Part 13 (1/2)

It dived below again. Another inch and, after a long time, another, were excavated.

Matters still progressed when Burl stepped out from a group of overshadowing toadstools and halted. He cast his eyes over the landscape and was struck by its familiarity. He was, in fact, very near the spot he had left the night before in that maniacal ride on the back of a flying beetle. He moved back and forth, trying to account for the feeling of recognition.

He saw the low cliff, then, and moved eagerly toward it, pa.s.sing within fifty feet of Saya's body, now more than half-buried in the ground. The loose dirt around the outline of her figure was beginning to topple in little rivulets upon her. One of her shoulders was already half-screened from view. Burl pa.s.sed on, unseeing.

He hurried a little. In a moment he recognized his location exactly.

There were the mining-bee burrows. There was a thrown-away lump of edible mushroom, cast aside as the tribesfolk fled.

His feet stirred up a fine dust, and he stopped short. A red puffball had burst here. It fully accounted for the absence of the tribe, and Burl sweated in sudden fear. He thought instantly of Saya. He went carefully to make sure. This was, absolutely, the hiding place of the tribe. There was another mushroom-fragment. There was a spear, thrown down by one of the men in his flight. Red dust had settled upon the spear and the mushroom-fragments.

Burl turned back, hurrying again, but taking care to disturb the dust no more than he could possibly help.

The little excavation into which Saya was sinking inch by inch was not in his path. Her body no longer lay above the ground, but in it. Burl went by, frantic with anxiety about the tribe, but about Saya most of all.

Her body quivered and sank a fraction into the ground. Half a dozen small streams of earth were tumbling upon her. In minutes she would be wholly hidden from view.

Burl went to beat among the mushroom-thickets, in quest of the bodies of his tribesfolk. They could have staggered out of the red dust and collapsed beyond. He would have shouted, but the deep sense of loneliness silenced him. His throat ached with grief. He searched on....

There was a noise. From a huge clump of toadstools--perhaps the very one he had climbed over in the night--there came the sound of cras.h.i.+ngs and the breaking of the spongy stuff. Twin tapering antennae appeared, and then a monster beetle lurched into the open s.p.a.ce, its ghastly mandibles gaping sidewise.

It was all of eight feet long and supported by six crooked, saw-toothed legs. Huge, multiple eyes stared with preoccupation at the world. It advanced deliberately with clankings and clas.h.i.+ngs as of a hideous machine. Burl fled on the instant, running directly away from it.

A little depression lay in the ground before him. He did not swerve, but made to jump over it. As he leaped he saw the color of bare flesh, Saya, limp and helpless, sinking slowly into the ground with tricklings of dirt falling down to cover her. It seemed to Burl that she quivered a little.

Instantly there was a terrific struggle within Burl. Behind him was the giant meat-eating beetle; beneath him was Saya whom he loved. There was certain death lurching toward him on evilly crooked legs--and the life he had hoped for lay in a shallow pit. Of course he thought Saya dead.

Perhaps it was rage, or despair, or a simple human madness which made him act otherwise than rationally. The things which raise humans above brute creation, however, are only partly reasonable. Most human emotions--especially the creditable ones--cannot be justified by reason, and very few heroic actions are based upon logical thought.

Burl whirled as he landed, his puny spear held ready. In his left hand he held the haunch of a creature much like the one which clanked and rattled toward him. With a yell of insane defiance--completely beyond justification by reason--Burl flung that meat-filled leg at the monster.

It hit. Undoubtedly, it hurt. The beetle seized it ferociously. It crushed it. There was meat in it, sweet and juicy.

The beetle devoured it. It forgot the man standing there, waiting for death. It crunched the leg-joint of a cousin or brother, confusing the blow with the missile that had delivered it. When the tidbit was finished it turned and lumbered off to investigate another mushroom thicket. It seemed to consider then an enemy had been conquered and devoured and that normal life could go on.

Then Burl stopped quickly, and dragged Saya from the grave the s.e.xton-beetles had labored so feverishly to provide for her. Crumbled soil fell from her shoulders, from her face, and from her body. Three little eight-inch beetles with black and red markings scurried for cover in terrified haste. Burl carried Saya to a resting-place of soft mould to mourn over her.

He was a completely ignorant savage, save that he knew more of the ways of insects than anybody anywhere else--the Ecological Service, which had stocked this planet, not being excepted. To Burl the unconsciousness of Saya was as death itself. Dumb misery smote him, and he laid her down gently and quite literally wept. He had been beautifully pleased with himself for having slain one flying beetle. But for Saya's seeming death, he would have been almost unbearable with pride over having put another to flight. But now he was merely a broken-hearted, very human young man.

But a long time later Saya opened her eyes and looked about bewilderedly.

They were in considerable danger for some time after that, because they were oblivious to everything but each other. Saya rested in half-incredulous happiness against Burl's shoulder as he told her jerkily of his attempt on a night-bound b.u.t.terfly, which turned out to be a flying beetle that took him aloft. He told of his search for the tribe and then his discovery of her apparently lifeless body. When he spoke of the monster which had lurched from the mushroom thicket, and of the desperation with which he had faced it, Saya looked at him with warm, proud eyes. But Burl was abruptly struck with the remarkable convenience of that discovery. If his tribesmen could secure an ample supply of meat, they might defend themselves against attack by throwing it to their attackers. In fact, insects were so stupid that almost any object thrown quickly enough and fast enough, might be made to serve as sacrifices instead of themselves.

A timid, frightened whisper roused them from their absorption. They looked up. The boy Dik stood some distance away, staring at them wide-eyed, almost convinced that he looked upon the living dead. A sudden movement on the part of either of them would have sent him bolting away. Two or three other bobbing heads gazed affrightedly from nearby hiding-places. Jon was poised for flight.

The tribe had come back to its former hiding-place simply as a way to rea.s.semble. They had believed both Burl and Saya dead, and they accepted Burl's death as their own doom. But now they stared.

Burl spoke--fortunately without arrogance--and Dik and Tet came timorously from their hiding-places. The others followed, the tribe forming a frightened half-circle about the seated pair. Burl spoke again and presently one of the bravest--Cori--dared to approach and touch him.

Instantly a babble of the crude l.a.b.i.al language of the tribe broke out.

Awed exclamations and questions filled the air.