Part 17 (1/2)

He saw its cause.

There was a thing moving toward the folk from the recesses of the canon.

It moved very swiftly. It moved upon stilt-like, impossibly attenuated legs of impossible length and inconceivable number. Its body was the thickness of Burl's own. And from it came a smell of such monstrous foetor that any man, smelling it, would gag and flee even without fear to urge him on. The creature was a monstrous millipede, forty feet in length, with features of purest, unadulterated horror.

It did not appear to plan to spring. Its speed of movement did not increase as it neared the tribesfolk. It was not rus.h.i.+ng, like the furious charge of the murderers Burl's tribe knew. It simply flowed sinuously toward them with no appearance of haste, but at a rate of speed they could not conceivably outrun.

Sticklike legs twitched upward and caught the spinning body of an ant.

The creature stopped, and turned its head about and seized the object its side-legs had grasped. It devoured it. Burl shouted again and again.

There was a rain of missiles upon the creature. But they were not to hurt it, but to divert its incredibly automaton-like attention. Its legs seized the things flung to it. It was not possible to miss. Ten, fifteen,--twenty of the items of small-game were grasped in mid-air, as if they were creatures in flight.

Burl's shoutings took effect. His people fled to the side of the level lip of ground. They climbed frantically past the opening of the valley.

They fled toward the heights.

Burl was the last to retreat. The monstrous millipede stood immobile, trapped for the moment by the gratification of all its desires. It was absorbed by the mult.i.tude of tiny tidbits with which it had been provided.

It was a fact to Burl's honor that he debated a frantic attack upon the monster in its insane absorption. But the strangling stench was deterrent enough. He fled,--the last of his band of fugitives to leave the place where the monstrous creature lived and preyed. As he left it, it was still crunching the small meals, one by one, with which the folk had supplied it.

They went on up the mountain-flank. It was not to be supposed, of course, that the creature could not move above the slanting rock-surface. Unquestionably it roamed far and wide, upon occasion. But its own foetid reek would make impossible any idea of trailing the humans by scent. And, climbing desperately as the humans did, it would be unable to see them when they were past the first protuberance of the mountain.

In twenty minutes they slackened their pace. Exhaustion prompted it.

Caution ordered it. Because here they saw another small island of flatness in the slanting universe which was all they could see save mist. It was simply a place where boulders had piled up, and soil had formed, and there was a miniature haven for life other than moulds which could grow on naked stone.

Actually, there was a s.p.a.ce a hundred feet by fifty on which wholly familiar mushrooms grew. It was a thicket like a detached section of the valley itself. Well-known edible fungi grew here. There were gray puffb.a.l.l.s. And from it came the cheerful loud chirping of some small beetle, arrived at this spot n.o.body could possibly know how, but happily ensconsed in a separate bit of mushroom-jungle remote from the dangers of the valley. If it was small enough, it would even be safe from the reeking horror of the canon just below it.

They broke off edible mushrooms here and ate. And this could have been safety for them--save for the giant millipede no more than half a mile below. Old Jon wheezed querulously that here was food and there was no need for them to go further, just now. Here was food....

Burl regarded him with knitted brows. Jon's reaction was natural enough.

The tribesfolk had never tended to think for the future because it was impossible to make use of such planning. Even Burl could easily enough have accepted the fact that this was safety for the moment and food for the moment. But it happened that to settle down here until driven out would--and at this moment--have deprived him of the authority he had so recently learned to enjoy.

”You stay,” he said haughtily, to Jon. ”I go on, to a better place where nothing is to be feared at all!”

He held out his hand to Saya. He a.s.sailed the slope again, heading upward in the mist.

His tribe followed him. Dik and Tet, of course, because they were boys and Burl led on to high adventures in which so far n.o.body had been killed. Dor followed because--he being the strongest man in the tribe--he had thoughtfully realized that his strength was not as useful as Burl's brains and other qualities. Cori followed because she had children, and they were safer where Burl led than anywhere else. The others followed to avoid being left alone.

The procession toiled on and up. Presently Burl noticed that the air seemed clearer, here. It was not the misty, only half transparent stuff of the valley. He could see for miles to right and left. He realized the curvature of the mountain-face. But he could not see the valley. The mist hid that.

Suddenly he realized that he saw the cloud-bank overhead as an object.

He had never thought of it specifically before. To him it had been simply the sky. Now he saw an indefinite lower surface which yet definitely hid the heights toward which he moved. He and his followers were less than a thousand feet below it. It appeared to Burl that presently he would run into an obstacle which would simply keep him from going any further. The idea was disheartening. But until it happened he obstinately climbed on.

He observed that the thing which was the sky did not stay still. It moved, though slowly. A little higher, he could see that there were parts of it which were actually lower than he was. They moved also, but they moved away from him as often as they moved toward him. He had no experience of any dangerous thing which did not leap at its victims.

Therefore he was not afraid.

In fact, presently he noticed that the whiteness which was the cloud-layer seemed to retreat before him. He was pleased. Weak things like humans fled from enemies. Here was something which fled at his approach! His followers undoubtedly saw the same thing. Burl had killed spiders. He was a remarkable person. This unknown white stuff was afraid of him. Therefore it was wise to stay close to Burl. Burl found his vanity inflamed by the fact that always--even at its thickest--the white cloud-stuff never came nearer than some dozens of feet. He swaggered as he led his people up.

And presently there was brightness about them. It was a greater brightness than the tribesfolk had ever known. They knew daylight as a grayness in which one could see. Here was a brightness that shone. They were not accustomed to brightness.