Nightmare Planet
Page 7
similar tothat intended for their race. It had a rightness and a goodness about itwhich was perceptible for all its novelty. And because Burl had oncebeen lost from his tribe, he was capable of estimating novelties alittle better than the rest.
He listened to the night-noises from close by the cave's small entrance.He heard the breathing of his tribesmen. He felt the heat of theirbodies, keeping the crowded enclosure warm enough for all. Saya wasclose beside him. She held fast to his arm for reassurance. He waswakeful, and thinking very busily and very painfully.
Saya was filled with a tumult that was combined fear of the unknown andrelief from much greater fear of the familiar ... and warm, proudmemories of the sight of Burl leading and commanding the others, andmemories of the look and feel of sunshine, and pictures of sky andgrass and trees which she had never seen before. Emotion-filled memoriesof Burl as he killed a spider! Flinging a ball-fungus at a hatchlingmantis, saving a young boy. Grandly leading the others up themountainside which it had never occurred to anybody else to climb.Keeping onward sternly when it seemed that the solid ground had twistedand would drop them into a misplaced sky. And now, between her and thedoorway to the strange and very beautiful night outside.
Saya felt an absorbed, impassioned, delectable disquiet from the touchof Burl's arm beneath her fingers.
He stirred. She whispered a question.
"I am going out," he murmured in her ear. "I wish to see the lights. Tosee if they come nearer, or move."
It had occurred to him that the first few stars they had seen glowed indarkness like the giant fireflies of the valley. They were comparable insize to all the enlarged insect kingdom. They were a yard and more inlength, and sometimes at night they soared and wheeled above the lowlandfungus jungles, and the segmented larval females of their kind, whichnever grew wings, grew frantic at the sight. They climbed recklesslyupon the flat tops of toadstools and waved their dimmer twinned lanternsat the flying males.
But this was not the lowland. Burl freed his arm from Saya's fingers. Hecrept through the constricted opening of the cave, carrying his lancebefore him. He already had a vague idea that it should be not only aninstrument but a weapon. He imagined stabbing enemy creatures withit--but only vaguely, as yet.
He stood upright in the open air. There was coolness. Night had fallen,but only a little while since. There were smells in the air such as Burlhad never smelled before--green things growing, and the peculiar cleanodor of wind that has been bathed in sunshine, and the peculiarlysatisfying fragrance of coniferous trees.
But Burl raised his eyes to the heavens. He saw the stars in all theirglory, and he was the first man in at least forty generations to look atthem from this planet. There were myriads upon myriads of them, varyingin brightness from stabbing lights to infinitesimal twinklings. Theywere of every possible color. They hung in the sky above him, immobileand unthreatening. They had not come nearer. They were very beautiful.
"_... he was the first man in ... forty generations tolook at them._"]
Burl stared. And then he noticed that he was breathing deeply, with anew zest. He was filling his lungs with clean, cool, fragrant air suchas men were intended to breathe from the beginning, and of which Burland many others had been deprived. It was almost intoxicating to feel sosplendidly alive and unafraid.
There was a rustling. Saya stood beside him, trembling a little. Toleave the others had required great courage. But she had come to realizethat if any danger befell Burl she wished to share it. So she had come.They shared the starlight.
They heard the nightwind and the orchestra of night-singers. Theywandered aside from the cave-mouth, and Saya found completely primitiveand wholly atavistic pride in the courage of Burl, who was actually notafraid of the dark! Her own uneasiness became merely something to givemore savor to her pride in him. She stayed close beside him, not onlyfor reassurance but also for joy in being close to him.
Presently they heard a new sound in the night. It was very far away andnot in the least like any sound they had ever heard before. It changedin pitch. Insect-cries do not. It was a baying, yelping sound. It rosein pitch, and held the higher note, and abruptly dropped in pitch beforeit ceased. Minutes later it came again.
Saya shivered, but Burl said thoughtfully:
"That is a good sound."
He didn't know why. Saya shivered once more. She said reluctantly:
"I am cold."
It had been a rare sensation in the lowlands. It came only after one ofthe infrequent thunderstorms, when wetted human bodies were exposed tothe gusty winds that otherwise rarely blew there. But here the nightsgrew cold, after sundown. The heat in the ground radiated to outer spaceat night, not being trapped by a layer of clouds. Before dawn, thetemperature would be close to freezing, though anything worse than alight fleeting hoar-frost would be rare on this plateau.
The two of them went back to the cave. It was warm there. The cave wasso packed with humans that their body-heat kept the air from growingchill. Burl and Saya crouched among the rest, and became drowsy andcomfortable. Presently Saya dropped off to sleep, her hand trustfully inBurl's.
But he remained awake for a long time, blinking. He thought of thestars, but they were too strange. He thought of the trees and grass. Butmost of the impressions of this upper world were so remote from previousknowledge that he could only accept them as they were and deferreflection upon them until later. But he did feel an enormouscomplacency, what with having brought his followers to an effectiveparadise of safety, and having arrived at a completely satisfactoryemotional status with Saya.
But the last thing he actually thought about, before his eyes blinkedshut in sleep, was that yelping noise he had heard in the night. It wastotally novel in kind, yet there was something buried among his racialheritages that told him it was good.
* * * * *
Burl was first awake of all the tribesmen and he looked out into a coldand pallid grayness. He saw trees. One side of the cluster was brightlylighted, the other side was dark. He heard tiny singing noises of thecreatures of this place. Presently he crawled out of the cave to scoutfor danger.
The air was biting in its chill. It was an excellent reason why giantinsects could not survive here, but it was particularly invigorating ashe breathed it in. Then he summoned courage to move to where he couldpeer at the source of this strange light.
He saw the top of the sun as it peered above the eastern cloud-bank. Thesky grew lighter. He blinked at the sun and saw it rise more fully intoview. He thought to look upward, and the stars that had bewildered himwere nearly gone.
He ran to call Saya.
The rest of the tribe waked as he roused her. One by one they followed,to watch their first sunrise. The men and women gaped at the sun as itfilled the east with colorings and rose above the seemingly steaminglayer of clouds and then appeared to spring free of the horizon and swimon upward.
The children blinked and shivered and crept to their mothers for warmth.The women enclosed them in their cloaks, and they thawed and peered outonce more at the glory of sunshine and the day. Soon, though, theyrealized that warmth came from the glaring body in the sky. Thechildren presently discovered a game. It was the first game they hadever played, and it consisted simply of running into a shaded placeuntil they shivered, and then of running out into the sunshine againwhere they were warm. Until this dawning they had never been free enoughfrom fear to play at all. But this discovery of the nightly chill and ofthe utility of cloaks for warmth up here as well as it had been againstthe nightly rain of the lowlands, was a specific suggestion of the valueof clothing. Which was to have another significance, a short time later.
In this first dawn of their experience, the tribesmen ate of the ediblemushroom they had brought up the mountain-flank. But there was not anindefinite amount of food left. Burl shared the meal Saya brought him.She touched him fondly. But he regarded his happy fellows with somethinglike a scowl. They were quite contented, and they had for the moment noneed
of his guidance. They did not look to him for orders. And Burlwanted attention.
He spoke abruptly.
"We do not want to go back to the place we came from," he said sternly."We must look for food here, so we can stay for always. Today we lookfor food."
It was a seizure of the initiative. It was the linking of what the folkmost craved with obedience to Burl. It was the instinct of a leader. Theeating men murmured agreement. There was a certain definite idea ofgoodness--not moral virtue, but of the desirable--becoming associatedwith what Burl did and what Burl commanded. His tribe was becoming agroup of which he was the leader, rather than only a loose associationheld together only by the fear of solitude.
He led them exploring as soon as they had eaten. All of them, of course.None had yet become confident enough to be left behind. They straggledirregularly behind Burl and Saya. They came to a brook and regarded itwith amazement. There were no leeches. No fungus. No swiftly driftingislands of scum. It was clear. Greatly