Nightmare Planet Read online

suitable spots to feed, and to multiply as onlyparthenogenic aphids can do. But already on the far side of themilkweed, an ant-lion climbed up to do murder among them. The ant-lionwas the larval form the lace-wing fly, of course. Aphids were itspredestined prey.

  Burl continued to march, holding Saya's hand. The reek of formic acidcame to his nostrils. But that was only ants. The slope grew steeper.Massacre began behind him on the tree-sized milkweed. The ant-lion whicheven when it was but half an inch long, on Earth, could bite through theskin of a man--the ant-lion reached the pasturing cows. It plunged intoslaughter. It was demoniac. It was such ghastly ferocity that the eggsfrom which its kind hatched were equipped, each one, with a plasticcolumn to hold it well away from the object on which the clutch of eggswere laid. But for this precaution by the maternal lace-wing fly, thefirst of her brood to hatch would devour its unhatched brothers andsisters. This ant-lion charged into the placidly feeding aphids on themilkweed plant. It seized one and crushed it, holding it aloft so thatthe juices of its body would pour into the ant-lion's mouth. Almostinstantly, it seemed, the mild-eyed aphid was a shrunken empty sack. Theant-lion seized another. The remaining aphids fed placidly while theirenemy did vast slaughter among them.

  Clickings and a shrill stridulation sounded. Warrior-ants climbed withstupid ferocity to offer battle.

  Burl moved on to a minor eminence. He reached its top and looked sharplyabout him with the caution that was the price of existence on thisworld. Two hundred feet away, a small scurrying horror raged andsearched among the rough-edged layers of what on other worlds was calledpaper-mould or rock-tripe. Here it was thick as quilting, andinfinitesimal creatures denned under it. The sixteen-inch spiderdevoured them, making gluttonous sounds. But it was busy, and allspiders are relatively short-sighted.

  Burl turned to Saya--and realized that all the human folk had followedhim. One of the adults was reaching fearfully for part of a discardedcricket-shell in the ground. He tore free an emptied, sickle-shaped jaw.It was curved and sharp and deadly if properly wielded. The man had seenBurl kill something. He tried vaguely to imagine killing somethinghimself. He was not too successful. Another man tugged at the ground.The skinny boy was practicing thrusts with his giant dagger.

  Two of the adults were armed, without any clear idea of what to do withtheir arms. But Burl knew, now.

  He regarded them angrily. He had not meant to desert them, or even totake Saya permanently from among them. Humans had little enough ofsatisfaction on this planet. The scared company of their kind was one ofthe most important. So Burl did not resent that they had followed him.He did resent that they were near when he wanted to talk to Saya in whathe did not yet think of as lover-like seclusion.

  They halted, regarding him humbly. They had been hungry, and he hadfound food for them. They had been paralyzed by terror, and he had daredto move. So they moved with him. They might have followed anybody else,but only Burl had initiative--so far. They trustfully waited to followand to imitate him for so long as panic numbed their ability to thinkfor themselves.

  Burl opened his mouth to shout furiously at them. But it was not a goodidea for humans to draw attention. Spiders did not hunt by scent, butsound sometimes drew them. Burl closed his mouth again, in a tautstraight line. The men looked at him supplicatingly. They had never beenlost, and so had never learned to think even a little. Burl had learnedto think in a rudimentary fashion and now he suddenly perceived that itwas pleasing to have all the tribe regard him so worshipfully, even ifnot in quite the same fashion as Saya. He was suddenly aware that evenas Saya had obeyed him when he told her to come with him, they wouldobey. He had, at the moment, no commands to give, but he immediatelyinvented one for the pleasure of seeing it carried out.

  "_I carry sharp things_," he said sternly. "I killed a spider. Go find_sharp things_ to carry."

  They were a meek and abject folk, and they were desperately in need ofsomething to do to take their minds from the uselessness of doinganything at all.

  They moved to obey. Saya would have loosened her hand and obeyed, too,but Burl held her beside him. One of the women, with a child three yearsold, laid the child down by Burl's feet while she went fearfully to seeksome fragment of a dead creature, that would meet Burl's specificationof sharpness.

  Burl heard a stifled scream. A ten-year-old boy stood paralyzed, staringin an agony of horror at something which had stepped from behind amisshapen fungoid object.

  It was a pallidly greenish creature with a small head and enormous eyes.It was a very few inches taller than a man. Its abdomen swelledgracefully into a pleasing, leaf-like shape. The boy faced it, paralyzedby horror, and it stood stock-still. Its great, hideously spiny armswere spread out in a pose of pious benediction.

  "_The boy faced it, paralyzed by horror._"]

  It was a partly-grown praying mantis, not very long hatched. It stoodrigid, waiting benignly for the boy to come closer. If he fled, it wouldfling itself after him with ferocity beside which the fury of a tigerwould seem kittenish. If he approached, its fanged arms would flashdown, pierce his body, and hold him inextricably fast by the spikes thatwere worse than trap-claws. And of course it would not wait for him todie before it began its meal.

  The small party of humans stood frozen. They were filled with horrorfor the boy. They were cast into a deep abyss of despair by thesight of a half-grown mantis, because if there was one such miniatureinsect-dinosaur in the valley, there would be many others. Hundreds ofothers. This meant there had been a hatching of them. And they were asdeadly as spiders.

  * * * * *

  But Burl did not think in such terms just now. Vanity filled him. He hadcommanded, and he had been obeyed. But now obedience was forgottenbecause there was this young praying mantis. If men had ever thought offighting such a creature, it could have destroyed any number of them bypure ferocity and superiority of armament. But Burl raged. He ran towardthe spot. Even mantises were sometimes frightened by the unexpected.Burl seized a lumpish object barely protruding from the ground. Itlooked like a rock. It was actually a flattened ball-fungus, feeding onthe soil through thin white threads beneath it. Burl wrenched it freeand hurled it furiously at the young monster.

  Insects simply do not think. Something came swiftly at it, and themantis flashed its ghastly arms to seize and kill its attacker. Theball-fungus was heavy. It literally knocked the mantis backward. The boyfled frantically. The insect fought crazily against the thing it thoughthad assailed it.

  The humans gathered around Burl hundreds of yards away--again uphill.The slope of the mountain-flank was marked here. They gathered aboutBurl because of an example set by the woman who had left herthree-year-old child behind. Saya, in the unfailing instinct of a girlfor a small child, had snatched it up when Burl left her. Then she hadjoined him because the instinct which had made her obey him in startingoff--it was not quite the same instinct which moved the others--alsobade her follow him wherever he went. The mother of the child went toretrieve her deposit. Other figures moved cautiously toward him. Thetribe was reconvened.

  The floor of the valley seemed a trifle obscured. The mist that hungalways in the air made it seem less distinct; less actual; not quite asreal as it had been.

  Burl gulped and said sternly:

  "Where are the sharp things?"

  The men looked at one another, numbly. Then one spoke despairingly,ignoring Burl's question. "Now," said the man dully, "there was not onlythe hunting-spider in the valley, but its young. And not only the youngof the hunting-spider, but the young of a mantis ... It was hard to stayalive at the best of times. Now it had become impossible ..."

  Burl glared at him. It was neither courage nor resolution. He had cometo realize what a splendid sensation it was to be admired by one'sfellows. The more he was admired, the better. He was enraged that peoplethought to despair.

  "I," said Burl haughtily, "am _not_ going to stay here. I go to a placewhere there are neither spiders nor mantises. Come!"

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sp; He held out his hand to Saya. She gave the child to its mother and lookhis hand. Burl stalked haughtily away, and she went with him. He wentuphill. Naturally. He knew there were spiders and mantises in thevalley. So many that to stay there was to die. So he went away fromwhere they were.

  Burl had found out that adulation was enjoyable and authoritydelectable. He had found that it was pleasant to be a dictator. And thenhe had been disregarded. So he marched furiously away from his folk, inexactly the fashion of a spoiled child refusing to play any longer. Hehappened to march up the mountainside toward the cloud-bank that heconsidered the sky. He had no conscious intent to climb the mountain. Hedid not intend to lead the others. He meant to sulk, by punishing themthrough the removal of his own admirable person from their society. Butthey followed him.

  So he led his people upward. It has happened on other planets, in othermanners. Most human achievements come about through the daring of thosewho