night long, the warm pellets of liquid came from the sky. They boomed
upon the hollow heads of the toadstools, and splashed into the steaming
pools that lay festering all over the fungus-covered earth.
And all the night long the great fires grew and spread in the mass of
already half-carbonized mushroom. The flare at the horizon grew brighter
and nearer. Burl, naked and hiding beneath a huge mushroom, watched it
grow near him with wide eyes, wondering what this thing was. He had
never seen a flame before.
The overhanging clouds were brightened by the flames. Over a stretch at
least a dozen miles in length and from half a mile to three miles
across, seething furnaces sent columns of dense smoke up to the roof of
clouds, luminous from the glow below them, and spreading out and forming
an intermediate layer below the cloudbanks.
It was like the glow of all the many lights of a vast city thrown
against the sky--but the last great city had moulded into fungus-covered
rubbish thirty thousand years before. Like the flitting of airplanes
above a populous city, too, was the flitting of fascinated creatures
above the glow.
* * * * *
Moths and great flying beetles, gigantic gnats and midges grown huge
with the passing of time, they fluttered and danced the dance of death
above the flames. As the fire grew nearer to Burl, he could see them.
Colossal, delicately formed creatures swooped above the strange blaze.
Moths with their riotously colored wings of thirty-foot spread beat the
air with mighty strokes, and their huge eyes glowed like carbuncles as
they stared with the frenzied gaze of intoxicated devotees into the
glowing flames below them.
Burl saw a great peacock moth soaring above the burning mushroom hills.
Its wings were all of forty feet across, and fluttered like gigantic
sails as the moth gazed down at the flaming furnace below. The separate
flames had united, now, and a single sheet of white-hot burning stuff
spread across the country for miles, sending up its clouds of smoke, in
which and through which the fascinated creatures flew.
Feathery antennae of the finest lace spread out before the head of the
peacock moth, and its body was softest, richest velvet. A ring of
snow-white down marked where its head began, and the red glow from below
smote on the maroon of its body with a strange effect.
For one instant it was outlined clearly. Its eyes glowed more redly than
any ruby's fire, and the great, delicate wings were poised in flight.
Burl caught the flash of the flames upon two great iridescent spots upon
the wide-spread wings. Shining purple and vivid red, the glow of opal
and the sheen of pearl, all the glory of chalcedony and chrysoprase
formed a single wonder in the red glare of burning fungus. White smoke
compassed the great moth all about, dimming the radiance of its gorgeous
dress.
Burl saw it dart straight into the thickest and brightest of the licking
flames, flying madly, eagerly, into the searing, hellish heat as a
willing, drunken sacrifice to the god of fire.
Monster flying beetles with their horny wing-cases stiffly stretched,
blundered above the reeking, smoking pyre. In the red light from before
them they shone like burnished metal, and their clumsy bodies with the
spurred and fierce-toothed limbs darted like so many grotesque meteors
through the luminous haze of ascending smoke.
Burl saw strange collisions and still stranger meetings. Male and female
flying creatures circled and spun in the glare, dancing their dance of
love and death in the wild radiance from the funeral pyre of the purple
hills. They mounted higher than Burl could see, drunk with the ecstasy
of living, then descended to plunge headlong to death in the roaring
fires beneath them.
From every side the creatures came. Moths of brightest yellow with soft
and furry bodies palpitant with life flew madly into the column of light
that reached to the overhanging clouds, then moths of deepest black with
gruesome symbols upon their wings came swiftly to dance, like motes in a
bath of sunlight, above the glow.
And Burl sat crouched beneath an overshadowing toadstool and watched.
The perpetual, slow, sodden raindrops fell. A continual faint hissing
penetrated the sound of the fire--the raindrops being turned to steam.
The air was alive with flying things. From far away, Burl heard a
strange, deep bass muttering. He did not know the cause, but there was a
vast swamp, of the existence of which he was ignorant, some ten or
fifteen miles away, and the chorus of insect-eating giant frogs reached
his ears even at that distance.
The night wore on, while the flying creatures above the fire danced and
died, their numbers ever recruited by fresh arrivals. Burl sat tensely
still, his wide eyes watching everything, his mind groping for an
explanation of what he saw. At last the sky grew dimly gray, then
brighter, and day came on. The flames of the burning hills grew faint as
the fire died down, and after a long time Burl crept from his hiding
place and stood erect.
A hundred yards from where he was, a straight wall of smoke rose from
the still smouldering fungus, and Burl could see it stretching for miles
in either direction. He turned to continue on his way, and saw the
remains of one of the tragedies of the night.
A huge moth had flown into the flames, been horribly scorched, and
floundered out again. Had it been able to fly, it would have returned to
its devouring deity, but now it lay immovable upon the ground, its
antennae seared hopelessly, one beautiful, delicate wing burned in
gaping holes, its eyes dimmed by flame and its exquisitely tapering
limbs broken and crushed by the force with which it had struck the
ground. It lay helpless upon the earth, only the stumps of its antennae
moving restlessly, and its abdomen pulsating slowly as it drew
pain-racked breaths.
Burl drew near and picked up a stone. He moved on presently, a velvet
cloak cast over his shoulders, gleaming with all the colors of the
rainbow. A gorgeous mass of soft, blue moth fur was about his middle,
and he had bound upon his forehead two yard-long, golden fragments of
the moth's magnificent antennae. He strode on, slowly, clad as no man
had been clad in all the ages.
After a little he secured a spear and took up his journey to Saya,
looking like a prince of Ind upon a bridal journey--though no mere
prince ever wore such raiment in days of greatest glory.
* * * * *
For many long miles Burl threaded his way through a single forest of
thin-stalked toadstools. They towered three-man-heights high, and all
about their bases were streaks and splashes of the rusts and moulds that
preyed upon them. Twice Burl came to open glades wherein open, bubbling
pools of green slime festered in corruption, and once he hid himself
fearfully as a monster scarabeus beetle lumbered within three yards of
him, moving heavily onward with a clanking of limbs as of some mighty
machine.
Burl saw the mighty armour and the inward-curving jaws of the creature,
and envied him his weapons. The time was not yet come, however, when
Burl would smile at the great insect and hunt him for the juicy flesh
contained in those armoured limbs.
Burl was still a savage, still ignorant, still timid. His principal
advance had been that whereas he had fled without reasoning, he now
paused to see if he need flee. In his hands he bore a long,
sharp-pointed chitinous spear. It had been the weapon of a huge, unnamed
flying insect scorched to death in the burning of the purple hills,
which had floundered out of the flames to die. Burl had worked for an
hour before being able to detach the weapon he coveted. It was as long
and longer than Burl himself.
He was a strange sight, moving slowly and cautiously through the
shadowed lanes of the mushroom forest. A cloak of delicate velvet in
which all the colors of the rainbow played in iridescent beauty hung
from his shoulders. A mass of soft and beautiful moth fur was about his
middle, and in the strip of sinew about his waist the fiercely toothed
limb of a fighting beetle was thrust carelessly. He had bound to his
forehead twin stalks of a great moth's feathery golden antennae.
Against the play of color that came from his borrowed plumage his pink
skin showed in odd contrast. He looked like some proud knight walking
slowly through the gardens of a goblin's castle. But he was still a
fearful creature, no more than the monstrous creatures about him save in
the possession of latent intelligence. He was weak--and therein lay his
greatest promise. A hundred thousand years before him his ancestors had
been forced by lack of claws and fangs to develop brains.
Burl was sunk as low as they had been, but he had to combat more
horrifying enemies, more inexorable threatenings, and many times more
crafty assailants. His ancestors had invented knives and spears and
flying missiles. The creatures about Burl had knives and spears a
thousand times more deadly than the weapons that had made his ancestors
masters of the woods and forests.
Burl was in comparison vastly more weak than his forebears had been, and
it was that weakness that in times to come would lead him and those who
followed him to heights his ancestors had never known. But now--
He heard a discordant, deep bass bellow, coming from a spot not twenty
yards away. In a flash of panic he darted behind a clump of mushrooms
and hid himself, panting in sheer terror. He waited for an instant in
frozen fear, motionless and tense. His wide, blue eyes were glassy.
The bellow came again, but this time with a querulous note. Burl heard a
crashing and plunging as of some creature caught in a snare. A mushroom
fell with a brittle snapping, and the spongy thud as it fell to the
ground was followed by a tremendous commotion. Something was fighting
desperately against something else, but Burl did not know what creature
or creatures might be in combat.
He waited for a long time, and the noise gradually died away. Presently
Burl's breath came more slowly, and his courage returned. He stole from
his hiding place, and would have made away, but something held him back.
Instead of creeping from the scene, he crept cautiously over toward the
source of the noise.
He peered between two cream-colored toadstool stalks and saw the cause
of the noise. A wide, funnel-shaped snare of silk was spread out before
him, some twenty yards across and as many deep. The individual threads
could be plainly seen, but in the mass it seemed a fabric of sheerest,
finest texture. Held up by the tall mushrooms, it was anchored to the
ground below, and drew away to a tiny point through which a hole gave on
some yet unknown recess. And all the space of the wide snare was hung
with threads, fine, twisted threads no more than half the thickness of
Burl's finger.
This was the trap of a labyrinth spider. Not one of the interlacing
threads was strong enough to hold the feeblest of prey, but the threads
were there by thousands. A great cricket had become entangled in the
maze of sticky lines. Its limbs thrashed out, smashing the snare-lines
at every stroke, but at every stroke meeting and becoming entangled with
a dozen more. It thrashed about mightily, emitting at intervals the
horrible, deep bass cry that the chirping voice of the cricket had
become with its increase in size.
* * * * *
Burl breathed more easily, and watched with a fascinated curiosity. Mere
death--even tragic death--as among insects held no great interest for
him. It was a matter of such common and matter-of-fact occurrence that
he was not greatly stirred. But a spider and his prey was another
matter.
There were few insects that deliberately sought man. Most insects have
their allotted victims, and will touch no others, but spiders have a
terrifying impartiality. One great beetle devouring another was a matter
of indifference to Burl. A spider devouring some luckless insect was but
an example of what might happen to him. He watched alertly, his gaze
traveling from the enmeshed cricket to the strange orifice at the rear
of the funnel-shaped snare.
The opening darkened. Two shining, glistening eyes had been watching
from the rear of the funnel. It drew itself into a tunnel there, in
which the spider had been waiting. Now it swung out lightly and came
toward the cricket. It was a gray spider (_Agelena labyrinthica_), with
twin black ribbons upon its thorax, next the head, and with two stripes
of curiously speckled brown and white upon its abdomen. Burl saw, too,
two curious appendages like a tail.
It came nimbly out of its tunnel-like hiding place and approached the
cricket. The cricket was struggling only feebly now, and the cries it
uttered were but feeble, because of the confining threads that fettered
its limbs. Burl saw the spider throw itself upon the cricket and saw the
final, convulsive shudder of the insect as the spider's fangs pierced
its tough armour. The sting lasted a long time, and finally Burl saw
that the spider was really feeding. All the succulent juices of the now
dead cricket were being sucked from its body by the spider. It had stung
the cricket upon the haunch, and presently it went to the other leg and
drained that, too, by means of its powerful internal suction-pump. When
the second haunch had been sucked dry, the spider pawed the lifeless
creature for a few moments and left it.
Food was plentiful, and the spider could afford to be dainty in its
feeding. The two choicest titbits had been consumed. The remainder could
be discarded.
A sudden thought came to Burl and quite took his breath away. For a
second his knees knocked together in self-induced panic. He watched the
gray spider carefully with growing determination in his eyes. He, Burl,
had killed a hunting-spider upon the red-clay cliff. True, the killing
had been an accident, and had nearly cost him his own life a few minutes
later in the web-spider's snare, but he had killed a spider, and of the
most deadly kind.
Now, a great ambition was growing in Burl's heart. His tribe had always
feared spiders too much to know much of their habits, but they knew one
or two things. The most important was that the snare-spiders never left
their lairs to hunt--never! Burl was about to make a daring application
of that knowledge.
He drew back from the white and shining snare and crept softly to the
rear. The fabric gathered itself into a point and then continued for
some twenty feet as a tunnel, in which the spider waited while dreaming
of its last meal and waiting for the next victim to become entangled in
the labyrinth in front. Burl made his way to a point where the tunnel
was no more than ten feet away, and waited.
Presently, through the interstices of the silk, he saw the gray bulk of
the spider. It had left the exhausted body of the cricket, and returned
to its resting place. It settled itself carefully upon the soft walls
of the tunnel, with its shining eyes fixed upon the tortuous threads of
its trap. Burl's hair was standing straight up upon his head from sheer
fright, but he was the slave of an idea.
He drew near and poised his spear, his new and sharp spear, taken from
the body of an unknown flying creature killed by the burning purple
hills. Burl raised the spear and aimed its sharp and deadly point at the
thick gray bulk he could see dimly through the threads of the tunnel. He
thrust it home with all his strength--and ran away at the top of his
speed, glassy-eyed from terror.
A long time later he ventured near again, his heart in his mouth, ready
to flee at the slightest sound. All was still. Burl had missed the
horrible convulsions of the wounded spider, had not heard the frightful
gnashings of its fangs as it tore at the piercing weapon, had not seen
the silken threads of the tunnel ripped as the spider--hurt to
death--had struggled with insane strength to free itself.
He came back beneath the overshadowing toadstools, stepping quietly and
cautiously, to find a great rent in the silken tunnel, to find the great
gray bulk lifeless and still, half-fallen through the opening the spear
had first made. A little puddle of evil-smelling liquid lay upon the
ground below the body, and from time to time a droplet fell from the
spear into the puddle with a curious splash.
Burl looked at what he had done, saw the dead body of the creature he
had slain, saw the ferocious mandibles, and the keen and deadly fangs.
The dead eyes of the creature still stared at him malignantly, and the
hairy legs were still braced as if further to enlarge the gaping hole
through which it had partly fallen.
Exultation filled Burl's heart. His tribe had been but furtive vermin
for thousands of years, fleeing from the mighty insects, hiding from
them, and if overtaken but waiting helplessly for death, screaming
shrilly in terror.
He, Burl, had turned the tables. He had slain one of the enemies of his
tribe. His breast expanded. Always his tribesmen went quietly and
fearfully, making no sound. But a sudden, exultant yell burst from
Burl's lips--the first hunting cry from the lips of a man in three
hundred centuries!
* * * * *
The next second his pulse nearly stopped in sheer panic at having made
such a noise. He listened fearfully, but there was no sound. He drew
near his prey and carefully withdrew his spear. The viscid liquid made
it slimy and slippery, and he had to wipe it dry against a leathery
toadstool. Then Burl had to conquer his illogical fear again before
daring to touch the creature he had slain.
He moved off presently, with the belly of the spider upon his back and
two of the hairy legs over his shoulders. The other limbs of the monster
hung limp, and trailed upon the ground. Burl was now a still more
curious sight as a gayly colored object with a cloak shining in
iridescent colors, the golden antennae of a great moth rising from his
forehead, and the hideous bulk of a gray spider for a burden.
He moved through the thin-stalked mushroom forest, and, because of the
thing he carried, all creatures fled before him. They did not fear
man--their instinct was slow-moving--but during all the millions of
years that insects have existed, there have existed spiders to prey upon
them. So Burl moved on in solemn state, a brightly clad man bent beneath
the weight of a huge and horrible monster.
He came upon a valley full of torn and blackened mushrooms. There was
not a single yellow top among them. Every one had been infested with
tiny maggots which had liquefied the tough meat of the mushroom and
caused it to drip to the ground below. And all the liquid had gathered
in a golden pool in the center of the small depression. Burl heard a
loud humming and buzzing before he topped the rise that opened the
valley for his inspection. He stopped a moment and looked down.
A golden-red lake, its center reflecting the hazy sky overhead. All
about, blackened mushrooms, seeming to have been charred and burned by a
fierce flame. A slow-flowing golden brooklet trickled slowly over a
rocky ledge, into the larger pool. And all about the edges of the golden
lake, in ranks and rows, by hundreds, thousands, and by millions, were
ranged the green-gold, shining bodies of great flies.
They were small as compared with the other insects. They had increased
in size but a fraction of the amount that the bees, for example, had
increased; but it was due to an imperative necessity of their race.
The flesh-flies laid their eggs by hundreds in decaying carcases. The
others laid their eggs by hundreds in the mushrooms. To feed the maggots
that would hatch, a relatively great quantity of food was needed,
therefore the flies must remain comparatively small, or the body of a
single grasshopper, say, would furnish food for but two or three grubs
instead of the hundreds it must support.
Burl stared down at the golden pool. Bluebottles, greenbottles, and all
the flies of metallic luster were gathered at the Lucullan feast of
corruption. Their buzzing as they darted above the odorous pool of
golden liquid made the sound Burl had heard. Their bodies flashed and
glittered as they darted back and forth, seeking a place to alight and
join in the orgy.
Those which clustered about the banks of the pool were still as if
carved from metal. Their huge, red eyes glowed, and their bodies shone
with an obscene fatness. Flies are the most disgusting of all insects.
Burl watched them a moment, watched the interlacing streams of light as
they buzzed eagerly above the pool, seeking a place at the festive
board.
A drumming roar sounded in the air. A golden speck appeared in the sky,
a slender, needle-like body with transparent, shining wings and two huge
eyes. It grew nearer and became a dragonfly twenty feet and more in
length, its body shimmering, purest gold. It poised itself above the
pool and then darted down. Its jaws snapped viciously and repeatedly,
and at each snapping the glittering body of a fly vanished.
A second dragonfly appeared, its body a vivid purple, and a third. They
swooped and rushed above the golden pool, snapping in mid air, turning
their abrupt, angular turns, creatures of incredible ferocity and
beauty. At the moment they were nothing more or less than
slaughtering-machines. They darted here and there, their many-faceted
eyes burning with blood-lust. In that mass of buzzing flies even the
most voracious appetite must be sated, but the dragonflies kept on.
Beautiful, slender, graceful creatures, they dashed here and there above
the pond like avenging fiends or the mythical dragons for which they had
been named.
* * * * *
Only a few miles farther on Burl came upon a familiar landmark. He knew
it well, but from a safe distance as always. A mass of rock had heaved
itself up from the nearly level plain over which he was traveling, and
formed an outjutting cliff. At one point the rock overhung a sheer drop,
making an inverted ledge--a roof over nothingness--which had been
pre-empted by a hairy creature and made into a fairylike dwelling. A
white hemisphere clung tenaciously to the rock above, and long cables
anchored it firmly.
Burl knew the place as one to be fearfully avoided. A Clotho spider
(_Clotho Durandi, LATR_) had built itself a nest there, from which it
emerged to hunt the unwary. Within that half-globe there was a monster,
resting upon a cushion of softest silk. But if one went too near, one of
the little inverted arches, seemingly firmly closed by a wall of silk,
would open and a creature out of a dream of hell emerge, to run with
fiendish agility toward its prey.
Surely, Burl knew the place. Hung upon the outer walls of the silken
palace were stones and tiny boulders, discarded fragments of former
meals, and the gutted armour from limbs of ancient prey. But what caused
Burl to know the place most surely and most terribly was another
decoration that dangled from the castle of this insect ogre. This was
the shrunken, desiccated figure of a man, all its juices extracted and
the life gone.
The death of that man had saved Burl's life two years before. They had
been together, seeking a new source of edible mushrooms for food. The
Clotho spider was a hunter, not a spinner of snares. It sprang suddenly
from behind a great puff-ball, and the two men froze in terror. Then it
came swiftly forward and deliberately chose its victim. Burl had escaped
when the other man was seized. Now he looked meditatively at the hiding
place of his ancient enemy. Some day--
But now he passed on. He went past the thicket in which the great moths
hid during the day, and past the pool--a turgid thing of slime and
yeast--in which a monster water snake lurked. He penetrated the little
wood of the shining mushrooms that gave out light at night, and the
shadowed place where the truffle-hunting beetles went chirping
thunderously during the dark hours.
And then he saw Saya. He caught a flash of pink skin vanishing behind
the thick stalk of a squat toadstool, and ran forward, calling her name.
She appeared, and saw the figure with the horrible bulk of the spider
upon its back. She cried out in horror, and Burl understood. He let his
burden fall and then went swiftly toward her.