The Caterpillars Question

Chapter 2

Later, he wondered why he had entered the immense boulder. If he had stopped to consider the outré dangers that might await them, he would have yanked Tappy from the boulder.

His will and his reason at that moment seemed to have stepped outside for a chat, leaving his body without guidance. He felt numb, though something thrilled beneath the crystalline surface of his frozen brain. Still not believing that he would find the rock anything but impenetrable or that he could ignore its petrous imperative, he stepped forward. He did not know what to expect when his hand, holding Tappy's, went into the rock.

He found a soft resistance which forced him to lean against it, and then he was in darkness. He was unable to breathe; his nostrils were covered with a semi-liquid stuff. Silicon had become silicone.

Her hand pulled on his, and, holding his breath and hoping that he would not have to do it for long, he went two more steps. Air flowed around him. Light touched his shut eyelids. He opened them and breathed deeply.

He looked around. For a moment, he felt like a preliterate confronted with his first photograph. He could make no sense or order out of what he saw. It was all just a snarl of lines with no meaning. Tappy was the only thing not unchaotic. She was standing facing the sun, her blue-gray eyes open, her head tilted back as if bathing in the light. She looked happy.

Then the landscape seemed to shift and to fall into an arrangement which was, if not familiar, at least Terrestrial enough to be reassuring. The boulder from which they had emerged was about six feet higher than the one they had gone into. The other side had been pinkish-gray granite. This looked like black basalt. It was near a shallow creek about two hundred feet broad at this point, and it was in a valley extending for half a mile on both sides.

The sky was blue and unclouded. A gentle cool breeze flowed around him. He judged that the sun was about a quarter of the way above the true horizon. But he seemed to be in a valley in the floor of a crater. Immense walls circled the valley. He did not, of course, know how far away they were.

Certainly, he was not on Earth. Though some of the low-growing plants nearby looked like Terrestrial bushes, the tree on his right was, he was sure, not a thing that grew anywhere on his native planet. Its pea-green bark was as smooth as skin, and it exuded a greasy and slightly reddish thick liquid. The ground at the base of the tree and among high, arched, exposed roots was wet with the liquid. Its branches started about halfway up the fifty- or sixty-foot height but began a leftward twist not far from the trunk and spiraled up around the trunk. The leaves were dark green disks covered with pale red spider's-web designs.

About a dozen flying animals were roosting on the branches or were on top of nests made of dried mud. Some were tiny, the size of yellow finches; some, as large as ravens. Their batlike wings were covered with brightly colored fur. Their faces were batlike, foxlike, and monkeylike. Their cries were as varied and as melodious as those of birds.

Tappy, still smiling, startled him by muttering in what sounded like a foreign language, then made gestures which he interpreted as a request for him to describe their surroundings.

He told her in detail everything he could see. She turned, her hand still in his, and tugged him toward the east, if it was the east, along the creek bank. He walked beside her, giving her directions when they came to a rock she might fall over or to a sudden dip or rise. Meanwhile, his empty belly asked for food, and he wondered how they were going to eat and how, if they had to spend the night in this country, they would survive if the air got cold and if there were any dangerous animals or snakes in this place.

A horn blared nearby. Startled, he and Tappy halted. She moved her head from side to side as if she were listening. He looked around. From a distance, ahead of them, came another sound. It was almost exactly like the chuffing of a steam locomotive, the sound of which he knew from watching movies. Whatever originated it, it had to be a long way off. Then the horn blared again, nearer this time.

Though it sounded much like that of an automobile, Jack did not think that there was any such nearby. This terrain and the lack of roads indicated that cars would be a rarity indeed. Though, of course, he really did not know what to expect here. Surely, the sound had to be originated by an animal. However, he was wrong unless the honker was a two-legged animal that had arms, hands, legs, and feet remarkably like a human's.

Around a huge boulder eighty feet ahead of them near the creek strode a humanoid figure. The face was not that of Homo sapiens; it looked more like the helmet of a medieval knight than anything else. The eyes were dark slits in the brown skin. Below them a large, noseless, and sharply downward-angling bulge formed the upper jaw. The froglike mouth had very thin dark lips. The lower jaw, chinless, sloped abruptly below the lower lips toward the neck. In all, the face below the high forehead formed in profile an isosceles triangle.

Its dark skin glistened with grease. Its penis was about eight inches long and two inches thick, but it lacked testicles.

Its mouth open, issuing the blaring sound, it marched straight toward Tappy and Jack, its pace not the least broken when it saw them. Its right hand held a stone-tipped spear and on its back was an animal-skin pack. Behind it, around the boulder, came a parade of similar beings. Two males were first, carrying bows in their hands and quivers full of arrows on their backs. Then came six obvious females (though they lacked breasts) and seven children. Behind them were four adult males and two half-grown males, all armed with spears.

Except for the honking leader, all were silent.

Tappy, far from looking alarmed or questioning, seemed to be at ease. She was even smiling.

Presently, the parade passed them, and, after a while, the honker and the honking were gone.

Jack did not ask her any questions about the creatures. He knew that she would not answer. He went to the creek, bent down, and scooped up water in his cupped hands. After he had drunk enough, he told Tappy to drink. The water seemed to be pure, another indication that he was not on Earth.

"That's great stuff," Jack said, "but my belly's kicking up a storm. I wonder what's good to eat around here?"

They resumed walking and came to a bush laden with large cherrylike fruit on which a family of tiny opossumlike animals were feeding. These ran when the two approached them. Jack did not know if the fruit was fatal to humans, but he would, at this moment, anyway, rather die of poisoning than starvation.

He picked and bit into a "cherry" and tasted something like a butterscotch liqueur. He spat out the four small pits and said, "If you'll wait awhile, Tappy, we'll see if this kills me."

She shook her head and groped along a branch, tore five of the fruit loose from their thick stems, and popped them into her mouth. They ate all the rest and then drank more creek water. Jack went behind a bush for a bowel movement, though Tappy could not see him, of course. Not having toilet paper bothered him, but the amenities of civilization— or was it conveniences?— were not to be found here. Not so far, anyway.

Tappy went behind the same boulder to relieve herself after Jack had told her where not to step. He kept expecting to feel a sudden sharp or burning pain in his guts. As time went on without any discomfort, he forgot about his apprehensions.

He knew now that they had arrived in the morning of this planet and were going northward. The sun had risen higher, not descended. Also, the numbness he had felt after going through the rock had dissolved. Though he still was uneasy, he could think clearly. What that led to was a strong desire to be back on Earth. Especially when, just as Tappy began climbing up the rocky but bush-grown slope toward the top of the valley, he saw a group of tawny lion-sized animals come out of the forest across from the creek. When one of them roared, it exposed large sharp teeth.

To live, big predators had to prey on big herbivores, but Jack had not seen any of the latter. He hoped that the large meat-eaters were on their way to a place where large grass-eaters abounded. He also hoped that these predators would not consider him and Tappy as food. He breathed easier when the group, after drinking from the creek, walked back into the forest.

Tappy had not halted when the beast roared. She was feeling her way up the slope, grabbing a bush when the footing was insecure and pulling herself on up. He followed her. By the time they reached the top, his hands were bleeding from sharp rocks and thorns, a knee of his trousers was torn, and he was sweating and thirsty again. He forgot about that, when, panting, he looked around and up. The floor of the crater angled downward from the bases of the walls, enabling him to see much of the area. Most of it seemed to be covered with green and scarlet plants, the branches of which surely extended over the many streams that must run down from the walls. There had to be a lot of rainfall to keep all this vegetation alive.

Now he could see more clearly what had seemed to be just splotches on the crater walls when he had been in the valley. The entire circle of crater wall was covered with gigantic figures and symbols.

The walls had to be at least thirty miles away. Perhaps fifty. He had been in Arizona once and knew how deceiving distances could be in very clear air. That meant that the figures might be a thousand feet tall. He could not estimate accurately since he did not know how far away they were.

The symbols scattered among the figures were of many bright colors, and none was like any he had ever seen before. Some of the figures were of machines or vessels. Most were of bipeds, some of whom looked human enough. They were doing all sorts of things and were in various postures. Some of the paintings looked like spaceships, but he could not be sure.

"Damn it, Tappy! Wait for me!"

She was heading toward the woods. He caught up with her and said, "We have to stay together so I can see the dangers. Remember, I'm the one who isn't blind!"

Tappy made a gesture with her right hand which he interpreted as apologetic. If he had hurt her by reminding her of her blindness, he could not see it on her face. She looked eager to get going. To where? Did she know? Or was she being drawn by some undefined but powerful feeling like the instinct of a lemming? That was, he told himself, not a reassuring analogy. Lemmings were pulled toward destruction. However, it might be the right comparison after all.

He was thinking too much, too concerned about what they might be walking into. If he allowed himself to be sucked into the maelstrom of his thoughts and apprehensions, he would not be able to go on. He would just sit down and refuse to go a step farther. He would die. Either he would starve or a predator would get him.

That was enough incentive to make him drive onward, though another was the crater panorama. He was a painter, and his curiosity about the gigantic figures burned in him. That must be the biggest mural in the world. Who could have done it? How? Why?

They entered the shade of interlocking branches, the lowest of which radiated from the trunks about ten feet above them. Through the infrequent spaces among the leaves, sunlight speared. This illuminated the ground-mat of purple plants, one inch high, growing closely together, which seemed to spread everywhere. His feet crushed the plants, and a thin liquid exuding from them spread a faint peppermint odor. Most of the trees had a deeply corrugated, pale orange bark. The heart-shaped green leaves, covered with purple rosettes, were about six inches long. The branches were populated by a variety of small furry creatures, winged and wingless. They were as noisy as birds, and some of the fliers were as beautiful and varied in their markings as Terrestrial birds.

There were, here and there, bushes and plenty of dead wood fallen from the trees. But the walking was almost as easy as if they had been in a well-kept park.

After an hour's walk, Jack said, "Let's rest. I don't know where you're going, Tappy, I hope you do, but whatever is there isn't going to go away."

That might not be true. Maybe it was going to go away, and, somehow, Tappy knew it.

He brought out a few of the butterscotch "cherries" from his jacket pocket and handed them to her. From another pocket, he took a half dozen he had saved for himself.

"We have to find something solid to eat, protein and carbohydrates. Or we'll start having diarrhea."

Soon after resuming their journey, they came across a broad and shallow stream. While hand-cupping its water to drink, Jack saw some foot-long salamanderoids in pursuit of tiny fishlike creatures. He stuck a hand in the water and waited, still as a fishing bear, until a salamander came close. He grasped the thing and lifted it, though its wrigglings and greasy skin made it hard to hold, and hurled it against a tree trunk. He ran after it just in time to seize it again as it crawled painfully back to the creek. He knocked its head against the trunk once more. It still tried to creep away, but he took his jackknife from his jacket pocket, opened it, and cut the thing's head off. Its blood was red.

After catching another, Jack took off its head and gutted both of them. He collected dead wood, made shavings from it, and used his cigarette lighter to start a fire. Then he skewered a salamander on a pointed stick and held it over the fire. Though the flesh was undercooked inside and burned on the outside, it was more than satisfactory.

"Tastes like greasy frog legs," Jack said as he started cooking the second animal.

After washing their hands and faces in the creek, they started to go on. Jack, however, called a halt so that they could check their possessions. Some of them might be useful.

Tappy had nothing except the nightgown, socks, and shoes she wore. That she had not automatically taken her handbag along showed how urgent her desire had been to get to the gate-rock. He had his wristwatch, and his pants and jacket pockets held a comb, a handkerchief, the jackknife, the cigarette lighter (he had quit smoking but still carried it), car keys, a leather holder with four pencils and a pen, a small notebook with unlined pages, and his wallet. This contained four hundred dollars, mostly large bills, credit cards, a driver's license, and photographs of his parents, sister, and of some of his better paintings.

There were also three quarters, two dimes, a nickel, and five pennies.

Except for the knife and the lighter, the items seemed to be useless. But he decided not to discard them. They pushed on and did not stop until the half-twilight of the forest began darkening toward night. He told Tappy to wait while he climbed a particularly tall tree. Fortunately, there was a big boulder under it from which he could leap upward and grab the lowest limb. While he was climbing, flying mammals fled before him. He went by several nests with young in them, but did not touch them. The parents flew chittering at him, swooping around his head. He also had to brush off hundreds of long-legged insects which, however, did not bite him.

When he had gotten up as far as he could go, he looked westward. Though the sun had dropped below the crater wall, the sky was still bright, and a pale light lay over the upward-sloping land. He gasped, and he clung to the bending treetop to keep from falling.

The Brobdingnagian figures on the wall were moving.

He watched while they and the symbols around them marched along the wall as if in a slow-motion film. He stayed there for at least thirty minutes, shouting down now and then to reassure Tappy that he was all right. Finally, the figures and the symbols stopped moving. He did not know how far they had gone in their travel, perhaps a few miles. He wondered if they moved during every twilight and would eventually complete a circuit.

As he started down cautiously, he saw a pale round object with a dark crescent on its northeastern part slide up from above the eastern wall. He waited until it revealed itself as a moon slightly smaller than Earth's Luna. He was just about to tell Tappy about it when something huge and dark shot across the silvery face. It seemed to be circular and to be topped by a structure of some sort through which the moon gleamed here and there. Then the object was gone, though he had the impression that it had flown into the crater. If it could be seen from here, it must be enormous. And it must have a staggering power to be able to keep its bulk aloft.

When he got down, he waited until he had recovered his wind before he told her what he had seen. Surprisingly, Tappy nodded as if she understood what the titanic vessel was.

He said, "Well? Explain," but she did not, of course, answer.

"I know you can't help it, Tappy, or you appear not to be able to speak, though sometimes I wonder. But you really frustrate me."

She put out her hand as if to tell him that she was sorry or, perhaps, to get comfort from him. He took it and stroked the back of her hand, then pulled her to him and held her close for I a little while.

"We'll get through this somehow."

He hoped that he sounded convincing.

The dying light sifting down through the leafy canopy was presently replaced by a pale gloom shed by the moon. By now, the cries of the small animals, ever-present through the day, had died with the light. They were succeeded by a booming from far off, its direction undetectable, and, now and then, a roaring. He shivered from more than the cooling air.

He and Tappy had to find some relatively safe place to sleep, and that could only be up in a tree. He explained this to her before he climbed into several nearby trees. Finally, he gave up.

"There's just no way we could sleep up there without falling off the minute we went to sleep."

They passed a chilly and fretful night, often awakening suddenly, and most of the time dozing. For warmth and courage, they held each other in their arms, but their arms became numb. And, every time one moved, the other was startled out of sleep. During the night, Jack wished several times that Tappy was a big and fat girl. That thought gave him the only smiles of the night.

The booming faded away. Though the roaring filtered through the woods now and then, it did not come nearer. That was not so comforting, though. It seemed to Jack that a predator would quit roaring as soon as it smelled a prey and would then approach it very quietly.

Once, he heard a new sound, a hooting. It quit after a while, but he stayed awake for a long time after that. He thought of the silence of the forest during the day. It was not really silent; the noises were just different from those of the city and much less loud, but he could become used to them. There were no radios blaring rock or country-western that could be heard two blocks away from the cars, or ghetto blasters of youths who would tell you very sincerely that they were very concerned about people's rights and the need for protection from invasion of privacy. There were no vehicle horns blaring; no sirens wailing. No thunderous jets overhead. No flickering icons or voices and music from the TV sets.

At that moment, Jack wished to hell that he could be back among the ear-scratching screeches and unmelodious clashings.

When the darkness began paling, he and Tappy got up. They were tired and cross, though they tried not to show it. After squatting behind the bushes, they pushed on until the sun came up above the crater wall. Jack caught two salamanders, made a fire, and cooked them. These, with more berries and fruit, filled their stomachs. They took their clothes off, Tappy removed her leg brace, too, and they rolled, gasping and crying out, in the cold creek water.

Just as Jack stood up to go ashore, he saw the leading edge of a wave of red liquid coming from upstream. By the time he got Tappy out of the creek, the water was bright red from bank to bank. It looked like blood, but he could not imagine that any one animal could bleed that much. Was there a large-scale butchery going on up there? If so, what was being slaughtered and who were the killers?

After a few minutes, however, the water cleared.

Jack considered going east for a while to avoid whatever had reddened the creek. When he decided he would, he told Tappy they should make a detour. She shook her head and walked north. He shrugged, and he followed her. Maybe she knew what she was doing.

They did not come across the carcasses or corpses that Jack expected, except that of a rabbit-sized mammal lying half in the creek. Insects rose from it in a cloud as the two passed its stinking body. Though it was bipedal and looked mammalian, it had a long beak resembling a woodpecker's. Later, they heard a hammering and saw, back in the forest, a similar animal knocking its beak against a tree trunk. So, the animal was, in a sense, a woodpecker.

When the sun was straight above their heads, as seen through a break in the leafy ceiling, Tappy halted. She turned slowly, her nostrils twitching as if she were trying to catch some odor. Then she turned east. They walked for perhaps a mile before coming to another creek. Or, for all Jack knew, the same creek. After drinking again, they walked to the other bank, the water up to their knees in the middle, and they went up the bank, steeper on this side.

She stopped again, turning her head from side to side, her right hand extended and going back and forth across a vertical plane as if she were feeling an invisible wall. After a minute of this, she turned north, stopping only when Jack called out to her that she was heading for an immense and conical, anthill-like structure. When he followed Tappy around it, he was confronted by a big hole on the opposite side.

Within it sat cross-legged one of the creatures with a face like a knight's helmet. He was holding a large piece of cooked meat which he stuck at intervals into his mouth. His lower jaw did not move, but very sharp and tiny yellow teeth moved inside the mouth. They seemed to be in several rows, one behind the other, and to be moved by some biological mechanism inside the "visor," as Jack thought of it.

Jack looked around for some evidence of the fire that had cooked the meat, but he could see nothing.

A stone axe was by the honker, and so was a pile of different kinds of fruits and vegetables. There was also a liquid-filled gourd by the heap of steaks.

The honker did not seem to be startled or alarmed at the sudden appearance of the two humans. Its dark eyes, which were at least a quarter inch inside the bony face, looked steadfastly at them.

Jack described the honker to Tappy, though he had the feeling that she had known that he was in the structure. Jack was the one startled when she gave vent to a series of soft honkings. The creature did not respond until its teeth had ceased moving and the meat had been swallowed. Then it responded just as softly. Jack could see now that something white projected from the tip of its tongue, something as slim and as sharp as a thorn.

Tappy looked disappointed.

"What in hell is going on?" Jack said. "You can talk to this thing?'

Tappy shrugged. Then she felt along him, dipped her hand in his pants pockets, and drew out a coin, a quarter. She turned to the honker and held the quarter out to him while she honked more dots and dashes. By then, Jack had figured out that the creature spoke in a sort of Morse code.

The honker extended its hand. Without directions from Jack, Tappy walked up to the honker. He took the quarter from her, looked closely at both sides of it, rubbed it between his thumb and finger, then said something. Tappy held out both hands, which the honker filled with two large steaks and a pile of pancake-shaped and -sized green and purple vegetables. She honked something, the honker replied, and she turned and held out the barter to Jack. He stuffed the meat in one of his jacket pockets, the vegetables in the other.

The honker stuck its tongue far out, enabling Jack to see more clearly the white thorny projection at its end. Tappy stuck her tongue out, turned, and walked away.

Following her, Jack said, "Damn it, Tappy! If you can speak their lingo, why can't you speak English to me?"

She did not reply. Angered and bewildered, he walked closely behind her. He had to break his surly silence to warn her of a house-sized boulder ahead of her. As if she already knew that it was there, she walked up to it and began feeling its rough reddish side. Shaking her head, she went around it and walked on northward.

An hour before dusk, they stopped. He made another fire and recooked the meat, which was too rare for him. Its blood and grease had coated the inside of his jacket pocket and drawn a bloom of pesky flying midges that he had to keep brushing off. These also bit savagely, making him even more angry. After they had eaten, however— the pancake-sized vegetables were raw but delicious, tasting like a mixture of cheese and asparagus— he began reproaching himself. He should not have bad feelings toward her. He could have refused to go into that gateway-boulder with her, and she must be under some kind of obsession or compulsion or both. Under a "spell," so to speak.

He continued on the same path of thought while climbing trees to search for a place to bed down. When he found one, he kept only half his mind on the task of finding dead branches on the ground and getting them up into the tree and placing them with their ends across two limbs. The auxiliary branches and the knobs and sharp points were removed, smoothed off with his jackknife. His knife was getting duller, he noted. The time would come when it would be useless, and the lighter would be empty. That thought made him feel panicky. However, perhaps he could trade more coins with a honker for a flint knife or an axe.

Shortly after the moon had risen, they were lying on their platform of hard branches. These were far from comfortable, and they could get warmth and softness only in each other and the little protection their clothes gave. Tappy was in his arms, his jacket spread over their upper parts. She hummed a tune he had never heard before, then fell asleep. The leg brace, which she had taken off, lay between her legs. Though he was very tired, he could not sink as swiftly as she into merciful unconsciousness.

He could not stop trying to make sense of what had happened, to find a pattern in the events that would give them an order and a goal.

Just how were Tappy's relatives— the two who had reluctantly given her a home— involved? Had they really been so eager to get rid of her? Was that eagerness an act? Could they have known somehow that Tappy was far more than she appeared to be? Mr. Melvin E. Daw and his wife, Michaela, upper-middle-class people, affluent, had seemed pleasant enough, though they had not been able to hide their dislike of Tappy. Their instructions on how he was to take Tappy to the clinic had been specific. But they had certainly not volunteered any information to answer his unspoken questions. They had given him a map of the route he was to take to New Hampshire and had stressed that he should not deviate from it. Why? There were other roads he could have taken.

Could they possibly have directed him to that road by which was the rural motel he and Tappy had stayed in? Could they have estimated his traveling time so that he would take lodging there overnight? There were, as far as he knew, no other motels in that area.

How could the Daws have known that he and Tappy would go up that hill and find that boulder?

Reviewing the conversation with the Daws and their gestures and expressions, he thought that what had seemed innocent enough then was now sinister. That interpretation, however, could be shaped by his suspicions, which had been shaped by the bizarre events occurring after they had stopped at the motel.

And how could a blind thirteen-year-old know, consciously or unconsciously, that the gateway-boulder was there? How could she even know about gates to other worlds?

Something— when and how he could not guess— had been implanted in her. It was driving her toward a goal that she could not explain or would not explain because something was keeping her from doing so.

"Empire of the stars."

A science-fiction cliche, essence of corn.

"Reality is a dream."

First said by some ancient Chinese philosopher.

"Larva... Chrysalis... Imago."

Entomological. But he did not think that these words applied to insects.

"Alien menace... only chance is to use the radiator."

That radiator certainly was not part of an automobile.

"Alien menace..."

He shivered. He had been conditioned by too many movies with horrible and evil monsters from outer space.

But that did not mean that such things did not exist.

He was in a situation which needed a superhero to deal with it, and he was far from being a Flash Gordon or Luke Skywalker. He was not even a good imitation. He had never shot a gun and knew nothing of fencing or the martial arts beyond what he had seen in films.

He awoke from a nightmare. He had been in his studio, a studio that had never existed in reality but one he had imagined he would have some day. Bright sunlight fell through the enormous skylight like the shower of gold that had impregnated Danae, bathing a nude Tappy in the center of the room. Not the Tappy he knew, but an older and fully developed young woman. He was before his easel and had the portrait almost done. All he needed were a few more strokes of the brush to get her face just right, to give it a hint of the ethereal. No, of the unearthly.

The light darkened. Looking up, he saw that black clouds had slid under the sun, though the sky had been, a moment ago, without a trace of the nebulous. Then the clouds lowered green-gray tendrils-tentacles— and somehow they came through skylight glass and began misting the room. He could see Tappy only vaguely now.

The horror did not begin at once. It was hidden behind the swirling fingers of the cloud as they reached out for him. They touched him at the same time that he saw that Tappy's skin had become greasy. The glistening fatty exudation dripped from her as if she were a burning candle and pooled around her feet.

The shiny and greasy stuff began to rise before her. Very quickly, Tappy became gaunt, and then she was skin wrapped around bones. Now she was walking toward him, her arms held out. The figure forming from the grease had been left behind, but it was sliding along behind her on the trail. He could see through Tappy's skin and bones despite the weak light, and he could see that the figure was a rapidly swelling replica of her.

He wanted to scream but could not. His throat was plugged with semi-liquid fat rising from deep within himself.

Tappy's hand almost touched him. The figure behind her reached around her, slid her arm along Tappy's outstretched arm, and shot her hand toward his mouth.

He came out of the nightmare to find himself groaning.

Though the moon did not relieve the darkness much, he could see Tappy's eyes staring at him. But she could not see him at all, of course. Or could she?

She muttered something. He said, "It's all right. Go back to sleep."

She closed her eyes and began snoring softly.

Larva... Chrysalis... Imago, he thought.

Was she going to change from what she was now into something as different as a larva was from an imago? Or did those words apply to someone else?

Then one of those sudden and unexplainable shifts of mind happened, and he began worrying that he might have made her pregnant. After a while, he dismissed the worry with a rueful grin. They were in a situation so serious that the chance that she might have a baby was a slight problem. As of now, anyway. Nine months from now, it might be very grave. If they lived that long.

He fell asleep again, and he was making love to Mullins Blanchflower, if what he was doing could be called making love. He awoke at the tail end of a wet dream, wondering why his unconscious would choose Mullins for his dream partner. She was a rather plain and chubby girl he had known in high school, though not in the biblical sense. He had never consciously wished to make her. But copulation with undesirable girls had happened occasionally in his night fantasies. The unconscious was a tricky and unpredictable bastard.

He thought: Now I'll have to wash out my shorts. And I thought I was too tired, hungry, and miserable even to contemplate screwing. If I'd known how things were going to be, I'd have tried it with Tappy. But then she'd have been too tired, hungry, and wretched or would have thought she was. Anyway, for God's sake, I was just worrying about her maybe being pregnant. Of course, there are other ways to get off. But she might not be ready for those.

What a jerk I am!

He was lying on his side, and something— it must be Tappy's leg— was next to his chest and stomach. He opened his eyes and saw her profile, though dimly. He also saw something dark astride her legs and leaning far forward. Her body was bare to just above her breasts. The nightgown had been pulled up above them.

He tried to shout and at the same time to rise and grab the thing sitting on Tappy. He could only tremble; his throat and tongue seemed numb; his body had no more muscles than a log. He hurled his will at his body, screaming at it to move. But he was as lax as if he had been bitten by a poisonous snake.

Now he was able to see the figure on her a little better than when he had awakened. Though it was not raping Tappy, as he had first thought, he did not lose any of his sickening fright. It was bending far over her, its face against her breasts or between them. Then it sat upright, pulled its legs up, and got to its feet. Jack rolled his eyes sidewise to keep its head in sight. He could make out, dimly, the knight's-helmet face of a honker, and its male organ. It-he-bent over to look down at Jack. His tongue moved far out and then back in. Faint as the light was, it showed the white thorny tip at the end of the honker's tongue.

The honker patted Jack on the forehead as if it were reassuring or comforting him. It turned away, still bending over, and placed something between Tappy's breasts. Then it climbed slowly down from the platform and faded into the blackness.

Jack, sweating despite the chill, wondered if he was to stay paralyzed until he starved to death or, more likely, was eaten alive by beasts or insects. Then he felt ashamed, because he had considered his own plight before thinking of Tappy's.

He did not know how much time had passed when he began to be able to move his fingers and toes. After a little while, he could turn his head. Some time later, he could utter some slurred words and lift his arms and legs. Meanwhile, Tappy was also making sounds and moving her head and limbs. Presently, both he and she sat up. Something fell from her chest and between her legs onto the platform. She lifted it up and put it close to her eyes, though why she would do that when she was blind Jack did not know. She handed it to him. As soon as he had it in his hand, he knew that it was the quarter he had given the honker in exchange for the food.

He did not have time to think about the implications of its return. Thinking would have done no good, anyway. Tappy, weeping, was in his arms. Jack stroked her bare back and told her that everything was okay. She shook her head, rubbing her face against his chest. Then she pulled away, took his right hand, and placed it between her breasts.

He said, "My God!"

A hard swelling the size of a marble was under her skin. It felt very warm.

She touched the side of her neck and put the tip of her finger on the side of his neck. The pressure made him aware that where she had touched was very tender. He felt sicker. The honker must have stuck the thorny tip on its tongue into their necks and injected a temporarily paralyzing poison.

When dawn came, they climbed down and washed their hands and faces to refresh themselves. Jack decided that he would wash out his shorts and bathe when the air became much warmer. He told Tappy to lift her nightgown so that he could examine the swelling between her breasts. It had grown no bigger, and the skin over it did not seem as warm. As far as he could determine, there was no break in the skin. However, when full sunlight came, he looked closely at it and saw a very small reddish dot in the center.

The honker had stuck the thorny excrescence— maybe it was an organ— into her chest. The thorn must be both a poison injector and an ovipositor, though he did not know if an egg had been shot through the thorn's hollow shaft into her. Whatever it was that had been planted just under the skin, it had grown very fast.

Or was there some other explanation?

"For God's sake, Tappy," he said, "If you have any idea of what's going on, you must tell me if you can! Talk! Please talk!"

Tappy, looking distressed, shook her head. Her index finger felt the round lump.

He mastered the impulse to grab her by the throat and force words out of her. That would not do it, he knew, or thought he knew, but he felt that he had to do something to get answers to his questions. If he did not soon get at least a little explanation of what had been happening, he would go crazy, amok, completely out of his mind.

At that moment, a deep thrumming came from above. He seized her hand and pulled her along until he came to one of the narrow breaks in the forest ceiling. Above him, far up, was something enormous. It was descending slowly, and the sound it was making becoming ever louder.

"It's got to be that ship I saw outlined by the moon," he muttered.

Though the size of the vessel was awesome and its mission was unknown and, thus, possibly dangerous for him and Tappy, he almost felt relief. Whatever happened, he might be able to get some answers. Though it was probable that he would not like them.

He told Tappy to stay where she was while he climbed a tree. She looked frightened but nodded. When he got to the top of the tree, he could see the bottom of a truly titanic ring. It had to be at least a mile in diameter and two hundred feet thick. The purplish-gray sides went up for an indeterminate distance, and from its upper edge curved many gigantic metal beams of the same color as the circular base. The curving beams or ribs met at the center to form an open cap or cage. Here and there boxlike structures clung to the circle at the bottom and along the sides of the ribs. There were no rocket exhausts, no obvious means of propulsion.

As the vessel dropped closer, the thrumming became a roar that was so loud he thought he would scream. Standing on a branch, with one arm wrapped around the thin trunk top, he put his fingertips into his ears. That did not help much.

The circular structure was now about two hundred feet above but a quarter of a mile away. At that moment, the coins, his wrist-watch, his jackknife, everything metallic in his pockets, became hot. He tried to get rid of them before they burned him, but he was slowed down because he had to cling to the trunk with one hand. His fingers were scorched before he had thrown the hot objects down through the branches. He climbed down to find that Tappy had removed her leg brace. They clung tightly to each other while the bellowing around them became so loud that it seemed solid.

Suddenly, there was silence. He looked up through the break and saw, far up, some of the curving ribs. The weight of the machine must have crushed trees beneath it, and its lower edge must have sunk deep into the ground. He released Tappy, and she sat down, pale and shaking.

An animal resembling a furless anteater ran past them. Jack could not fully hear its whining and its claws slapping the ground, but at least his hearing was beginning to return.

Tappy groped around until she found her leg brace. She touched it gingerly, then picked it up. It had cooled off by now.

Jack, not knowing what else to do, wanting to do something, began looking for the items he had discarded. But he stopped. Tappy was holding the brace up with one hand and feeling along its inner side. That had been covered with a soft thick fabric to prevent skin-chafing, hut it had been partially melted away. At one end of the inner side was a long and narrow opening. It had been hidden by a panel that had, for some reason, slid into a recess in the brace.

He said, "Hold it, Tappy! Wait!"

He took the brace from her and examined the opening. There were six tiny orange-colored buttons inside, two rows of three, with a somewhat larger scarlet button at the head of the rows.

"What the hell!"

He seemed to have been saying that a lot lately.

Only a baby's fingers could have pushed one button without pushing another next to it. He said, "We got something here, Tappy. Just what I don't know."

He took one of the pencils from the leather holder in his jacket pocket. Holding the pencil in his right hand, he gripped the brace in the middle, and he pointed one end at a nearby tree but away from his body. He made sure that the other end did not point at Tappy.

"Maybe I shouldn't," he said. "Do I know what I'm doing? No. But I'll do it, anyway."

Using the eraser end of the pencil, he pressed on the larger, scarlet button. Nothing happened. Had he really thought that it would?

He paused to tell Tappy what he was doing. She looked surprised but not as much as he had expected.

He said, "It can't be a weapon, Tappy. It'd be too awkward to use as such, unless..."

Perhaps it was a weapon, but the designer had been forced to camouflage it as a leg brace and, hence, could not avoid cumbersomeness in its handling.

He placed the pencil end on one of the orange buttons nearest to the scarlet button.

The tree the brace was aimed at split soundlessly, though the crash of the upper part on the ground certainly was noisy enough.

The tree had been neatly sheared off.

Shouts filtered through the forest, human voices. The blaring of honkers also came through. He paid them no attention.

Where the upper part of the tree had been, extending from the stump, was a shadowy but clearly visible replica of the part that had fallen off. It was the ghost of the sheared-off part.