The Mad Planet Page 10
upward intime to catch the outline of a huge body--a moth--as it passed abovehim. He turned to watch the line of its flight, and saw a strange glowin the sky behind him. The mushroom hills were still burning.
He crouched beneath a squat toadstool and waited for the dawn, his clubheld tightly in his hands, and his ears alert for any sound of danger.The slow-dropping, sodden rain kept on. It fell with irregular, drumlikebeats upon the tough top of the toadstool under which he had takenrefuge.
Slowly, slowly, the sodden rainfall continued. Drop by drop, all thenight long, the warm pellets of liquid came from the sky. They boomedupon the hollow heads of the toadstools, and splashed into the steamingpools that lay festering all over the fungus-covered earth.
And all the night long the great fires grew and spread in the mass ofalready half-carbonized mushroom. The flare at the horizon grew brighterand nearer. Burl, naked and hiding beneath a huge mushroom, watched itgrow near him with wide eyes, wondering what this thing was. He hadnever seen a flame before.
The overhanging clouds were brightened by the flames. Over a stretch atleast a dozen miles in length and from half a mile to three milesacross, seething furnaces sent columns of dense smoke up to the roof ofclouds, luminous from the glow below them, and spreading out and formingan intermediate layer below the cloudbanks.
It was like the glow of all the many lights of a vast city thrownagainst the sky--but the last great city had moulded into fungus-coveredrubbish thirty thousand years before. Like the flitting of airplanesabove a populous city, too, was the flitting of fascinated creaturesabove the glow.
* * * * *
Moths and great flying beetles, gigantic gnats and midges grown hugewith the passing of time, they fluttered and danced the dance of deathabove the flames. As the fire grew nearer to Burl, he could see them.
Colossal, delicately formed creatures swooped above the strange blaze.Moths with their riotously colored wings of thirty-foot spread beat theair with mighty strokes, and their huge eyes glowed like carbuncles asthey stared with the frenzied gaze of intoxicated devotees into theglowing flames below them.
Burl saw a great peacock moth soaring above the burning mushroom hills.Its wings were all of forty feet across, and fluttered like giganticsails as the moth gazed down at the flaming furnace below. The separateflames had united, now, and a single sheet of white-hot burning stuffspread across the country for miles, sending up its clouds of smoke, inwhich and through which the fascinated creatures flew.
Feathery antennae of the finest lace spread out before the head of thepeacock moth, and its body was softest, richest velvet. A ring ofsnow-white down marked where its head began, and the red glow from belowsmote on the maroon of its body with a strange effect.
For one instant it was outlined clearly. Its eyes glowed more redly thanany ruby's fire, and the great, delicate wings were poised in flight.Burl caught the flash of the flames upon two great iridescent spots uponthe wide-spread wings. Shining purple and vivid red, the glow of opaland the sheen of pearl, all the glory of chalcedony and chrysopraseformed a single wonder in the red glare of burning fungus. White smokecompassed the great moth all about, dimming the radiance of its gorgeousdress.
Burl saw it dart straight into the thickest and brightest of the lickingflames, flying madly, eagerly, into the searing, hellish heat as awilling, drunken sacrifice to the god of fire.
Monster flying beetles with their horny wing-cases stiffly stretched,blundered above the reeking, smoking pyre. In the red light from beforethem they shone like burnished metal, and their clumsy bodies with thespurred and fierce-toothed limbs darted like so many grotesque meteorsthrough the luminous haze of ascending smoke.
Burl saw strange collisions and still stranger meetings. Male and femaleflying creatures circled and spun in the glare, dancing their dance oflove and death in the wild radiance from the funeral pyre of the purplehills. They mounted higher than Burl could see, drunk with the ecstasyof living, then descended to plunge headlong to death in the roaringfires beneath them.
From every side the creatures came. Moths of brightest yellow with softand furry bodies palpitant with life flew madly into the column of lightthat reached to the overhanging clouds, then moths of deepest black withgruesome symbols upon their wings came swiftly to dance, like motes in abath of sunlight, above the glow.
And Burl sat crouched beneath an overshadowing toadstool and watched.The perpetual, slow, sodden raindrops fell. A continual faint hissingpenetrated the sound of the fire--the raindrops being turned to steam.The air was alive with flying things. From far away, Burl heard astrange, deep bass muttering. He did not know the cause, but there was avast swamp, of the existence of which he was ignorant, some ten orfifteen miles away, and the chorus of insect-eating giant frogs reachedhis ears even at that distance.
The night wore on, while the flying creatures above the fire danced anddied, their numbers ever recruited by fresh arrivals. Burl sat tenselystill, his wide eyes watching everything, his mind groping for anexplanation of what he saw. At last the sky grew dimly gray, thenbrighter, and day came on. The flames of the burning hills grew faint asthe fire died down, and after a long time Burl crept from his hidingplace and stood erect.
A hundred yards from where he was, a straight wall of smoke rose fromthe still smouldering fungus, and Burl could see it stretching for milesin either direction. He turned to continue on his way, and saw theremains of one of the tragedies of the night.
A huge 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 immovable upon the ground, itsantennae seared hopelessly, one beautiful, delicate wing burned ingaping holes, its eyes dimmed by flame and its exquisitely taperinglimbs broken and crushed by the force with which it had struck theground. It lay helpless upon the earth, only the stumps of its antennaemoving restlessly, and its abdomen pulsating slowly as it drewpain-racked breaths.
Burl drew near and picked up a stone. He moved on presently, a velvetcloak cast over his shoulders, gleaming with all the colors of therainbow. A gorgeous mass of soft, blue moth fur was about his middle,and he had bound upon his forehead two yard-long, golden fragments ofthe moth's magnificent antennae. He strode on, slowly, clad as no manhad been clad in all the ages.
After a little he secured a spear and took up his journey to Saya,looking like a prince of Ind upon a bridal journey--though no mereprince ever wore such raiment in days of greatest glory.
* * * * *
For many long miles Burl threaded his way through a single forest ofthin-stalked toadstools. They towered three-man-heights high, and allabout their bases were streaks and splashes of the rusts and moulds thatpreyed upon them. Twice Burl came to open glades wherein open, bubblingpools of green slime festered in corruption, and once he hid himselffearfully as a monster scarabeus beetle lumbered within three yards ofhim, moving heavily onward with a clanking of limbs as of some mightymachine.
Burl saw the mighty armour and the inward-curving jaws of the creature,and envied him his weapons. The time was not yet come, however, whenBurl would smile at the great insect and hunt him for the juicy fleshcontained in those armoured limbs.
Burl was still a savage, still ignorant, still timid. His principaladvance had been that whereas he had fled without reasoning, he nowpaused to see if he need flee. In his hands he bore a long,sharp-pointed chitinous spear. It had been the weapon of a huge, unnamedflying insect scorched to death in the burning of the purple hills,which had floundered out of the flames to die. Burl had worked for anhour before being able to detach the weapon he coveted. It was as longand longer than Burl himself.
He was a strange sight, moving slowly and cautiously through theshadowed lanes of the mushroom forest. A cloak of delicate velvet inwhich all the colors of the rainbow played in iridescent beauty hungfrom his shoulders. A mass of soft and beautiful moth fur was about hismiddle, and in the strip of sin
ew about his waist the fiercely toothedlimb of a fighting beetle was thrust carelessly. He had bound to hisforehead twin stalks of a great moth's feathery golden antennae.
Against the play of color that came from his borrowed plumage his pinkskin showed in odd contrast. He looked like some proud knight walkingslowly through the gardens of a goblin's castle. But he was still afearful creature, no more than the monstrous creatures about him save inthe possession of latent intelligence. He was weak--and therein lay hisgreatest promise. A hundred thousand years before him his ancestors hadbeen forced by lack of claws and fangs to develop brains.
Burl was sunk as low as they had been, but he had to combat morehorrifying enemies, more inexorable threatenings, and many times morecrafty assailants. His ancestors had invented knives and spears andflying missiles. The creatures about Burl had knives and spears athousand times more deadly than the weapons that had made his ancestorsmasters of the woods and forests.
Burl was in comparison vastly more weak than his forebears had been, andit