Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol X

by Various

  Feathery antennae of the finest lace spread before the head of the peacock moth, and its body was softest, richest velvet. A ring of snow-white down marked where its head began, and the red glow from below eerily illuminated its maroon body.

  For one instant it was outlined clearly. Its eyes glowed more redly than any ruby's fire, and the great, delicate wings were poised in flight. Burl caught the reflected flash of flames on two great iridescent spots on the widespread wings. Shining purple and vivid red, the glow of opal and sheen of pearl, all the glory of chalcedony and chrysoprase formed a single wonder in the glare of burning fungus. Then white smoke swirled about the great moth, dimming the radiance of its gorgeous dress.

  Burl saw it dive straight into the thickest and brightest of the licking flames, flying madly, eagerly, into the searing, hellish heat--a willing, drunken sacrifice to the god of fire.

  Monster flying beetles with horny wing cases stiffly stretched blundered above the reeking, smoking pyre. In the red light they shone like burnished metal, and their clumsy bodies with spurred and fierce-toothed limbs hurtled like meteors through the luminous haze of ascending smoke.

  Burl saw strange collisions and stranger meetings. Male and female flying creatures circled and spun dances of love and death in the wild radiance from the funeral pyre of the purple hills. They mounted higher than Burl could see, drunk with the ecstasy of life, then descended to plunge headlong to death in the roaring fires below.

  From everywhere they came. Moths of brightest yellow with soft, furry bodies palpitant with life flew madly into the column of light that reached to the overhanging clouds. Moths of deepest black, with gruesome symbols on their wings, danced, like motes in a bath of sunlight, above the glow.

  And Burl sat crouched beneath an overshadowing toadstool, watching--and listening. A continual faint hiss penetrated the sound of fire: raindrops turning to steam. From afar, Burl heard a strange, deep bass muttering. Unbeknownst to him, it was the chorus of insect-eating giant frogs, reaching his ears 15 miles from their vast swamp.

  The night wore on, while the flying creatures above the fire danced and died, ever replaced by fresh arrivals. Burl sat tensely still, awed yet uncomprehending. At last the sky grew dimly gray, then brighter, and day began. The flames of the burning hills grew faint as the fire died, and at last Burl crept from his hiding place and stood erect.

  He turned to continue his odyssey, and saw the remains of one of the tragedies of the night.

  A huge moth had flown into the flames, been horribly scorched, and floundered out again. Unable to return to its devouring deity, it now lay immovable, one beautiful, delicate wing burned in gaping holes, eyes dimmed by flame, and exquisitely tapering limbs crushed by the force with which it had struck the ground. It lay helpless, only its broken antennae moving restlessly, painfully.

  Burl approached, and picked up a stone. He moved on presently, a velvet cloak across his shoulders, gleaming with all the colors of the rainbow. A gorgeous mass of soft, blue moth fur covered his middle, and bound to his forehead were two yard-long, golden fragments of the moth's magnificent antennae. In a strip of sinew about his waist was thrust the fiercly toothed limb of a fighting beetle. He soon added to his inventory a sharp-pointed spear from another scorched victim of the flames. It was longer than he himself.

  So equipped, Burl resumed his trek to Saya, looking like a prince of Ind on a bridal journey--though no mere prince ever wore such raiment in days of greatest glory.

  For miles Burl threaded his way through a forest of towering toadstools, decorated with colorful rusts and molds. Twice he avoided huge bubbling pools of festering green slime, and once hid fearfully as a monster scarabeus beetle lumbered within three yards of him, moving heavily with a clanking of limbs like some great machine.

  Burl saw the creature's mighty armor and inward-curving jaws, and envied its weapons. The time was not yet come, however, when he would smile at the great insect and hunt it for the juicy flesh inside those armored limbs.

  Burl was still a savage, still ignorant, still timid. His principle advance had been that whereas he had fled without reasoning, he now paused to see if he need flee.

  He was a strange sight, moving cautiously through the shadowed lanes of the mushroom forest. Against the play of color from his borrowed plumage his pink skin showed in odd contrast. He looked like some proud knight walking slowly through the gardens of a goblin's castle. But he was still a fearful creature, superior to the monsters about him only in the possession of latent intelligence. He was weak--and therein lay his greatest promise. 100,000 years before, his ancestors had been forced by lack of claws and fangs to develop brains.

  Burl was sunk as low as they, but he had to combat more horrifying enemies and more inexorable threats. His ancestors had invented knives, spears, and flying missiles. The creatures about Burl had knives and spears a thousand times more deadly than the weapons that had made his ancestors masters of the woods and forests.

  Burl was in comparison vastly more weak than his forebears had been; that weakness that would someday lead him and those who followed him to heights his ancestors had never known. But now--

  He heard a discordant, deep bass bellow, from a spot not 20 yards away. In a flash of panic he darted behind a clump of mushrooms and hid, panting in sheer terror.

  The bellow came again, this time with a querulous note. Burl heard a crashing and plunging as of a struggle. A mushroom broke with a brittle snapping, and the spongy thud as it fell was followed by a tremendous commotion. Something was desperately fighting something else, but Burl could not identify the combatants.

  The noise gradually faded. Presently Burl's breathing slowed, and his courage returned. He stole from his hiding place, and would have retreated, but something held him back. Instead of creeping from the scene, he crept cautiously toward the source of the noise.

  He peered between two cream-colored toadstool stalks and saw the cause of the noise. A wide, funnel-shaped snare of silk was spread before him, 20 yards across and equally deep. Individual threads were plainly visible, but in the mass it seemed a fabric of sheerest, finest texture. Supported by tall mushrooms, it was anchored to the ground below, and drew away to a tiny point through which a hole led to some unknown recess. And all the space of the wide snare was hung with threads, fine, twisted threads no more than half the thickness of Burl's finger.

  This was the trap of a labyrinth spider. Not one of the interlacing threads was strong enough to hold the feeblest prey, but they numbered in the thousands. A great cricket had become entangled in the maze of sticky lines. Its limbs thrashed out, smashing the snare lines at every stroke, but at every stroke meeting and becoming entangled with a dozen more. It struggled mightily, emitting at intervals its horrible, deep bass cry.

  Burl watched, fascinated. Most insects have their allotted victims and touch no others. These posed no threat to him, so Burl had little interest in them. But spiders are terrifyingly impartial. A spider devouring some luckless insect was an example of what might happen to Burl.

  The opening at the rear of the funnel-shaped snare darkened. The snare drew itself into a tunnel there, in which the spider had waited and watched. Now it swung out lightly, advancing toward the cricket. It was a gray spider (Agelena labyrinthica), with twin black ribbons on its thorax, aside the head, and two stripes of speckled brown and white on its abdomen. Burl also saw two curious appendages like tails.

  The cricket struggled only feebly now, its cries muted by the confining threads fettering its limbs. Burl saw the spider throw itself at the cricket and witnessed the final, convulsive shudder of the insect as the spider's fangs pierced its tough armor. The sting lasted a long time, and finally Burl realized the spider was feeding, sucking the succulent juices from the now dead cricket. When at last the carcass was drained, the spider pawed the lifeless creature for a few moments and left it.

  A sudden thought came to Burl and took his breath away. For a second his knees knocked togethe
r in self-induced panic. He watched the gray spider carefully with growing determination. He, Burl, had killed a hunting spider at the red-clay cliff. True, the killing had been accidental, and had nearly cost him his own life, but he had killed a spider of the most deadly kind.

  Now great ambition grew in Burl's heart. His tribe had always feared spiders too much to study their habits, but they knew a few things. The most important: snare spiders never left their lairs to hunt--never! Burl hoped to make daring application of that knowledge.

  He drew back from the white, shining snare and crept softly to the rear. The fabric gathered itself into a point and continued 20 feet as a tunnel, in which the spider would dream of its last meal and await its next victim. Burl made his way to a point where the tunnel was just 10 feet away. Soon, through the threads of the tunnel, he saw the thick gray bulk of the spider return to its resting place.

  Burl's hair stood on end from sheer fright, but he was slave to an idea. He drew near and aimed his deadly, pointed spear at the bulge in the tunnel where the spider lay. He thrust it home with all his strength--and ran away at top speed, glassy-eyed from terror.

  Much later he ventured near again, heart still in his mouth, ready to flee at the slightest sound. All was still. Burl had missed the horrible convulsions of the wounded spider, had not heard the frightful gnashings of its fangs against the piercing weapon, had not seen the silken threads of the tunnel ripped as the mortally wounded spider struggled madly to free itself.

  He came back beneath the overshadowing toadstools, quietly and cautiously, to find a great rent in the silken tunnel, and the great gray bulk lifeless and still, half-fallen through the opening the spear had made. A little puddle of evil-smelling liquid lay on the ground below, and from time to time a droplet dripped from the spear into the puddle with a splash.

  Burl looked at what he had done, saw the dead body of the creature he had slain, saw the ferocious mandibles and keen, deadly fangs. The creature's dead eyes stared at him malignantly, and the hairy legs remained braced as if further to enlarge the gaping hole through which it had partly fallen.

  Exultation filled Burl's heart. His tribe had been furtive vermin for thousands of years, hiding or fleeing from mighty insects, and, if overtaken, screaming shrilly in terror while helplessly awaiting death.

  Burl had turned the tables. He had slain an enemy of his tribe. His breast expanded. Always his tribesmen went quietly and fearfully, but a sudden exultant yell burst from Burl's lips--the first hunting cry from the lips of a man in 300 centuries!

  The next second his pulse nearly stopped in sheer panic at having made such a noise. He listened apprehensively but there was no sound. He approached his prey and carefully withdrew his spear. The viscid liquid made it slimy and slippery; he wiped it dry against a leathery toadstool. Then Burl had to conquer his illogical fear again before daring to touch the creature he had slain.

  He moved off presently, with the belly of the spider on his back and two hairy legs over his shoulders. The other limbs hung limp, trailing on the ground. Burl was now a still more curious sight wrapped in a shining cloak of iridescent colors, wearing a headdress of golden antennae, and hauling the hideous bulk of a gray spider.

  He moved through the mushroom forest, and, because of the thing he carried, all creatures fled before him. They did not fear man--their instinct was slow-moving--but during all the millions of years that insects have existed, spiders have preyed on them.

  Burl heard loud humming and buzzing as he topped a rise opening onto a valley of torn and blackened mushrooms. He stopped and looked down.

  There was not a single yellow top among the mushrooms. Each was infected with tiny maggots which had liquefied the tough meat of the mushroom and caused it to drip to the ground below. The liquid had gathered at the center of the depression to form a golden-red lake. And all about its edges, in ranks and rows, by thousands, by millions, were ranged the green-gold, shining bodies of great flies.

  They were small, compared to other insects. Their increase in size had been limited due to an imperative necessity of their race.

  The flesh flies laid their eggs by hundreds in decaying carcasses. The others laid their eggs by hundreds in mushrooms. To feed the maggots that would hatch, a relatively great quantity of food was needed, therefore the flies must remain small, or the body of a single grasshopper, say, would furnish food for but two or three grubs instead of the hundreds it must support.

  Burl stared down at the golden pool. Bluebottles, greenbottles, and all flies of metallic luster gathered at the Lucullan feast of corruption. Their buzzing as they darted above the odorous pool of golden liquid made the sound Burl had heard. Their bodies flashed and glittered as they darted about, seeking a place to alight and join the orgy.

  Those which clustered at the banks of the pool were still as if carved from metal. Their huge, red eyes glowed, and their bodies shone with obscene fatness. Flies are the most disgusting of all insects. Burl watched them, watched the interlacing streams of light as they buzzed eagerly above the pool, seeking a place at the festive board.

  A drumming roar sounded. A golden speck appeared in the sky, a slender, needlelike body with transparent, shining wings and two huge eyes. It grew nearer and became a dragonfly 20 feet long, its body shimmering, purest gold. It poised above the pool, then darted down. Its jaws snapped viciously and repeatedly; each time the glittering body of a fly vanished.

  A second dragonfly appeared, its body a vivid purple, and a third. They swooped and rushed above the golden pool, snapping in midair, making abrupt, angular turns, creatures of incredible ferocity and beauty. At the moment they were nothing more nor less than slaughtering machines. Their multifaceted eyes burned with bloodlust. In that mass of buzzing flies even the most voracious appetite must be sated, but the dragonflies kept on. Slender, graceful creatures, they dashed here and there above the pond like the mythical dragons for which they had been named.

  A few miles farther on Burl recognized a familiar landmark. He knew it well, but always from a safe distance. A mass of rock had heaved itself up from the nearly level plain he was traversing, and formed an outjutting cliff. At one point the rock overhung a sheer drop, making an inverted ledge--a roof over nothingness--which a hairy creature had transformed into a fairylike dwelling. A white hemisphere clung tenaciously to the rock above, and long cables anchored it firmly.

  A Clotho spider (Clotho Durandi, LATR) had built a nest there, from which it emerged to hunt the unwary. Within that half-globe was a monster, resting on a cushion of softest silk. If one went too near, one of the little inverted arches, seemingly firmly closed by a wall of silk, would open and a creature out of a dream of hell emerge, to run with fiendish agility toward its prey.

  Yes, Burl knew the place. Hung on the outer walls of the silken palace were stones and tiny boulders, discarded fragments of former meals, and gutted armor from limbs of ancient prey. And most terrible was another decoration that dangled from the castle of this insect ogre: the shrunken, desiccated figure of a man, all juices extracted, life gone.

  That man's death had saved Burl's life two years before. They had been together, seeking edible mushrooms. The Clotho spider sprang suddenly from behind a great puffball, and the two men froze in terror. It came swiftly forward and chose its victim. Burl had escaped when the other man was seized. Now he looked meditatively at the hiding place of his ancient enemy. Someday--

  But now he passed on. He passed the thicket in which great moths hid during the day, and the turgid pool of slime and yeast where a monster water snake lurked. He penetrated the little wood of shining mushrooms that produced light at night, and the shadowed place where truffle-hunting beetles went chirping thunderously at dark hours.

  Then Burl saw Saya, a flash of pink skin vanishing behind the thick stalk of a squat toadstool. He ran forward, calling her name. She appeared, and saw the figure with the horrible bulk of the spider on its back. Horrified, she cried out, and Burl understood. He dropp
ed his burden, then went swiftly toward her.

  They met. Saya waited timidly until she saw who this man was, and astonishment filled her face. Gorgeously attired, in an iridescent cloak from the whole wing of a great moth, with a strip of softest fur from a night-flying creature about his middle, with golden feathery antennae bound on his forehead, and a fierce spear in his hands--this was not the Burl she knew.

  But he moved slowly toward her, filled with fierce delight at seeing her again, thrilling with joy at her slender gracefulness and the dark richness of her tangled hair. He held out his hands and touched her shyly. Then, manlike, he babbled excitedly of his adventures, and dragged her toward his great victim, the gray-bellied spider.

  Saya trembled when she saw the furry bulk lying on the ground, and almost fled when Burl advanced and took it on his back. But something of the pride that filled him came vicariously to her. She smiled a flashing smile, and Burl stopped short in his explanation, tongue-tied. His eyes became pleading and soft. He laid the huge spider at her feet and spread out his hands imploringly.

  30,000 years of savagery had not lessened Saya's femininity. She became aware that Burl was her slave, that these wonderful things he wore and had done meant nothing if she did not approve. She drew away--saw the misery in Burl's face--and abruptly ran into his arms and clung to him, laughing happily. And suddenly Burl understood that all these things he had done, even the slaying of a great spider, were of no importance whatever beside this most wonderful thing that had just happened, and told Saya so quite humbly, but holding her very close to him as he did.

  And so Burl came back to his tribe. He had left nearly naked, with but a wisp of moth wing twisted about his middle, a timid, fearful, trembling creature. He returned triumphantly, walking slowly, fearlessly down a broad lane of golden mushrooms toward the hiding place of his people.