The Forgotten Planet

8 A Flight Continues

Burl kept his people alive until darkness fell. He had assigned watchers for each direction and when flight was necessary the adults helped the children to avoid the red dust. Four times they changed direction after shrill–voiced warnings. When night settled over the plain they were forced to come to a halt.

But the puffballs were designed to burst by day. Stumbled into, they could split at any time, and the humans did hear some few of the tearing noises that denoted a spore–spout in the darkness. But after slow nightly rain began they heard no more.

Burl led his people into the plain of red puffballs as soon as the rain had lasted long enough to wash down the red haze still hanging in the air and turn the fallen spores to mud.

It was an enterprise of such absolute desperation that very likely no civilized man would have tried it. There were no stars, for guidance, nor compasses to show the way. There were no lights to enable them to dodge the deadly things they strove to escape, and there was no possibility of their keeping a straight course in the darkness. They had to trust to luck in perhaps the longest long–shot that humans every accepted as a gamble.

Quaintly, they used the long antennae of a dead flying–beetle as sense–organs for themselves. They entered the red plain in a long single file, Burl leading the way with one of the two feathery whips extended before him. Saya helped him check on what lay in the darkness ahead, but made sure not to leave his side. Others trailed behind, hand in hand.

Progress was slow. The sky was utter blackness, of course, but nowhere in the lowlands is there an absolute black. Where fox–fire doesn't burn without consuming, there are mushrooms with glows of their own. Rusts sometimes shone faintly. Naturally there were no fireflies or glow–worms of any sort; but neither were there any living things to hunt the tiny tribe as it moved half–blindly in single file through the plain of red puffballs. Within half an hour even Burl did not believe he had kept to his original line. An hour later they realized despairingly that they were marching helpless through puffballs which would make the air unbreathable at dawn. But they marched on.

Once they smelled the rank odor of cabbages. They followed the scent and came upon them, glowing palely with parasitic moulds on their leaves. And there were living things here: huge caterpillars eating and eating, even in the dark, against the time of metamorphosis. Burl could have cried out infuriatedly at them because they were—so he assumed—immune to the death of the red dust. But the red dust was all about, and the smell of cabbages was not the smell of life.

It could have been, of course. Caterpillars breathe like all insects at every stage of their development. But furry caterpillars breathe through openings which are covered over with matted fur. Here, that matted fur acted to filter the air. The eggs of the caterpillars had been laid before the puffballs were ready to burst. The time of spore–bearing would be over before the grubs were butterflies or moths. These creatures were safe against all enemies—even men. But men groped and blundered in the darkness simply because they did not think to take the fur garments they wore and hold them to their noses to serve as gas–masks or air–filters. The time for that would come, but not yet.

With the docility of despair, Burl's tribe followed him through all the night. When the sky began to pale in the east, they numbly resigned themselves to death. But still they followed.

And in the very early gray light—when only the very ripest of the red puffballs spouted toward a still–dark sky—Burl looked harassedly about him and could have groaned. He was in a little circular clearing, the deadly red things all about him. There was not yet light enough for colors to appear. There was merely a vast stillness everywhere, and a mocking hint of the hot and peppery scent of death–dust—now turned to mud—all about him.

Burl dropped in bitter discouragement. Soon the misty dust–clouds would begin to move about; the reddish haze would form above all this space….

Then, quite suddenly, he lifted his head and whooped. He had heard the sound of running water.

His followers looked at him with dawning hope. Without a word to them, Burl began to run. They followed hastily and quickened their pace when his voice came back in a shout of triumph. In a moment they had emerged from the tangle of fungus growths to stand upon the banks of a wide river—the same river whose gleam Burl had seen the day before, from the farther side of the red puffball plain.

Once before, Burl had floated down a river upon a mushroom raft. That journey had been involuntary. He had been carried far from his tribe and Saya, his heart filled with desolation. But now he viewed the swiftly–running current with delight.

He cast his eyes up and down the bank. Here and there it rose in a low bluff and thick shelf–fungi stretched out above the water. They were adaptations of the fungi that once had grown on trees and now fed upon the incredibly nourishing earth–banks formed of dead growing things. Burl was busy in an instant, stabbing the relatively hard growths with his spear and striving to wrench them free. The tribesmen stared blankly, but at a snapped order they imitated him.

Soon two dozen masses of firm, light fungus lay upon the shore. Burl began to explain what they were for, but Dor remonstrated. They were afraid to part from him. If they might embark on the same fungus–raft, it would be a different matter. Old Tama scolded him shrilly at the thought of separation. Jon trembled at the mere idea.

Burl cast an apprehensive glance at the sky. Day was rapidly approaching. Soon the red puffballs would burst and shoot their dust–clouds into the air. This was no time to make stipulations. Then Saya spoke softly.

Burl made the suggested great sacrifice. He took the gorgeous velvet cloak of moth–wing from his shoulder and tore it into a dozen long, irregular pieces along the lines of the sinews reinforcing it. He planted his spear upright in the largest raft, fastening the other cranky craft to it with the improvised lines.

In a matter of minutes the small flotilla of rafts bobbed in the stream. One by one, Burl settled the folk upon them with stern commands about movement. Then he shoved them out from the bank. The collection of uneasy, floating things moved slowly out from shore to where the current caught them. Burl and Saya sat on the same section of fungus, the other trustful but frightened tribes–people clustered timorously about.

As they began to move between the mushroom–lined banks of the river, and as the mist of nighttime lifted from its surface, columns of red dust spurted sullenly upward on the plain. In the light of dawn the deadly red haze was forming once more over the puffball plain.

By that time, however, the unstable rafts were speeding down the river, bobbing and whirling in the stream, with wide–eyed people as their passengers gazing in wonderment at the shores.

Five miles downstream, the red growths became less numerous and other forms of fungus took their places. Moulds and rusts covered the ground as grass did on more favored planets. Toadstools showed their creamy, rounded heads, and there were malformed things with swollen trunks and branches mocking the trees that were never seen in these lowlands. Once the tribesmen saw the grisly bulk of a hunting–spider outlined on the river–bank.

All through the long day they rode the current, while the insect life that had been absent in the neighborhood of the death–plain became abundant again. Bees once more droned overhead, and wasps and dragonflies. Four–inch mosquitoes appeared, to be driven off with blows. Glittering beetles made droning or booming noises as they flew. Flies of every imaginable metallic hue flew about. Huge butterflies danced above the steaming land and running river in seeming ecstasy at simply being alive.

All the thousand–and–one forms of insect life flew and crawled and swam and dived where the people of the rafts could see them. Water–beetles came lazily to the surface to snap at other insects on the surface. The shell–covered boats of caddis–flies floated in the eddies and backwaters.

The day wore on and the shores flowed by. The tribesmen ate of their food and drank of the river. When afternoon came the banks fell away and the current slackened. The shores became indefinite. The river merged itself into a vast swamp from which came a continual muttering.

The water seemed to grow dark when black mud took the place of the clay that had formed its bed. Then there appeared floating green things which did not move with the flowing water. They were the leaves of the water–lilies that managed to survive along with cabbages and a very few other plants in the midst of a fungus world. Twelve feet across, any one of the green leaves might have supported the whole of Burl's tribe.

They became so numerous that only a relatively narrow, uncovered stream flowed between tens of acres of the flat, floating leaves. Here and there colossal waxen blossoms could be seen. Three men could hide in those enormous flowers. They exhaled an almost overpowering fragrance into the air.

And presently the muttering sound that had been heard far away grew in volume to an intermittent deep–bass roar. It seemed to come from the banks on either side. It was the discordant croaking of frogs, eight feet in length, which lived and throve in this swamp. Presently the tribesfolk saw them: green giants sitting immobile upon the banks, only opening their huge mouths to croak.

Here in the swamps there was such luxuriance of insect life that a normal tribal hunting–ground—in which tribesmen were not yet accustomed to hunt—would seem like a desert by comparison. Myriads of little midges, no more than three or four inches across their wings, danced above the water. Butterflies flew low, seemingly enamoured of their reflections in the glassy water.

The people watched as if their eyes would become engorged by the strange new things they saw. Where the river split and split and divided again, there was nothing with which they were familiar. Mushrooms did not grow here. Moulds, yes. But there were cattails, with stalks like trees, towering thirty feet above the waterways.

After a long, long time though, the streams began to rejoin each other. Then low hills loomed through the thicker haze that filled the air here. The river flowed toward and through them. And here a wall of high mountains rose toward the sky, but their height could not be guessed. They vanished in the mist even before the cloud–bank swallowed them.

The river flowed through a river–gate, a water–gap in the mountains. While day still held fully bright, the bobbing rafts went whirling through a narrow pass with sheer walls that rose beyond all seeing in the mist. Here there was even some white water. Above it, spanning a chasm five hundred feet across, a banded spider had flung its web. The rafts floated close enough to see the spider, a monster even of its kind, its belly swollen to a diameter of yards. It hung motionless in the center of the snare as the humans swept beneath it.

Then the mountains drew back and the tribe was in a valley where, look as they might, there was no single tawny–red puffball from whose spreading range the tribesmen were refugees. The rafts grounded and they waded ashore while still the day held. And there was food here in plenty.

But darkness fell before they could explore. As a matter of precaution Burl and his folk found a hiding–place in a mushroom–thicket and hid until morning. The night–sounds were wholly familiar to them. The noise of katydids was louder than usual—the feminine sound of that name gives no hint of the sonorous, deep–toned notes the enlarged creatures uttered—and that implied more vegetation as compared with straight fungoid flora. A great many fireflies glowed in the darkness shrouding the hiding–place, indicating that the huge snails they fed on were plentiful. The snails would make very suitable prey for the tribesmen also. But men were not yet established in their own minds as predators.

They were, though, definitely no longer the furtive vermin they had been. They knew there were such things as weapons. They had killed ants for food and a pirate–wasp as an exercise in courage. To some degree they were acquiring Burl's own qualities. But they were still behind him—and he still had some way to go.

The next day they explored their new territory with a boldness which would have been unthinkable a few weeks before. The new haven was a valley, spreading out to a second swamp at its lower end. They could not know it, but beyond the swamp lay the sea. Exploring, because of strictly practical purposes and not for the sake of knowledge, they found a great trap–door in the earth, sure sign of the lair of a spider. Burl considered that before many days the monster would have to be dealt with. But he did not yet know how it could be done.

His people were rapidly becoming a tribe of men, but they still needed Burl to think for them. What he could not think out, so far, could not be done. But a part of the proof that they needed Burl to think for them lay in the fact that they did not realize it. They gathered facts about their environment. The nearest ant–city was miles away. That meant that they would encounter its scouting foragers rather than working–parties. The ant–city would be a source of small prey—a notion that would have been inconceivable a little while ago. There were numerous giant cabbages in the valley and that meant there were big, defenseless slugs to spear whenever necessary.

They saw praying–mantises—the adults were eighteen feet tall and as big as giraffes, but much less desirable neighbors—and knew that they would have to be avoided. But there were edible mushrooms on every hand. If one avoided spiders and praying–mantises and the meat–eating beetles; if one were safely hidden at night against the amorous male spiders who took time off from courtship to devour anything living that came their way; and if one lived at high–tension alertness, interpreting every sound as possible danger and every unknown thing as certain peril—then one could live quite comfortably in this valley.

For three days the tribesmen felt that they had found a sort of paradise. Jon had his belly full to bursting all day long. Tet and Dik became skilled ant–hunters. Dor found a better spear and practiced thoughtfully with it.

There were no red puffballs here. There was food. Burl's folk could imagine no greater happiness. Even old Tama scolded only rarely. They surely could not conceive of any place where a man might walk calmly about with no danger at all of being devoured. This was paradise!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He found a caterpillar wrapped in its thick cocoon and, because he was not foraging and not particularly hungry, he inspected it with care. With great difficulty he even broke the strand of silk that formed it, unreeling several feet in curiosity. Had he meditated, Burl would have seen that this was cord which could be used to build snares as spiders did. It could also be used to make defenses in which—if built strongly and well—even hunting–spiders might be tangled and dispatched.

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

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

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

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

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

It was a discovery that was immediately and urgently useful.

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

As the monster moved out of sight Burl, abandoning any other project he might have intended, headed for the place his tribe had more or less settled in. He had news which offered the satisfaction of making him much–needed again, but he would have traded that pleasure ten hundred times over for the simple absence of that one creature from this valley. That female tarantula meant simply and specifically that the tribe must flee or die. This place was not paradise!

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

Bumping and bouncing behind its abdomen as it moved, fastened to its body by dirtied silken ropes, this creature dragged a burden which was its own ferocity many times multiplied. It was dragging an egg–bag larger than its body—which was feet in diameter. The female spider would carry this ghastly burden—cherishing it—until the eggs hatched. And then there would be four to five hundred small devils loose in the valley. From the instant of their hatching they would be as deadly as their parent. Though the offspring would be small—with legs spanning no more than a foot—their bodies would be the size of a man's fist and able to leap two yards. Their tiny fangs would be no less envenomed than their mother's. In stark, maniacal hatred of all other life they would at least equal the huge gray horror which had begot them.

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

There were days of bright light and murder, and nights of slow rain and death in the valley. The great creatures under the cloud–bank committed atrocities upon each other and blandly dined upon their victims. Unthinkingly solicitous parents paralyzed creatures to be left living and helpless for their young to feed on. There were enormities of cruelty done in the matter–of–fact fashion of the insect world. To these things the humans were indifferent. They were uneasy, but like other humans everywhere they would not believe the worst until the worst arrived.

Two weeks after their coming to the valley, the worst was there. When that day came the first gray light of dawn found the humans in a shivering, terrified group in a completely suicidal position. They were out in the open—not hidden but in plain view. They dared not hide any more. The furry gray monster's brood had hatched. The valley seemed to swarm with small gray demons which killed and killed, even when they could not devour. When they encountered each other they fought in slavering fury and the victors in such duels dined upon their brethren. But always they hunted for more things to kill. They were literally maniacs—and they were too small and too quick to fight with spears or clubs.

So now, at daybreak, the humans looked about despairingly for death to come to them. They had spent the night in the open lest they be trapped in the very thickets that had formerly been their protection. They were in clear sight of the large gray murderer, if it should pass that way. And they did not dare hide because of that ogreish creature's brood.

The monster appeared. A young girl saw it and cried out chokingly. It had not seen them. They watched it leap upon and murder a vividly–colored caterpillar near the limit of vision in the morning–mist. It was in the tribe's part of the valley. Its young swarmed everywhere. The valley could have been a paradise, but it was doomed to become a charnel–house.

And then Burl shook himself. He had been angry when he left his tribe. He had been more angry when he returned and they would not obey him. He had remained with them, petulantly silent, displaying the offended dignity he felt and elaborately refusing to acknowledge any overtures, even from Saya. Burl had acted rather childishly. But his tribesmen were like children. It was the best way for him to act.

They shivered, too hopeless even to run away while the shaggy monster feasted a half–mile away. There were six men and seven women besides himself, and the rest were children, from gangling adolescents to one babe in arms. They whimpered a little. Then Saya looked imploringly at Burl—coquetry forgotten now. The other whimpered more loudly. They had reached that stage of despair, now, when they could draw the monster to them by blubbering in terror.

This was the psychological moment. Burl said dourly:

"Come!"

He took Saya's hand and started away. There was but one direction in which any human being could think to move in this valley, at this moment. It was the direction away from the grisly mother of horrors. It happened to be the way up the valley wall. Burl started up that slope. Saya went with him.

Before they had gone ten yards Dor spoke to his wife. They followed Burl, with their three children. Five yards more, and Jak agitatedly began to bustle his family into movement. Old Jon, wheezing, frantically scuttled after Burl, and Cori competently set out with the youngest of her children in her arms and the others marching before her. Within seconds more, all the tribe was in motion.

Burl moved on, aware of his following, but ignoring it. The procession continued in his wake simply because it had begun to do so. Dik, his adolescent brashness beaten down by terror, nevertheless regarded Burl's stained weapon with the inevitable envy of the half–grown for achievement. He saw something half–buried in the soil and—after a fearful glance behind—he moved aside to tug at it. It was part of the armor of a former rhinoceros beetle. Tet joined him. They made an act of great daring of lingering to find themselves weapons as near as possible to Burl's.

A quarter–mile on, the fugitives passed a struggling milkweed plant, no more than twenty feet high and already scabrous with scale and rusts upon its lower parts. Ants marched up and down its stalk in a steady single file, placing aphids from their nearby ant–city on suitable spots to feed,—and to multiply as only parthenogenic aphids can do. But already, on the far side of the milkweed, an ant–lion climbed up to do murder among them. The ant–lion, of course, was the larval form of a lace–wing fly. The aphids were its predestined prey.

Burl continued to march, holding Saya's hand. The reek of formic acid came to his nostrils. He ignored it. Ants were as much prey to his tribesmen, now, as crabs and crayfish to other, shore–dwelling tribesmen on long–forgotten Earth. But Burl was not concerned with food, now. He stalked on toward the mountain–slopes.

Dik and Tet brandished their new weapons. They looked fearfully behind them. The monster from whom they fled was lost in its gruesome feasting,—and they were a long way from it, now. There was a steady, single–file procession of ants, with occasional gaps in the line. The procession passed the line through one of those gaps.

Beyond it, Tet and Dik conferred. They dared each other. They went scrambling back to the line of ants. Their weapons smote. The slaughtered ants died instantly and were quickly dragged from the formic–acid–scented path. The remaining ants went placidly on their way. The weapons struck again.

The two adolescents had to outdo each other. But they had as much food as they could carry. Gloating—each claiming to have been most daring and to have the largest bag of game—they ran panting after the tribe. They grandly distributed their take of game. It was a form of boasting. But the tribesfolk accepted the gifts automatically. It was, after all, food.

The two gangling boys, jabbering at each other, raced back once more. Again they returned with dangling masses of foodstuff,—half–scores of foot–long creatures whose limbs, at least, contained firm meat.

Behind, the ant–lion made his onslaught into the stupidly feasting aphids, and warrior–ants took alarm and thrust forward to offer battle. Tumult arose upon the milkweed.

But Burl led his followers toward the mountainside. He reached a minor eminence and looked about him. Caution was the price of existence on this world.

Two hundred feet away, a small scurrying horror raged and searched among the rough–edged layers of what on other worlds was called paper–mould or rock–tripe. Here it was thick as quilting, and infinitesimal creatures denned under it. The sixteen–inch spider devoured them, making gluttonous sounds. But it was busy, and all spiders are relatively short–sighted.

Burl turned to Saya, and realized that all his tribe had followed him fearfully even to this small height he'd climbed only to look around from. Dor had taken advantage of Burl's pause. There was an empty cricket–shell partly overwhelmed by the fungoid soil. He tore free a now–hollow, sickle–shaped jaw. It was curved and sharp and deadly if properly wielded. Dor had seen Burl kill things. He had even helped. Now, very grimly, he tried to imagine killing something all alone. Jak saw him working on the sickle–shaped weapon. He tugged at the cricket's ransacked carcass for another weapon. Dik and Tet vaingloriously pretended to fight between themselves with their recently acquired instruments for killing. Jon wheezed and panted. Old Tama complained to herself in whispers, not daring to make sounds in the daylight. The rest waited until Burl should lead them further.

When Burl turned angry eyes upon them—he was beginning to do such things deliberately, now—they all regarded him humbly. Now they remembered that they had been hungry and he had gotten food for them, and they had been paralyzed by terror, and he dared to move. They definitely had a feeling of dependence upon him, for the present moment only. Later, their feeling of humbleness would diminish. In proportion as he met their needs for leadership, they would tend to try to become independent of him. His leadership would be successful in proportion as he taught them to lead themselves. But Burl perceived this only dimly. At the moment it was pleasing to have all his tribe regard him so worshipfully, even if not in quite the same fashion as Saya. He was suddenly aware that now—at any rate while they were so frightened—they would obey him. So he invented an order for them to obey.

"I carry sharp things," he said sternly. "Some of you have gotten sharp things. Now everybody must carry sharp things, to fight with."

Humbly, they scattered to obey. Saya would have gone with them, but Burl held her back. He did not quite know why. It could have been that the absolute equality of the sexes in cravenness was due to end, and for his own vanity Burl would undertake the defense of Saya. He did not analyze so far. He did not want her to leave him, so he prevented it.

The tribesfolk scattered. Dor went with his wife, to help her arm herself. Jak uneasily followed his. Jon went timorously where the picked–over remnant of the cricket's carcass might still yield an instrument of defense. Cori laid her youngest child at Burl's feet while she went fearfully to find some toothed instrument meeting Burl's specification of sharpness.

There was a stifled scream. A ten–year–old boy—he was Dik's younger brother—stood paralyzed. He stared in an agony of horror at something that had stepped from behind a misshapen fungoid object fifty yards from Burl, but less than ten yards from him.

It was a pallidly greenish creature with a small head and enormous eyes. It stood upright, like a man,—and it was a few inches taller than a man. Its abdomen swelled gracefully into a leaflike form. The boy faced it, paralyzed by horror, and it stood stock–still. Its great, hideously spined arms were spread out in a pose of hypocritical benediction.

It was a partly–grown praying mantis, not too long hatched. It stood rigid, waiting benignly for the boy to come closer or try to flee. If he had fled, it would fling itself after him with a ferocity beside which the fury of a tiger would be kittenish. If he approached, its fanged arms would flash down, pierce his body, and hold him terribly fast by the needle–sharp hooks that were so much worse than trap–claws. And of course it would not wait for him to die before it began its meal.

All the small party of humans stood frozen. It may be questioned whether they were filled with horror for the boy, or cast into a deeper abyss of despair by the sight of a half–grown mantis. Only Burl, so far, had any notion of actually leaving the valley. To the rest, the discovery of one partly mature praying mantis meant that there would be hundreds of others. It would be impossible to evade the tiny, slavering demons which were the brood of the great spider. It would be impossibility multiplied to live where a horde of small—yet vastly larger—fiends lived, raising their arms in a semblance of blessing before they did murder.

Only Burl was capable of thought, and this was because vanity filled him. He had commanded and had been obeyed. Now obedience was forgotten because there was this young mantis. If the men had dreamed of fighting it, it could have destroyed any number of them by sheer ferocity and its arsenal of knives and daggers. But Burl was at once furious and experienced. He had encountered such a middle–sized monster, when alone, and deliberately had experimented with it. In consequence he could dare to rage. He ran toward the mantis. He swung the small corpse of an ant—killed by Tet only minutes since—and hurled it past the terror–fascinated boy. He had hurled it at the mantis.

It struck. And insects simply do not think. Something hurtled at the ghastly young creature. Its arms struck ferociously to defend itself. The ant was heavy. Poised upright in its spectral attitude, the mantis was literally flung backward. But it rolled over, fighting the dead ant with that frenzy which is not so much ferocity as mania.

The small boy fled, hysterically, once the insect's attention was diverted.

The human tribe gathered around Burl many hundreds of yards away,—again uphill. He was their rendezvous because of the example set by Cori. She had left her baby with Burl. When Burl dashed from the spot, Saya had quite automatically followed the instinct of any female for the young of its kind. She'd snatched up the baby before she fled. And—of course—she'd joined Burl when the immediate danger was over.

The floor of the valley seemed a trifle indistinct, from here. The mist that hung always in the air partly veiled the details of its horrors. It was less actual, not quite as deadly as it once had seemed.

Burl said fiercely to his followers:

"Where are the sharp things?"

The tribesfolk looked at one another, numbly. Then Jon muttered rebelliously, and old Tama raised her voice in shrill complaint. Burl had led them to this! There had been only the red dust in the place from which they had come, but here was a hunting–spider and its young and also a new hatching of mantises! They could dodge the red dust, but how could they escape the deaths that waited them here? Ai! Ai! Burl had persuaded them to leave their home and brought them here to die….

Burl glared about him. It was neither courage nor resolution, but he had come to realize that to be admired by one's fellows was a splendid sensation. The more one was admired, the better. He was enraged that anyone dared to despair instead of thinking admiringly about his remarkableness.

"I," said Burl haughtily, "am not going to stay here. I go to a place where there are neither spiders nor mantises. Come!"

He held out his hand to Saya. She gave the child to Cori and confidently moved to follow him. Burl stalked grandly away and she went with him. He went uphill. Naturally! There were spiders and mantises in the valley,—so many that to stay there meant death. So he moved to go somewhere else.

And this was the climactic event that changed the whole history of humanity upon the forgotten planet. Up to this point, there may have been other individuals who had accomplished somewhat of Burl's kind of leadership. A few may have learned courage. It is possible that some even led their tribesfolk upon migrations in search of safer lands to live in. But until Burl led his people out of a valley filled with food, up a mountainside toward the unknown, it was simply impossible for humans to rise permanently above the status of hunted vermin; at the mercy of monstrous mindless creatures; whose forbears had most ironically been brought to this planet to prepare it for humans to live on.

Burl was the first man to lead his fellows toward the heights.