Nightmare Planet
Page 6
dangers behind.
A man exclaimed in naive astonishment. He was eating raw mushroom at themoment, and his mouth was full. But abruptly it occurred to him thattheir doom was lifted. He mentioned the fact in a sort of startledwonder.
"We will stay here," he added happily. "There is food."
And Burl regarded him with knitted brows. Burl was well on the way tobecoming spoiled. He had tasted power over his folk, and he foundhimself jealous of any decision by anybody else.
"I go on," he said haughtily. "Now! You may stay behind if youwish--alone!"
He broke off food for the journey. He held out his hand to Saya. He wenton. And again he went upward because to go back was to go to the canyonof the unknown killer. And his folk docilely followed him. They did notreally reason about it. To follow him had become a pattern, more or lessprecarious. In time it could become a habit. Over a period of years itcould even become a tradition.
The procession marched on and up. Burl noticed that the air seemedclearer, here. It was not the misty, quasi-transparent stuff of thevalley. He could see for miles to right and left, and the curvatures ofthe mountain-face. But he could not see the valley.
Then he realized that the cloud-bank he saw was finite--an object. Hehad never thought of it specifically before. To him it had seemed simplythe sky.
Now he saw an indefinite lower surface which yet definitely hid theheights toward which he moved. He and his followers were less than athousand feet below it. It appeared to Burl that presently he would runinto an obstacle that would simply keep him from going any further. Butuntil that happened he obstinately continued to climb.
The thing which was the sky appeared to stir. It moved. A little higher,and he could see that there were parts of it which were lower than hewas. They moved also. But they did not approach him. And he had noexperience of anything inimical which did not plunge upon its victims.Therefore he was not afraid.
In fact, a little later he observed that the whiteness retreated beforehim, and he was pleased. Weak things such as humans fled aside whenpredators approached. Here was something which fled aside at hisapproach. His followers undoubtedly observed the same phenomenon. He hadkilled a spider. He was a remarkable person. This unknown white stuffwas afraid of him.
Burl, with bland conceit, marched confidently through the cloud-bank,ever climbing. At its thickest, he could see only feet in eachdirection, but always when he advanced threateningly upon opacity, itcleared before him.
Presently the gray light grew brighter. Burl and his folk wereaccustomed to a shadowless illumination such as fungi could endure--theequivalent of a heavily overcast day on an Earth-type planet. Now themist about him took on a luminosity which was of a different kind.Suddenly he noticed the silence. He had never known even comparativesilence before in all his life. His ears had been assailed every minutesince he had been born by a din which was the noise of creatures. Bystridulations, by chirpings, by screams, or at the least by the clickingof armor or the deep-toned pulsations of wings. He had always lived inthe uproar of frenzied struggle. Now, that hellish chorus of shrieks andcries and mating-calls was cut off. The lower surface of the cloud-bankreflected it. Burl and his people moved upward through an unparalleledstillness.
They fell silent, marveling. They heard each other's movements. Theycould hear each other's voices. But they moved in a vast quietness overstones which here were not even lichen-covered, but glistened with wet.And all about them a golden glow hung in the very air. Stillness, andquietude, and golden light which grew stronger and stronger andstronger....
It was very remarkable when they came up through the sea of mist upon ashore of sunshine, and saw blue sky and sunlight for the first time. Thelight smote upon their pink skins and brilliantly colored furrygarments. It glinted in changing, ever-more-colorful flashes upon thecloaks made of butterfly wings. It sparkled upon the great lance carriedby Burl in the lead, and the quite preposterous weapons borne by hisfollowers.
The little party of twenty humans waded ashore through the last of thethinning white stuff which was cloud. They gazed about them withblinking, wondering, astounded eyes. The sky was blue. There was greengrass. And there was sound. The sound was of wind blowing in the treesand sunshine.
They heard insects, too, but they did not know what it was they heard.The shrill, small musical whirrings, the high-pitched small cries whichmade up a strange new elfin melody, were totally strange. All thingswere novel to their eyes, and an enormous exultation filled them. Fromdeep-buried ancestral memories, they knew that this was somehow right,was somehow normal. And they breathed clean air for the first time inmany generations.
Burl even shouted, in triumph, and his voice rang echoing among rocks.
The plateau rang with the shouting of a man in triumph!
* * * * *
They had enough food for days. They had brought it from the isolatedthicket not too far beneath the clouds. Had they found other foodimmediately, they would have settled down comfortably, in the fashionnormal to creatures whose idea of bliss is a secure hiding-place andfood on hand. Somehow they believed that this high place was secure. Butit was not a hiding-place. And though they did accept, with thesimplicity of children and savages, that they had no enemies here, theirfirst quest, nevertheless, was for a place in which they could concealthemselves.
They found a cave. It was small to hold all of them, so that they wouldbe crowded in it, but, as it turned out, that was fortunate.
At some time it had been occupied by some other creature, but the dirtwhich floored it had settled flat and there were no recent tracks. Itretained faint traces of an odor which was unfamiliar but notunpleasant. It had no connotation of danger.
Ants stank of formic acid plus the musky odor of their particular cityand kind. One could tell not only the kind of ant but what hill theycame from, from a mere sniff at a well-traveled ant-trail. Spiders hadtheir own hair-raising odor. The smell of a praying-mantis was acrid,and of beetles decay, and of course those bugs whose main defense wassmell gave off an effluvium which tended to strangle all but themselves.
The cave's smell was quite different. The humans thought vaguely that itmight be another kind of man. Actually, it _was_ the smell of awarm-blooded animal. But Burl and his fellows knew of no warm-bloodedcreatures but themselves.
They had come above the clouds a bare two hours before sunset--of whichthey knew nothing. For an hour they marveled, staying close together.They were astounded by the sun, more particularly since they could notlook at it. But presently, being savages, they accepted it with thematter-of-factness of children.
They could not cease to wonder at the vegetation about them. They wereaccustomed only to gigantic fungi, and a few feverishly growing plantsstriving to flower and bear seed before being devoured. Here they sawmany plants, and at first no insects at all. However, they looked onlyfor the large things they were accustomed to.
They were astounded by the slenderness of the plants. Grass fascinatedthem, and weeds. A large part of their courage came from the absence ofdebris upon the ground. In the valley, the habitation of a trapdoorspider was marked by grisly trophies--armor emptied of all meat but notyet rotted by the highly specialized bacteria which flourished uponchitin. The hunting-ground of even a mantis was marked by discarded,transparent beetle-wings and sharp spiny bits of armor, and mandiblesnot tasty enough to be consumed. Here, in the first hour of theirexploration, they saw no sign that any insect from the lowlands had evercome to this place at all. But they interpreted the fact quite correctlyas rarity, rather than complete absence of huge creatures blundering upinto the sunlight.
They were relieved that they had found a cave. There was no thicket oftrees close-growing enough to shelter them. They were ludicrously amazedwhen they found that trees were hard and solid, because the fungi theyknew were easily cut by sawtoothed tools. They found nothing to eat, butthey were not yet hungry. They did not worry about it while they stillhad bits of edible mushroom from their cl
imb.
When the sun sank low and the crimson colorings filled the westernhorizon, they shivered. They watched the glory of their first sunsetwith scared, incredulous eyes. Yellows and reds and purples rearedtoward the zenith. It became possible to look and gaze directly at thesun. They saw it descend behind something they could not guess at. Thenthere was dark.
The fact stunned them. So night came like this!
Then they saw the stars as they winked singly into being. And the folkfrom the lowland crowded frantically into the cave with its faint odorof having once been occupied. They filled the cave tightly. But Burl wassomewhat reluctant to admit his fear, and Saya lingered close to him.They were the last to enter.
* * * * *
Nothing happened. Nothing. The sounds of evening continued. They werestrange but infinitely soothing and somehow what night-sounds ought tobe. Burl and the others could not possibly analyze it, but for the firsttime in many generations they were in an environment really