A man who was a more skillful forager than the foot-long ants wasan acceptable husband. Warriors did not exist.
Burl did not even know what a warrior was. Yet today the sullen,unreasonable impulses to conduct what he could not quite imagine werevery strong. He knew all the despairing terror the others felt. But healso was hungry. The sheer doom that was upon his group did not changethe fact that he wanted to eat, nor did it change the fact that he feltqueer when the girl Saya looked at him. Because she was terrified, thesame sort of atavistic process was at work in her. She looked to Burl.Men no longer served as protectors against enemies so irresistible asgiant spiders. It was not possible. But when Burl realized her regardhis chest swelled. He felt a half-formed impulse to beat upon it. Hisnew-found reasoning processes told him that this particular fear wasdifferent in some fashion from the terrors men normally experienced. Itwas. This was a different sort of emergency. Most dangers were suddenand either immediately fatal or somehow avoidable. This was different.There was time to savor its meaning and its hopelessness. It seemed asif it should be possible to do something about it. But Burl was notable, as yet, to think what to do. The bare idea of doing anything wasunusual, now. Because of it, though, Burl was able to disregard histerror when Saya regarded him yearningly.
* * * * *
The other men muttered to each other of the sudden death in the mushroomthickets. No less certain death now feasted on the dead yellowcaterpillar. But Burl abruptly pushed his way clear of the small crowdand scowled for Saya to see. He moved toward the nearest fungus-thicket.An edible mushroom grew at its very edge. He marched toward it,swaggering. Men did not often swagger on this planet.
But then he ceased to swagger. His approach to the mingled mass oftoadstools and lesser monstrosities grew slower. His feet dragged. Hecame to a halt. His impulse to combat conflicted with the facts of hereand now. His flesh crawled at the thought of the grisly small beastswhich now might be within yards. These thickets had been men's safesthiding-places. Now they were places of surest disaster.
He stopped, with a coldness at the pit of his stomach. But as it was anew experience to be able to have danger come in a form which could beforeseen, so Burl now had a new experience in that he was ashamed to beafraid. Somehow, having tacitly undertaken to get food for hiscompanions, he could not bring himself to draw back while they watched.But he did want desperately to get the food in a hurry and get away fromthere.
He saw a gruesome fragment of a tragedy of days before. It was theemptied, scraped, hollow leg-shell of a beetle. It was horrendouslybarbed. Great, knife-edged spines lined its edge. They were six inchesin length. And men did not have weapons any more, but they sometimesused just such objects as this to dismember defenseless giant slugs theycame upon.
Burl picked up the hollow shell of the leg-joint. He shook it free ofclinging moulds--and small things an inch or two in length dropped fromit and scurried frantically into hiding. He moved hesitantly toward theedible mushroom which would be food for Saya and the rest. He was fouryards from the thicket. Three. Two. He needed to move only six feet, andthen slice at the flabby mushroom-head, and he would be at least anadmirable person in the eyes of Saya.
Then he cried out thinly. Something small, with insane eyes, leaped uponhim from the edge of a giant toadstool.
It was, of course, one of the small beasts which had hatched from thehunting-spider's egg-bag. It had grown. Its legs now spanned sixteeninches. Its body was as large as Burl's two fists together. It was bigenough to enclose his head in a cage of loathesomeness formed by itslegs, while its fangs tore at his scalp. Or it could cover his chestwith its abominableness while its poison filled his veins, and while itfeasted upon him afterward....
He flung up his hands in a paralytic, horror-stricken attempt to ward itoff. But they were clenched. His right hand did not let go of theleg-section with its razor-sharp barbs.
The spider struck the beetle-leg. He felt the impact. Then he heardgaspings and bubblings of fury. He heard an indescribable cry which wasmadness itself. The chitinous object he had picked up now shook andquivered of itself.
The spider was impaled. Two of its legs were severed and twitched uponthe ground before him. Its body was slashed nearly in half. It writhedand struggled and made beastly sounds. Thin, colored fluids dripped fromit. A disgusting musky smell filled the air. It strove to reach and killhim as it died. Its eyes looked like flames.
Burl's arm shook convulsively. The small thing dropped to the ground.Its remaining legs moved frantically but without purpose.
It died, though its leg continued to twitch and stir and quiver.
Burl remained frozen, for seconds. It was an acquired instinct; aconditioned reflex which humans had to develop on this world. Whendanger was past, one stayed desperately still lest it return. But Burl'sthoughts were now not of horror but a vast astonishment. He had killed aspider! He had killed a thing which would have killed him! He was stillalive!
And then, being a savage, and an animal, as well as a human being, heacted according to that highly complicated nature. As a savage, he knewwith strict practicality that it was improbable that there was anotherbaby spider nearby. If there had been, they would have fought eachother. As an animal, he was again hungry. As a human being, he was vain.
So he moved closer to the toadstool-thicket and put his hand out andbroke off a great mass of the one edible mushroom at the edge. Anoisesome broth poured out and little maggots dropped to the ground andwrithed there in it. But most of what he had broken off was sound. Heturned to take it to Saya. Then he saw the dropped weapon and thespider. He picked up the weapon.
The spider's legs still twitched, though futilely. He spiked the smallbody on the beetle-leg's spines. He strode back to the remnant of histribe with a peculiar gait that even he had not often practiced.
It was rather more pronounced than a swagger. It was a strut.
They trembled when they saw the dead creature he had killed. He gaveSaya the food. She took it, looking at him with bright and intense eyes.He took a part of the mushroom for himself and ate it, scowling.Thoughts were struggling to form in his mind. He was not accustomed tothinking, but he had done more of it than any other of the pitiful groupabout him.
He felt eyes watching him. There were five adult men in this groupbesides himself, and six women. The rest were children, from ganglingadolescents to one mere infant in arms. They were a remarkably colorfulgroup at the moment, had he only known it. The men woreyellow-and-gold-brown loin-cloths of caterpillar-fur, stripped from thedrained carcasses of creatures that the formerly resident clothed spiderhad killed. The women wore cloaks of butterfly-wing, similarly salvagedfrom the remnants of a meal left unfinished by a finicky or engorgedpraying mantis. The stuff was thick and leathery, but it wasmagnificently tinted in purples and yellows.
Time passed. The mushroom Burl had brought was finished. Some eyesalways explored the clear ground around this group. But other eyes fixedthemselves upon Burl. It was not a consciously questioning gaze. It wassurely not a hopeful one. But men and women and children looked at him.They marveled at him. He had dared to go and get food! He had beenattacked by one of the creatures who doomed them all, but he was notdead! Instead, he had killed the spider! It was marvelous! It wasunparalleled that a man should kill anything that attacked him!
* * * * *
The doomed small group regarded Burl with wondering eyes. He brushed hishands together. He looked at Saya. He wished to be alone with her. Hewished to know what she thought when she looked at him. Why she lookedat him. What she felt when she looked at him.
He stood up and said dourly:
"Come!"
She moved timidly and gave him her hand. He moved away. There was butone way that any human being on this planet would think to move, fromthis particular spot just now--away from the still-feasting gigantichorror whose offspring he had killed. The folk shivered near the edge ofthe first upward slope of the valley wall.
Burl moved in that direction.Toward the slope. Saya went with him.
Before they had gone ten yards a man spoke to his wife. They followedBurl, with their three children. Five yards more, and two of theremaining three adult men were hustling their families in his wake also.In seconds the last was in motion.
Burl moved on, unconscious of any who followed him, aware only of Saya.The procession, absurd as it was, continued in his wake simply becauseit had begun to do so. A skinny, half-grown boy regarded Burl's stainedweapon. He saw something half-buried in the soil and moved aside to tugat it. It was part of the armor of a former rhinoceros-beetle. He wenton, rather awkwardly holding a weapon which might have been called adagger, eighteen inches long, except that no dagger would have ahand-guard nearly its own length in diameter.
They passed a struggling milkweed plant, no more than twenty feet highand already scabrous with scale and rusts upon its lower parts. Antsmarched up and down its stalk in a steady, single file, placing aphidsfrom the ant-city on
Nightmare Planet Page 3
