The Mad Planet Page 12

lake, its center reflecting the hazy sky overhead. Allabout, blackened mushrooms, seeming to have been charred and burned by afierce flame. A slow-flowing golden brooklet trickled slowly over arocky ledge, into the larger pool. And all about the edges of the goldenlake, in ranks and rows, by hundreds, thousands, and by millions, wereranged the green-gold, shining bodies of great flies.

  They were small as compared with the other insects. They had increasedin size but a fraction of the amount that the bees, for example, hadincreased; but it was due to an imperative necessity of their race.

  The flesh-flies laid their eggs by hundreds in decaying carcases. Theothers laid their eggs by hundreds in the mushrooms. To feed the maggotsthat would hatch, a relatively great quantity of food was needed,therefore the flies must remain comparatively small, or the body of asingle grasshopper, say, would furnish food for but two or three grubsinstead of the hundreds it must support.

  Burl stared down at the golden pool. Bluebottles, greenbottles, and allthe flies of metallic luster were gathered at the Lucullan feast ofcorruption. Their buzzing as they darted above the odorous pool ofgolden liquid made the sound Burl had heard. Their bodies flashed andglittered as they darted back and forth, seeking a place to alight andjoin in the orgy.

  Those which clustered about the banks of the pool were still as ifcarved from metal. Their huge, red eyes glowed, and their bodies shonewith an obscene fatness. Flies are the most disgusting of all insects.Burl watched them a moment, watched the interlacing streams of light asthey buzzed eagerly above the pool, seeking a place at the festiveboard.

  A drumming roar sounded in the air. A golden speck appeared in the sky,a slender, needle-like body with transparent, shining wings and two hugeeyes. It grew nearer and became a dragonfly twenty feet and more inlength, its body shimmering, purest gold. It poised itself above thepool and then darted down. Its jaws snapped viciously and repeatedly,and at each snapping the glittering body of a fly vanished.

  A second dragonfly appeared, its body a vivid purple, and a third. Theyswooped and rushed above the golden pool, snapping in mid air, turningtheir abrupt, angular turns, creatures of incredible ferocity andbeauty. At the moment they were nothing more or less thanslaughtering-machines. They darted here and there, their many-facetedeyes burning with blood-lust. In that mass of buzzing flies even themost voracious appetite must be sated, but the dragonflies kept on.Beautiful, slender, graceful creatures, they dashed here and there abovethe pond like avenging fiends or the mythical dragons for which they hadbeen named.

  * * * * *

  Only a few miles farther on Burl came upon a familiar landmark. He knewit well, but from a safe distance as always. A mass of rock had heaveditself up from the nearly level plain over which he was traveling, andformed an outjutting cliff. At one point the rock overhung a sheer drop,making an inverted ledge--a roof over nothingness--which had beenpre-empted by a hairy creature and made into a fairylike dwelling. Awhite hemisphere clung tenaciously to the rock above, and long cablesanchored it firmly.

  Burl knew the place as one to be fearfully avoided. A Clotho spider(_Clotho Durandi, LATR_) had built itself a nest there, from which itemerged to hunt the unwary. Within that half-globe there was a monster,resting upon a cushion of softest silk. But if one went too near, one ofthe 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 withfiendish agility toward its prey.

  Surely, Burl knew the place. Hung upon the outer walls of the silkenpalace were stones and tiny boulders, discarded fragments of formermeals, and the gutted armour from limbs of ancient prey. But what causedBurl to know the place most surely and most terribly was anotherdecoration that dangled from the castle of this insect ogre. This wasthe shrunken, desiccated figure of a man, all its juices extracted andthe life gone.

  The death of that man had saved Burl's life two years before. They hadbeen together, seeking a new source of edible mushrooms for food. TheClotho spider was a hunter, not a spinner of snares. It sprang suddenlyfrom behind a great puff-ball, and the two men froze in terror. Then itcame swiftly forward and deliberately chose its victim. Burl had escapedwhen the other man was seized. Now he looked meditatively at the hidingplace of his ancient enemy. Some day--

  But now he passed on. He went past the thicket in which the great mothshid during the day, and past the pool--a turgid thing of slime andyeast--in which a monster water snake lurked. He penetrated the littlewood of the shining mushrooms that gave out light at night, and theshadowed place where the truffle-hunting beetles went chirpingthunderously during the dark hours.

  And then he saw Saya. He caught a flash of pink skin vanishing behindthe thick stalk of a squat toadstool, and ran forward, calling her name.She appeared, and saw the figure with the horrible bulk of the spiderupon its back. She cried out in horror, and Burl understood. He let hisburden fall and then went swiftly toward her.

  They met. Saya waited timidly until she saw who this man was, and thenastonishment went over her face. Gorgeously attired, in an iridescentcloak from the whole wing of a great moth, with a strip of softest furfrom a night-flying creature about his middle, with golden, featheryantennae bound upon his forehead, and a fierce spear in his hands--thiswas not the Burl she had known.

  But then he moved slowly toward her, filled with a fierce delight atseeing her again, thrilling with joy at the slender gracefulness of herform and the dark richness of her tangled hair. He held out his handsand touched her shyly. Then, manlike, he began to babble excitedly ofthe things that had happened to him, and dragged her toward his greatvictim, the gray-bellied spider.

  Saya trembled when she saw the furry bulk lying upon the ground, andwould have fled when Burl advanced and took it upon his back. Thensomething of the pride that filled him came vicariously to her. Shesmiled a flashing smile, and Burl stopped short in his excitedexplanation. He was suddenly tongue-tied. His eyes became pleading andsoft. He laid the huge spider at her feet and spread out his handsimploringly.

  Thirty thousand years of savagery had not lessened the femininity inSaya. She became aware that Burl was her slave, that these wonderfulthings he wore and had done were as nothing if she did not approve. Shedrew away--saw the misery in Burl's face--and abruptly ran into his armsand clung to him, laughing happily. And quite suddenly Burl saw withextreme clarity that all these things he had done, even the slaying of agreat spider, were of no importance whatever beside this most wonderfulthing that had just happened, and told Saya so quite humbly, but holdingher very close to him as he did so.

  And so Burl came back to his tribe. He had left it nearly naked, withbut a wisp of moth-wing twisted about his middle, a timid, fearful,trembling creature. He returned in triumph, walking slowly andfearlessly down a broad lane of golden mushrooms toward the hiding placeof his people.

  Upon his shoulders was draped a great and many-colored cloak made fromthe whole of a moth's wing. Soft fur was about his middle. A spear wasin his hand and a fierce club at his waist. He and Saya bore betweenthem the dead body of a huge spider--aforetime the dread of thepink-skinned, naked men. But to Burl the most important thing of all wasthat Saya walked beside him openly, acknowledging him before all thetribe.