere deathamong insects--even tragic death--held no great interest for him. It wastoo common an occurrence. And there were few insects which deliberatelysought man. Most insects have their allotted prey and will seek noothers.
But this involved a spider, and spiders have a terrifying impartiality.A spider devouring some luckless insect was but an example of what mighthappen to Burl. So he watched alertly, his eyes traveling from theenmeshed cricket to the strange opening at the back of the funnel-shapedlabyrinth.
That opening darkened. Two shining, glistening eyes had been watchingfrom the tunnel in which the spider had been waiting. Now it swung outlightly, revealing itself as a gray spider, with twin black ribbons uponits thorax and two stripes of curiously speckled brown and white uponits abdomen. Burl saw, also, two curious appendages like a tail, as itcame nimbly out of its hiding-place and approached the trapped creature.
The cricket was struggling weakly, now, and the cries it uttered werebut feeble, because of the cords that fettered its limbs. Burl saw thespider throw itself upon the cricket which gave one final, convulsiveshudder as fangs pierced its armor.
Shortly after, the spider fed. With bestial enjoyment it sucked all thesucculence, all the fluid, from its victim's carcass.
Then the breath left Burl in a peculiar, frightened gasp. It was notfrom anything he saw or heard. It was something that he thought.
For a second, his knees knocked together in self-induced panic. Itoccurred to him that he, Burl, had killed a hunting spider--atarantula--upon the red-clay cliff. True, the killing had been anaccident and had nearly cost him his own life in the web-spider's snare.But--he had killed a spider and of the most deadly kind. Now it occurredto Burl that he could kill another.
Spiders were the ogres of the human tribes on the forgotten planet.Knowledge of them was hard to come by, because to study them was death.But all men knew that web-spiders never left their traps. Never! AndBurl had imagined himself making an impossibly splendid, incrediblydaring use of that fact.
Denying to himself that he intended any action so suicidal, henevertheless drew back from the front of the snare and made his way tothe back, where the spider's tunnel was no more than ten feet away.
Then he found himself waiting.
Presently, through the interstices of the silk, he saw the gray bulk ofthe spider. It had left the drained and shrunken carcass of the cricketto return to its resting-place, settling itself carefully upon the softwalls of the fabric tunnel. From the yielding, globular nest at thetunnel's end it fixed maniacal eyes once more upon the threads of itssnare, seen down the length of the passage-way.
Burl's hair stood on end from sheer fright, but he was the slave of anidea.
The tunnel and the nest at its end d
id not rest on the ground, but weresuspended in air by cables like those that spread the gin itself. Thegray labyrinth-spider bulged the fabric. It lay in luxurious comfort,waiting for victims to approach.
There was sweat on Burl's face as he raised his spear. The bare idea ofattacking a spider was horrifying. But actually he was in no dangerwhatever before the instant of the spear-thrust, because web-spidersnever, never, leave their webs to hunt.
So Burl sweated, and grasped his spear with agonized firmness--andthrust it into the bulge that was the spider's body in its nest. Hethrust with hysterical fury.
And then he ran as if the devil were after him.
It was a long time before he dared come back, his heart in his throat.All was still. He had missed the horrid convulsions of the woundedspider; he had not heard the frightful gnashings of its fangs at thepiercing weapon, nor seen the silken threads of the tunnel ripped andtorn in the spider's death-struggle. Burl came back to quietness. Therewas a great rent in the silken tunnel, and a puddle of ill-smellingstuff lay upon the ground. From time to time another droplet fell fromthe spear to join it. And the great spider had fallen half through itsown enlargement of the rent made by the spear in the wall of the nest.
Burl stared. Even when he saw it, the thing was not easy to believe. Thedead eyes of the spider looked at him with mad, frozen malignity. Thefangs were still raised to kill. The hairy legs were still braced as ifto enlarge further the gaping hole through which it had partly fallen.
Then Burl felt exultation. His tribe had been furtive vermin for almostforty generations, fleeing from the mighty insects, hiding from them,and when caught waiting helplessly for death, screaming shrilly inhorror. But he, Burl, had turned the tables. He, a man, had killed aspider! His breast expanded. Always his tribesmen went quietly andfearfully, making no sound. But a sudden, surprising, triumphant yellburst from Burl's lips--the first hunting-cry of man upon the forgottenplanet in two thousand years.
Next second, of course, his pulse almost stopped in sheer terror becausehe had made such a noise. He listened fearfully. The insect world wasoblivious to him. Presently, shuddering but infinitely proud, he drewnear his prey. He carefully withdrew his spear, poised to flee if thespider stirred. It did not. It was dead. The blood upon the spear wasrevolting. Burl wiped it off on a leathery toadstool. Then....
He thought of Saya and his tribesmen. Trembling even as he gloated overhis own remarkable self, he shifted the spider and worked it out of thenest. Presently he moved off with the belly of the spider upon his backand two of its hairy legs over his shoulders. The other limbs of themonster hung limp, trailing on the ground behind him.
Marching, then he was the first such spectacle in history. His velvetcloak shining with its irridescent spots, the yard-long scraps of goldenantennae bound to his forehead, a spear in his hand, and the hideousbulk of a gray spider for burden--Burl was a very strange sight indeed.
He believed that other creatures fled before him because of the thing hecarried. He tended to grow haughty. But actually, of course, insects donot know fear. They recognize their own specific enemies. That isnecessary. But the his of the lowlands on the forgotten planet went onabstractedly, despite the splendid feat of one man.
Burl marched. He came upon a valley full of torn and tattered mushrooms.There was not a single yellow top among them. Every one had beeninfested with maggots that had liquefied the tough meat of themushroom-tops, causing it to drip to the ground below. The liquid wasgathered in a golden pool in the center of the small depression. Burlheard a loud and deep-toned humming before he saw the valley. Then hestopped and looked down.
He saw the golden pond, its surface reflecting the gray sky and thedarkened stumps of mushrooms on the hillside which looked as if they hadbeen blackened by a running flame. A small brooklet of golden liquidtrickled over a rocky ledge, and all round the edges of the pond andbrook, in ranks and rows, by hundreds and by thousands and it seemed bymillions, were the green-gold bodies of great flies.
They were small compared to other insects. The flesh-flies laid theireggs by the hundreds in decaying carcasses. The others chose mushroomsto lay their eggs in. To feed the maggots that would hatch, a relativelygreat quantity of food was needed; therefore, the flies must remaincomparatively small, or the body of a single grasshopper would furnishfood for only a few maggots instead of the hundreds it must support.There must also be a limit to the size of worms if hundreds were tofeast upon a single fungus.
But there was no limitation to the greediness of the adult creatures.There were bluebottles and green-bottles and all the flies of metalliclustre, gathered at a Lucullan feast of corruption. The buzzing of thoseswarming above the golden pool was a tremendous sound. The flying bodiesflashed and glittered as they flew back and forth, seeking a place toalight and join in the orgy.
The glittering bodies clustered in already-found places were motionlessas if carved from metal. Burl watched them. And then he saw motionoverhead.
A slender, brilliant shape appeared, darting swiftly through the air,enlarging into a needle-like body with transparent, shining wings andtwo huge eyes. It circled and enlarged again, becoming a shimmeringdragonfly, twenty feet and more in length. It poised itself abruptlyabove the pool, and then darted down, its jaws snapping viciously. Theysnapped again and again. Burl could not follow their slashings. And witheach snap the glittering body of a fly vanished.
A second dragonfly appeared and a third. They swooped above the goldenpool, snapping in mid-air, making their abrupt and angular turns,creatures of incredible ferocity and beauty. In that mass of buzzingcreatures, even the most voracious appetite must soon have been sated,but the slender creatures still darted about in frenzied destruction.
And all this while the loud, contented, deep-bass humming went on asbefore. Their comrades were slaughtered by the hundreds not forty feetabove their heads, but still the glittering rows of red-eyed fliesgorged themselves upon the fluid of the pond. The dragonflies feasteduntil they were unable to devour even a single one more of their chosenprey. But even then they continued to sweep madly above the pool,striking down the buzzing flies though their bodies must perforce remainuneaten.
Some of the dead flies, crushed to pulp by the angry dragonflies,dropped among their feasting brothers. Presently, one of them placed itsdisgusting proboscis upon the mangled creature. It sipped daintily fromthe contents of the broken armor. Another joined it and another. In alittle while a cluster of them pushed against each other for a chance tojoin them in a cannibalistic feast.
Burl turned aside and went on, leaving the dragonflies still at theirmassacre and the flies absorbed and ecstatic at their feast. The feast,indeed, was improved by the rain of murdered brethren from overhead.
Only a few miles farther on, Burl came upon a familiar landmark. He knewit well, but had always kept at a safe distance from it. A mass of rockhad heaved itself up from the almost level plain over which he traveledto form an out-jutting cliff. At one point the rock overhung, forming aninverted ledge--a roof over nothingness--which had been preempted by ahairy monster and made into a fairy-like dwelling. A white hemisphereclung to the rock, firmly anchored by long cables.
Burl knew the place as one to be feared. A clotho spider had builtitself a nest there, from which it emerged to hunt the unwary. Withinthe silken globe was a monstrosity, resting upon cushions of softestsilk. The exterior had been beautiful once. But if one went too near oneof the little inverted arches seemingly closed by panels of silk--itwould open and out would rush a creature from a dream of hell.
Surely Burl knew this place. Hung upon the walls of the fairy palacewere trophies. They had a purpose, of course. Stones and boulders hungthere, too, to hold the structure firm against the storm-winds thatrarely blew. But amid the stones and fragments of insect-armor there wasa very special decoration: the shrunken, dessicated skeleton of a man.
The death of that man had saved Burl's life two years before. They hadbeen together, seeking a new source of edible mush
room. The clothospider was a hunter, not a spinner of webs. It had sprung suddenly frombehind a great puffball as the two men froze in horror. Then it had comeforward and deliberately chosen its victim. It did not choose Burl.
Now he looked with half-frightened speculation at the lair of hisancient enemy. Some day, perhaps....
But now he passed on. He went past the thicket in which the great mothshid by day, past the slimy pool in which something unknown but terriblelurked. He penetrated the little forest of mushrooms that glowed atnight and the place where the truffle-hunting beetles chirpedthunderously during the dark hours.
And then he saw Saya. He caught a flash of pink skin vanishing behind asquat toadstool, and he ran forward calling her name. She emerged, andsaw the figure with the horrible bulk of the spider on its back. Shecried out in horror, and Burl understood. He let his burden fall,running swiftly to her.
They met. Saya waited timidly until she saw who this man was, and thenshe was astounded indeed. With golden plumes rising from his head, avelvet cloak about his shoulders, blue moth-fur about his middle, and aspear in his hand--and a dead spider behind him!--this was not the Burlshe had known.
He took her hands, babbling proudly. She stared at him and at hisvictim--but the language of men had diminished sadly--struggling tocomprehend. Presently her eyes glowed. She pulled at his wrists.
When they found the other tribesmen, they were carrying the dead spiderbetween them, Saya looking more proud than Burl.