reached above the clouds rose with a steep slope from the valley in
which Burl and the others had lived. To westward, however, the highland
was subject to an indentation which almost severed it. No more than
twenty miles from where Burl's group had climbed to sunshine, there was
a much more gradual slope downward. There, mushroom-forests grew almost
to the cloud-layer. From there, giant insects strayed up and onto the
plateau itself. They could not live on the plateau, of course. There was
no food for their insatiable hunger. Especially at night, there was no
warmth to keep them active. But they did stray from their normal
environment, and some of them reached the sunshine, and perhaps some of
them blundered back down to their mushroom-forests again. But those that
did not find their way back were chilled to torpor during their first
night on the highland. They were only partly active on the second day
if, indeed, they were active at all. And few or none recovered from the
second night of cold. Certainly none kept their full ferocity and
deadliness. And this was how the dogs survived.
Unquestionably the dogs were descended from dogs on the wrecked
ship--name now unknown--which had landed on this planet some forty-odd
human generations since. The humans had no memories of that ship, and
the dogs had surely no traditions. But perhaps because those early dogs
had less of intellect, they had possessed more useful instincts. Perhaps
dogs were bred by the first desperate generations of humans, to warn
them against dangers. But no human civilization could survive the
environment of the lowlands. The humans inevitably reverted to the
primitive. The environment was not one in which dogs could survive, so
somehow they took to the heights. Perhaps dogs survived their masters.
Perhaps some were abandoned or driven away. But dogs had reached the
heights. And they did survive because of the simple fact that giant
insects blundered up after them--and could not survive the proper
environment for dogs and men.
There was even a reason why they had not multiplied excessively. The
food-supply was limited. When there were too many dogs, their attacks on
stumbling insects were more desperate, and made earlier before ferocity
of the insects was lessened. And more dogs died. So there was a specific
adjustment of the dog population to the food-supply. There was also a
selection of those intelligent enough not to attack foolishly, but not
of those whose cowardice left them out of conflict altogether.
These dogs who regarded men with their heads cocked on one side were
excellent dogs. Intelligent dogs. They did not attack anything
imprudently, and they knew it was not necessary to be more than wary of
insects in general. Even spiders, unless they were very newly arrived
from the lowlands. So the attitude of men and dogs was that of
astonished curiosity rather than that of instant fear or rage. Burl knew
that the shaggy, bright-eyed creatures were unlike insects. Actually,
they behaved strikingly like men. They were estimating these strange
beings, men. Insects never estimated. Those that were not carnivorous
had no interest in anything but food, and those that were carnivorous
lumbered insanely into battle the instant any prey came to their notice.
The dogs did neither. They sniffed. They considered. They were amazed.
Burl said harshly to his group:
"Stay here!"
He walked slowly down into the amphitheater. Saya, disregarding his
order, followed him instantly. The dogs moved warily aside. But they
raised their noses and sniffed--long, luxurious sniffs. The smell of
humankind was a good smell. Dogs had gone hundreds of generations
without having it in their nostrils. But before that there were
thousands of generations of dogs to whom that smell was a fulfillment.
Burl reached the object the dogs had been attacking. It lay on the
grass, throbbing painfully. It had come up from the world below. It was
the larva of an azure-blue moth which spread ten-foot wings at
nightfall. The time for its metamorphosis was near, and it had gone
blindly in search of a place where it could spin its cocoon safely and
change to its winged form. It had come to another world--the world above
the clouds. It could find no proper place. Its stores of fat had
protected it a little from the chill. But the dogs had found it.
Burl considered. It was the custom of wasps to sting creatures like this
within a certain special spot--marked for them apparently by a tuft of
dark fur.
Burl thrust his lance into that particular spot. The creature died
quickly and without agony. The thought to kill was an inspiration, which
was the result of continued adventuring. Burl cut off meat for his
tribesmen. The dogs offered no objection. They were well-fed enough.
Burl and Saya, together, carried the meat back to the blinking
tribesfolk. On the way they passed within two yards of a dog which
regarded them with extreme intent and almost a wistful expression. Their
smell did not mean game. It meant--something the dog struggled dumbly to
remember.
"I have killed the thing," said Burl, in the tone of one speaking to an
equal. "You can go and eat it now. I took only part of it."
The dog wagged its tail--and then backed away as if in confusion. After
all, matters had not yet progressed to cordiality.
The humans consumed what Burl had brought them. Most of the dogs went to
the feast Burl had left. Presently they were back. They had no reason to
be hostile. They were fed. The humans offered them no injury. The humans
smelled good. The dogs were fascinated by their smell.
Presently they were close about the humans. They were not insects. They
were interested. The humans were extremely interested in anything which
was interested in them. It was a wholly novel experience. It was the
feeling Burl had felt in becoming the tribal leader. Now every human
felt a little of it, in the intent regard of the dogs. And everything
else was so strange that it was possible to accept anything without
question. Even the possible friendliness of unparalleled creatures which
assuredly were not of a kind with past enemies.
A similar state of "mind" existed among the dogs.
Saya had more meat than she desired. She looked about among the humans.
All were well supplied. She tossed it to a dog. He jerked away alertly,
and then sniffed at the meat where it had dropped. A dog can always eat.
He ate it.
"I wish you would talk to us," said Saya hopefully.
The dog wagged his tail.
"You do not look like us," said Saya interestedly, "but you act as we
do. Not as the--monsters!"
The dog looked at meat in Burl's hand. Burl tossed it. The dog caught it
with a quick snap, swallowed it, wagged his tail briefly and came
closer. It was a completely incredible action, but dogs and men were
blood-kin on this planet. Besides, there was subconscious racial-memory
instinct in friendship between man and dog. It was not overlaid by any
past experience of either. They were the only warm-blooded creatures on
this world. It was kinship felt by both.
Burl stood up and spoke politely to the dog. He addressed him with the
same respect he would have given to another man. In all his life he had
never felt equal to an insect, but he felt no arrogance toward this dog.
He felt superior only to other men.
[Illustration]
"We are going back to our cave," he said politely. "Maybe we will meet
again."
He led his tribe back to the cave in which they had spent the previous
night. The dogs followed, ranging on either side. They were well-fed,
with no memory of hostility to any creature which smelled like men. They
had instinct and intelligence. The latter part of the return to the
cave--if anybody had been qualified to notice--was remarkably like a
group of dogs taking a walk with a group of people. It was
companionable. It felt remarkably right.
That night Burl left the cave, as before, to look at the stars. This
time Saya went with him, gladly. But as they emerged from the
cave-entrance there was a stirring. A dog rose and stretched itself
elaborately, yawning the while. When Burl and Saya walked aside from the
cave, the dog trotted amiably with them.
They talked to it, embarrassed. And the dog seemed pleased. It wagged
its tail.
When morning came the dogs were still waiting hopefully for the humans
to come out. They appeared to expect the humans to take another nice
long walk, on which they would accompany them. It was a brand-new
satisfaction they did not wish to miss. After all, from a dog's
standpoint, humans were made to take long walks with, among other
things. The dogs greeted the humans with tail-waggings and cordiality.
* * * * *
The friendship of the dogs assured the humans' new status in life. They
had ceased to be fugitive game for any insect murderer. They had hoped
to be unpursued foragers. But, joined to the dogs, they were raised to
the estate of hunters. The men did not domesticate the dogs. They made
friends with them. The dogs did not subjugate themselves to the men.
They joined them, at first tentatively and then with worshipful
enthusiasm. And the partnership was so inherently right that within a
month it was as if it had been always. And indeed, except for a few
centuries, for them, it had.
The humans had made a permanent encampment by then. There were a few
caves at an appropriate distance from the slope up which most wanderers
from the lowlands came. The humans moved into the caves. A child found
the chrysalis of a giant butterfly, whose caterpillar form had so
offensive an odor that the dogs had not attacked it. But when it
emerged from the chrysalis, humans and dogs together assailed it before
it could take flight. They ended with warm approval of each other. The
humans had great wings with which to make cloaks. And men wore cloaks
now--shorter than the women's--but cloaks. They were very useful against
the evening chill. When one dawning a vast outcry of dogs awoke the
humans, Burl led the rush to the spot, and his great lance did execution
which the dogs appeared to admire. Burl wore a moth's feathery antennae,
now, bound to his forehead like a knight's plumes. They were very
splendid.
In a single month their entire way of life went through a revolution.
The ground was often thorny. A man pierced his foot, and bandaged it
with a strip of wing-fabric so he could walk. The injured foot was more
comfortable to walk with than the well one. Within a week women were
busily contriving divers forms of footgear, to achieve the greatest
comfort. One day Saya admired glistening red berries and tried to pluck
them, and they stained her fingers. She licked the fingers--and berries
were added to the tribe's menu. A veritable orgy of experimentation
began. And this was a state of affairs which is very, very rare among
human beings. A tribe with an established culture and tradition cannot
change without disaster. But men who have abandoned their old ways and
are seeking new ones can go far.
Already the dogs were established as sentries and watchmen and friends
to every one of the humans. By now mothers did not feel alarmed if a
child wandered out of sight. There would be dogs along. No danger could
approach a child without vociferous warning from the dogs. Men went
hunting, now, with zestful tail-wagging dogs as companions in the chase.
By the time a stray monster from the lowlands reached this area, it was
dazed and half-numbed by at least one night of bitter cold. Even spiders
could not find energy to leap. They fought like fiends, but sluggishly.
Men could kill them while dogs kept their attention. Burl killed one
the third week on the plateau. He was nerved to the deed by a peculiar
feeling that he must be worthy of the courage of the dogs with him at
the time.
And presently, while their way of life was still fluid, the permanent
pattern of civilization on the nightmare planet was settled. Burl and
Saya went out early one morning with the dogs, to hunt for meat for the
village. Hunting was easiest in the morning while creatures strayed up
the night before were still numbed. Often, hunting was merely butchery
of an enfeebled monster to whom any sort of movement was enormous
effort.
This morning the humans moved briskly. The dogs roamed exuberantly
through the brush before them. They were five miles from the village
when the dogs bayed game some distance ahead. And Burl and Saya ran to
the spot hand in hand--which was something of a change from their former
actions at the thought of a giant creature of the insect kind--and found
the dogs dancing and barking around one of the most ferocious and most
ghastly of the carnivorous beetles. It was not too large, to be sure.
Its body might have been four feet long, but its horrid mandibles added
three feet more.
Those scythe-like objects gaped wide--opening sidewise as a beetle's
jaws do--and snapped hideously, swinging about as the dogs dashed at
them. The legs were spurred and spiked and armed with dagger-like
spines. Burl plunged into the fight.
[Illustration: "_Those scythe-like objects gaped wide ... as the dogs
dashed at them._"]
The great gaping mandibles clicked and clashed. They were capable of
disemboweling a man or snapping a dog's body in half without effort.
There were whistling noises as the beetle breathed through its abdominal
spiracles. It fought furiously, making frantic plunges at the dogs who
dashed in and out to torment and bewilder it while they created the most
zestfully excited of uproars.
There was something beside this conflict that Burl and Saya should have
noticed, but they were instantly intent. The other thing was quite
unparalleled. There had been nothing else like it on this planet in many
hundreds of years. It moved slowly above the plateau as if examining it.
It was half a dozen miles away and perhaps a mile higher when Burl and
Saya prepared to intervene professionally on behalf of the dogs. Then it
swerved and moved directly toward them. It moved swiftly.
But it was silent, and they did not know at all. Burl leaped in with a
lance-thrust at the tough integument where an armored leg joined the
body. He missed, and the monster whirled. Then Saya flashed her cloak
before the beetle, so that it seemed a larger and nearer antagonist. As
the creature whirled again, Burl thrust once more and a hind-leg
crumpled.
Instantly the thing limped crazily. A beetle does not use its legs like
four-legged creatures. It moves the two end legs on one side with the
center leg on the other, so that always it is braced on an adjustable
tripod. But it cannot adjust readily to crippling.
A dog snatched at a spiny lower leg and crunched and darted away. The
expressionless, machine-like horror uttered a formless, deep-bass cry
and was spurred to all possible ferocity. The fight became a thing of
furious movement and uproar, with Burl striking once at a multiple eye
so the pain would deflect it from a charge on Saya, and Saya again
deflecting it with her cloak and once breathlessly trying to strike it
with her shorter spear.
Then the beetle sank to the ground, all three legs on one side crippled.
The remaining three thrust and thrust and struggled terribly and
suddenly it was on its back, still striking its gigantic jaws
frantically in the hope of murder. But Burl stabbed home between two
armor-plates where a ganglion was almost exposed. A thrust killed it
instantly.
Burl and Saya smiled at each other. There was a monstrous sound of
splintering trees. They whirled. The dogs pricked up their ears. One of
them barked defiantly.
* * * * *
Something huge--truly huge!--settled to the ground a bare hundred yards
away. It was metal, and there were ports, and it was utterly beyond
experience, because, of course, there had been no spaceship landings on
this planet in forty-odd human generations. But as Burl and Saya stared
blankly at it, a port opened, and men came out, and they waved hopefully
to the two barbarically attired figures who had been seen fighting a
monster with the help of dogs. Which meant some sort of civilization.
The dogs confirmed it. They sniffed. These, also, were men. And Burl and
his tribe had this smell, and were friends. So the dogs trotted forward
with the self-confident cordiality of dogs on excellent terms with
men--and there was no question of friendship. None at all. The men came
forward joyously to talk to Burl and Saya.
There were difficulties, of course. But Burl and Saya had the calm
composure of savages, and the alertness of people who are changing the
pattern of their lives of their own volition--and finding it very
pleasant--and things went swimmingly. There was, on the spaceship, an
"educator." They invited Burl to put it on his head. He obliged. And
very shortly he understood a new language, and was equipped with a very
considerable fund of general information. Among the items of information
was the fact that presently he would have a splitting headache--he
did--and that the making of records for an educator was so different
that it required generations to get all the facts and knowledge for a
single type of education down in permanent form.
All of which fitted admirably into the arrangements that the men on the
spaceship were anxious to make, and Burl was enthusiastically willing to
accede to. He and his folk knew the creatures of the lowlands as nobody
else could possibly know them. No electronic educator could possibly
make a record making available that knowledge in less than two
generations--maybe three. Therefore--
* * * * *
The nightmare world swims in space about its nearby sun. It has a name
now, but it does not matter. It has a city on it, which probably matters
less. It is a curious city, though. The people in it wear gorgeous
colored fur, and cloaks of butterfly wings. The least of the people in
that city wear garments which would fetch fortunes on other inhabited
worlds. In fact, such garments do. But it is most practical for Burl,
and Saya, and their followers to wear such garments. There is no day but
that a small, winged flying craft rises from the city to go silently
over the plateau until it reaches the space above the cloud-bank, and
then dives down into it. It is wise for the occupants and the operators
of such small craft to wear garments like the other humans on this
planet. They are recognized, that way, when garments such as most
planets find suitable would make them seem strange.
They want to be recognized, in the jungles and the noisesome valleys of
the lowlands. There are other humans down there. The people of the city,
of course, bring their fellows out as fast as they can find them. There
is a session with an educator--and a splitting headache afterward--and
very soon the folk who have hidden from monsters all their lives are
zestfully hunting them with dogs. Presently they are hunting them with
flying machines.
It is a nice arrangement. The search for more people in the lowlands is
a prosperous business even when it is unsuccessful. The wings of white
morph butterflies bring the highest price, but even a common
swallow-tail is riches enough. And the fur of caterpillars--duly
processed--goes into the holds of the regular spaceliners with the same
care given elsewhere to jewels and platinum.
But the nightmare planet has not become a merely sordid place of
business. What comforts and what luxuries spaceships can bring are
available enough, to be sure. But the city on the plateau, and the homes
of the barbarically clad inhabitants are not places to which invitations
are coveted for the luxury of them. The planet is a sportman's paradise.
Not long since, the Planet President of _Surmor III_ was a guest in
Burl's dwelling. Burl is all hard muscle, despite his graying hair, and
he and Saya have fitted very beautifully into the sort of civilization
that turned out to be congenial to them. They have grown children now,
and their home is quite fit to entertain a World President in its
richness. But it is small--the size they want it to be.
The atmosphere is oddly informal. There are self-respecting and amiable
dogs nearly everywhere. The World President of _Surmor III_ was inclined
to be stand-offish at first. But he is a sportsman, like Burl. And since
the last hunting trip, he is very respectful. After all, there are few
planet leaders who will, as they do, for pure sporting joy of the hunt,
fight the mastodon-sized tarantula of the lowlands with nothing but a
spear--and win.
But Burl does.