Part 15 (1/2)

And it was a deplorable state of affairs. It is not good for human beings to feel secure and experience contentment. Men achieve only by their wants or through their fears. Back at their former foraging-ground, the tribe would never have emulated Burl with any pa.s.sion so long as they could survive by traditional behavior. Before the menace of the red puffb.a.l.l.s developed, he had brought them to the point of killing ants, with him present and ready to a.s.sist. They would have stayed at about that level. The red dust had forced their flight.

During that flight they had achieved what was--compared to their former timidity--prodigies of valor.

But now they arrived at paradise. There was food. They could survive here in the fas.h.i.+on of the good old days before they learned the courage of desperation. They did not need Burl to keep them alive or to feed them. They tended to disregard him. But they did not disperse. Social grouping is an instinct in human beings as it is in cattle or in schools of fish. Also, when Burl was available there was a sense of pleasant confidence. He had gotten them out of trouble before. If more trouble came, he would get them out of it again. But why look for trouble?

Burl's tribesmen sank back into a contented lethargy. They found food and hid themselves until it was all consumed. A part of the valley was found where they were far enough from visible dangers to feel blissfully safe. When they did move, though still with elaborate caution, it was only to forage for food. And they did not need to go far because there was plenty of food. They slipped back. Happier than they had ever been, the foragers finally began to forget to take their new spears or clubs with them. They were furtive vermin in a particularly favorable environment.

And Burl was infuriated. He had known adulation. He was cherished, to be sure, but adulation no longer came his way. Even Saya....

An ironically natural change took place in Saya. When Burl was a chieftain, she looked at him with wors.h.i.+pful eyes. Now that he was as other men, she displayed coquetry. And Burl was of that peculiarly direct-thinking sort of human being who is capable of leaders.h.i.+p but not of intrigue. He was vain, of course. But he could not engage in elaborate maneuvers to build up a romantic situation. When Saya archly remained with the women of the tribe, he considered that she avoided him. When she coyly avoided speech with him, he angrily believed that she did not want his company.

When they had been in the valley for a week Burl went off on a bitter journey by himself. Part of his motivation, probably, was a childish resentment. He had been the great man of the tribe. He was no longer so great because his particular qualities were not needed. And--perhaps with some unconscious intent to punish them for their lessened appreciation--he went off in a pet.

He still carried spear and club, but the grandeur of his costume had deteriorated. His cloak was gone. The moth-antennae he had worn bound to his forehead were now so draggled that they were ridiculous. He went off angrily to be rid of his fellows' indifference.

He found the upward slopes which were the valley's literal boundaries.

They promised nothing. He found a minor valley in which a labyrinth spider had built its s.h.i.+ning snare. Burl almost scorned the creature. He could kill it if he chose, merely by stabbing it though the walls of its silken nest as it waited for unlucky insects to blunder into the intricate web. He saw praying-mantises. Once he came upon that extraordinary egg-container of the mantis tribe: a gigantic leaf-shaped ma.s.s of solidified foam, whipped out of some special plastic compound which the mantis secretes, and in which the eggs are laid.

He found a caterpillar wrapped in its thick coc.o.o.n and, because he was not foraging and not particularly hungry, he inspected it with care.

With great difficulty he even broke the strand of silk that formed it, unreeling several feet in curiosity. Had he meditated, Burl would have seen that this was cord which could be used to build snares as spiders did. It could also be used to make defenses in which--if built strongly and well--even hunting-spiders might be tangled and dispatched.

But again he was not knowingly looking for things to be of use. He coddled his sense of injury against the tribe. He punished them by leaving them.

He encountered a four-foot praying-mantis that raised its saw-toothed forelimbs and waited immobile for him to come within reach. He had trouble getting away without a fight. His spear would have been a clumsy weapon against so slender a target and the club certainly not quick enough to counter the insect's lightning-like movements.

He was bothered. That day he hunted ants. The difficulty was mainly that of finding individual ants, alone, who could be slaughtered without drawing hordes of others into the fight. Before nightfall he had three of them--foot-long carca.s.ses--slung at his belt. Near sunset he came upon another fairly recent praying-mantis hatchling. It was almost an ambush. The young monster stood completely immobile and waited for him to walk into its reach.

Burl performed a deliberate experiment--something that had not been done for a very long time on the forgotten planet. The small, grisly creature stood as high as Burl's shoulders. It would be a deadly antagonist.

Burl tossed it a dead ant.

It struck so swiftly that the motion of its horrible forearms could not be seen. Then it ignored Burl, devouring the tidbit.

It was a discovery that was immediately and urgently useful.

On the second day of his aimless journey Burl saw something that would be even more deadly and appalling than the red dust had been for his kind. It was a female black hunting-spider, the so-called American tarantula. When he glimpsed the thing the blood drained from Burl's face.

As the monster moved out of sight Burl, abandoning any other project he might have intended, headed for the place his tribe had more or less settled in. He had news which offered the satisfaction of making him much-needed again, but he would have traded that pleasure ten hundred times over for the simple absence of that one creature from this valley.

That female tarantula meant simply and specifically that the tribe must flee or die. This place was not paradise!

The entry of the spider into the region had preceded the arrival of the people. A giant, even of its kind, it had come across some pa.s.s among the mountains for reasons only it could know. But it was deadliness beyond compare. Its legs spanned yards. The fangs were needle-sharp and feet in length--and poisoned. Its eyes glittered with insatiable, insane blood-l.u.s.t. Its coming was ten times more deadly to the humans--as to the other living creatures of the valley--than a Bengal tiger loosed in a human city would have been. It was bad enough in itself, but it brought more deadly disaster still behind it.

b.u.mping and bouncing behind its abdomen as it moved, fastened to its body by dirtied silken ropes, this creature dragged a burden which was its own ferocity many times multiplied. It was dragging an egg-bag larger than its body--which was feet in diameter. The female spider would carry this ghastly burden--cheris.h.i.+ng it--until the eggs hatched.

And then there would be four to five hundred small devils loose in the valley. From the instant of their hatching they would be as deadly as their parent. Though the offspring would be small--with legs spanning no more than a foot--their bodies would be the size of a man's fist and able to leap two yards. Their tiny fangs would be no less envenomed than their mother's. In stark, maniacal hatred of all other life they would at least equal the huge gray horror which had begot them.

Burl told his tribesmen. They listened, eyes large with fright but not quite afraid. The thing had not yet happened. When Burl insistently commanded that they follow him on a new journey, they nodded uneasily but slipped away. He could not gather the tribe together. Always there were members who hid from him--and when he went in search of them, the ones he had gathered vanished before he could return.

There were days of bright light and murder, and nights of slow rain and death in the valley. The great creatures under the cloud-bank committed atrocities upon each other and blandly dined upon their victims.

Unthinkingly solicitous parents paralyzed creatures to be left living and helpless for their young to feed on. There were enormities of cruelty done in the matter-of-fact fas.h.i.+on of the insect world. To these things the humans were indifferent. They were uneasy, but like other humans everywhere they would not believe the worst until the worst arrived.

Two weeks after their coming to the valley, the worst was there. When that day came the first gray light of dawn found the humans in a s.h.i.+vering, terrified group in a completely suicidal position. They were out in the open--not hidden but in plain view. They dared not hide any more. The furry gray monster's brood had hatched. The valley seemed to swarm with small gray demons which killed and killed, even when they could not devour. When they encountered each other they fought in slavering fury and the victors in such duels dined upon their brethren.

But always they hunted for more things to kill. They were literally maniacs--and they were too small and too quick to fight with spears or clubs.