_9. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS SUNSHINE_
The sun that shone upon the forgotten planet was actually very near. Itshone on the top of the cloud-bank, and the clouds glowed with dazzlingwhiteness. It shone on the mountain-peaks where they penetrated themist, and the peaks were warmed, and there was no snow anywhere despitethe height. There were winds, here where the sun yielded sensible heat.The sky was very blue. At the edge of the plateau--from which thecloud-banks were down instead of up--the mountainsides seemed to descendinto a sea of milk. Great undulations in the mist had the semblance ofwaves, which moved with great deliberation toward the shores. Theyseemed sometimes to break in slow-motion against the mountain-wallswhere they were cliff-like, and sometimes they seemed to flow up gentlerinclinations like water flowing up a beach. But all of this was verydeliberate indeed, because the cloud-waves were sometimes twenty milesfrom crest to crest.
The look of things was different on the highlands. This part of theunnamed world, no less than the lowlands, had been seeded with life ontwo separate occasions. Once the seedings was with bacteria and mouldsand lichens to break up the rocks and make soil of them, and once withseeds and insect-eggs and such living things as might sustain themselvesimmediately they were hatched. But here on the highlands the differentclimatic conditions had allowed other seedlings and creatures to survivetogether.
Here moulds and yeasts and rusts were stunted by the sunlight. Grassesand weeds and trees survived, instead. This was an ideal environment forplants that needed sunlight to form chlorophyl, with which to make useof the soil that had been formed. So on the highlands the vegetation wasalmost earthlike. And there was a remarkable side-effect on the faunawhich had been introduced in the same manner and at the same time as thecreatures down below. In coolness which amounted to a temperate climate,there developed no such frenzy of life as made the nightmare junglesunder the clouds. Plants grow at a slower rate than fungi, and lessluxuriantly. There was no vast supply of food for large-sizedplant-eaters. Insects which were to survive, here, could not grow to bemonsters. Moreover, the nights here were chill. Very many insects growtorpid in the cool of a temperate-zone night, but warm up to activitysoon after sunrise. But a large creature, made torpid by cold, will notrevive so quickly. If large enough, it will not become fully activeuntil close to dark. On the plateau, the lowland monsters would starvein any case. But more;--they would have only a fraction of each day offull activity.
So there was a necessary limit to the size of the creatures that livedabove the clouds. To humans from other planets, the life on the plateauwould not have seemed horrifying at all. Save for the absence of birdsto sing, and a lack of small mammals to hunt or merely to enjoy, theuntouched, sunlit plateau with its warm days and briskly chill nightswould have impressed most civilized men as an ideal habitation.
But Burl and his followers were hardly prepared to see it that way atfirst glance. If told about it in advance, they would have thought of itwith despair.
But they did not know beforehand. They toiled upward, their leader movedby such ridiculous motives of pride and vanity as have caused men toachieve greatness throughout all history. Two great continents werediscovered back on Earth by a man trying to get spices to hide the gameyflavor of half-spoiled meat, and the power that drives mile-longspace-craft was first discovered and tamed by men making bombs todestroy their fellows. There were precedents for foolish motivesproducing results far from foolishness.
The trudging, climbing folk crawled up the hillside. They reached aplace high above the valley Burl had led them to. That valley grew mistyin appearance. Presently it could no longer be seen at all. The mistthey had taken for granted, all their lives, hid from them everythingbut the slanting stony wall up which they climbed. The stone was mostlycovered by bluish-green rock-tripe in partly overlapping sheets. Suchstuff is always close behind the bacteria which first attack arock-face. On a slope, it clings while soil is washed downward as fastas it is formed. The people never ate rock-tripe, of course. It producesfrightening cramps. In time they might learn that when thoroughly driedit can be cooked to pliability again and eaten with some satisfaction.But so far they neither knew dryness nor fire.
Nor had they ever known such surroundings as presently enveloped them. Aslanting rocky mountainside, which stretched up frighteningly to thevery sky. Grayness overhead. Grayness also to one side,--the side awayfrom the mountain. And equal grayness below. The valley from which theyhad come could no longer be seen even as a different shading of themist. And as they scrambled and trudged after Burl, his followersgradually became aware of the utter strangeness of all about them. Forone result, they grew sick and dizzy. To them it seemed that allsolidity was slowly tilting. Had they been superstitious, they mighthave thought of demons preparing to punish them for daring to come tosuch a place. But--quaintly enough--Burl's followers had developed nodemonology. Your typical savage is resolved not to think, but he doeshave leisure to want. He makes gods and devils out of his nightmares,and gambles on his own speculations to the extent of offering blackmailto demons if they will only let him alone or--preferably--give him moreof the things he wants.
But the superstitions of savages involve the payment of blackmail inexact proportion to their prosperity. The Eskimos of Earth lived alwayson the brink of starvation. They could not afford the luxury of tabusand totem animals whose flesh must not be eaten, and forbidden areaswhich might contain food.
Religion there was, among Burl's people, but superstition was not. Nohumans, anywhere, can live without religion, but on Earth Eskimos didwith a minimum of superstitions,--they could afford no more--and thehumans of the forgotten planet could not afford any at all.
Therefore they climbed desperately despite the unparalleled state ofthings about them. There was no horizon, but they had never seen ahorizon. Their feeling was that what had been "down" was now partly"behind" and they feared lest a toppling universe ultimately let themfall toward that grayness they considered the sky.
But all kept on. To lag behind would be to be abandoned in this placewhere all known sensations were turned topsy-turvy. None of them couldimagine turning back. Even old Tama, whimpering in a whisper as shestruggled to keep up, merely complained bitterly of her fate. She didnot even think of revolt. If Burl had stopped, all his followers wouldhave squatted down miserably to wait for death. They had no thought ofadventure or any hope of safety. The only goodnesses they could imaginewere food and the nearness of other humans. They had food--nobody hadabandoned any of the dangling ant-bodies Tet and Dik had distributedbefore the climb began. They would not be separated from their fellows.
Burl's motivation was hardly more distinct. He had started uphill in ajudicious mixture of fear and injured vanity and desperation. There wasnothing to be gained by going back. The terrors at hand were no greaterthan those behind, so there was no reason not to go ahead.
They came to a place where the mountain-flank sank inward. There was aflat space, and behind it a winding canyon of sorts like a vast crack inthe mountain's substance. Burl breasted the curving edge and foundflatness beyond it. He stopped short.
The mouth of the canyon was perhaps fifty yards from the lip of thedownward slope. So much space was practically level, and on it weretoadstools and milkweed--two of them--and there was food. It was asmall, isolated asylum for life such as they were used to. Theycould--it was possible that they could--have found a place of safetyhere.
But the possibility was not the fact. They saw the spider-web at once.It was slung between the opposite canyon-walls by cables all of twohundred feet long. The radiating cables reached down to anchorages onstone. The snare-threads, winding out and out in that logarithmic spiralwhose properties men were so astonished to discover, were fully a yardapart. The web was for giant game. It was empty now, but Burl saw thetelegraph-cord which ran from the very center of the web to theweb-maker's lurking-place. There was a rocky shelf on the canyon-wall. Onit rested the spider, almost invisible against the stone, with one furryleg touchin
g the cable. The slightest touch on any part of the web wouldwarn it instantly.
Burl's followers accumulated behind him. Old Jon's wheezing was audible.Tama ceased her complaints to survey this spot. It might be--it couldbe--a haven, and she would have to find new and different things tocomplain about in consequence. The spider-web itself, of course, was noreason for them to be alarmed. Web-spiders do not hunt. Their males do,but they are rarely in the neighborhood of a web save at mating-time.The web itself was no reason not to settle here. But there was a reason.
The ground before the web,--between the web and themselves--was acharnel-house of murdered creatures. Half-inch-thick wing-cases of deadbeetles and the cleaned-out carapaces of other giants. The ovipositor ofan ichneumon-fly,--see feet of springy, slender, deadly-pointedtube--and the abdomen-plates of bees and the draggled antennae of mothsand butterflies.
Something very terrible lived in this small place. The mountainsideswere barren of food for big flying things. Anything which did fly thishigh for any reason would never land on sloping foodless stone.It would land here. And very obviously it would die. Becausesomething--Something--killed things as they came. It denned back in thecanyon where they could not see it. It dined here.
The humans looked and shivered, all but Burl. He cast his eyes about forbetter weapons than he possessed. He chose for himself a magnificentlance grown by some dead thing for its own defense. He pulled it out ofthe ground.
It was utterly silent, here on the heights. No sounds from the valleyrose so high. There was no noise except the small creakings made as Burlstrove to free the new, splendid weapon for himself.
That was why he heard the gasp which somebody uttered in default of ascream that would not be uttered. It was a choked, a strangled, aninarticulate sobbing noise.
He saw its cause.
There was a thing moving toward the folk from the recesses of the canyon.It moved very swiftly. It moved upon stilt-like, impossibly attenuatedlegs of impossible length and inconceivable number. Its body was thethickness of Burl's own. And from it came a smell of such monstrousfoetor that any man, smelling it, would gag and flee even without fearto urge him on. The creature was a monstrous millipede, forty feet inlength, with features of purest, unadulterated horror.
It did not appear to plan to spring. Its speed of movement did notincrease as it neared the tribesfolk. It was not rushing, like thefurious charge of the murderers Burl's tribe knew. It simply flowedsinuously toward them with no appearance of haste, but at a rate ofspeed they could not conceivably outrun.
Sticklike legs twitched upward and caught the spinning body of an ant.The creature stopped, and turned its head about and seized the objectits side-legs had grasped. It devoured it. Burl shouted again and again.
There was a rain of missiles upon the creature. But they were not tohurt it, but to divert its incredibly automaton-like attention. Its legsseized the things flung to it. It was not possible to miss. Ten,fifteen,--twenty of the items of small-game were grasped in mid-air, asif they were creatures in flight.
Burl's shoutings took effect. His people fled to the side of the levellip of ground. They climbed frantically past the opening of the valley.They fled toward the heights.
Burl was the last to retreat. The monstrous millipede stood immobile,trapped for the moment by the gratification of all its desires. It wasabsorbed by the multitude of tiny tidbits with which it had beenprovided.
It was a fact to Burl's honor that he debated a frantic attack upon themonster in its insane absorption. But the strangling stench wasdeterrent enough. He fled,--the last of his band of fugitives to leavethe place where the monstrous creature lived and preyed. As he left it,it was still crunching the small meals, one by one, with which the folkhad supplied it.
They went on up the mountain-flank. It was not to be supposed, ofcourse, that the creature could not move above the slantingrock-surface. Unquestionably it roamed far and wide, upon occasion. Butits own foetid reek would make impossible any idea of trailing thehumans by scent. And, climbing desperately as the humans did, it wouldbe unable to see them when they were past the first protuberance of themountain.
In twenty minutes they slackened their pace. Exhaustion prompted it.Caution ordered it. Because here they saw another small island offlatness in the slanting universe which was all they could see savemist. It was simply a place where boulders had piled up, and soil hadformed, and there was a miniature haven for life other than moulds whichcould grow on naked stone.
Actually, there was a space a hundred feet by fifty on which whollyfamiliar mushrooms grew. It was a thicket like a detached section of thevalley itself. Well-known edible fungi grew here. There were graypuffballs. And from it came the cheerful loud chirping of some smallbeetle, arrived at this spot nobody could possibly know how, but happilyensconsed in a separate bit of mushroom-jungle remote from the dangersof the valley. If it was small enough, it would even be safe from thereeking horror of the canyon just below it.
They broke off edible mushrooms here and ate. And this could have beensafety for them--save for the giant millipede no more than half a milebelow. Old Jon wheezed querulously that here was food and there was noneed for them to go further, just now. Here was food....
Burl regarded him with knitted brows. Jon's reaction was natural enough.The tribesfolk had never tended to think for the future because it wasimpossible to make use of such planning. Even Burl could easily enoughhave accepted the fact that this was safety for the moment and food forthe moment. But it happened that to settle down here until driven outwould--and at this moment--have deprived him of the authority he had sorecently learned to enjoy.
"You stay," he said haughtily, to Jon. "I go on, to a better place wherenothing is to be feared at all!"
He held out his hand to Saya. He assailed the slope again, headingupward in the mist.
His tribe followed him. Dik and Tet, of course, because they were boysand Burl led on to high adventures in which so far nobody had beenkilled. Dor followed because--he being the strongest man in thetribe--he had thoughtfully realized that his strength was not as usefulas Burl's brains and other qualities. Cori followed because she hadchildren, and they were safer where Burl led than anywhere else. Theothers followed to avoid being left alone.
The procession toiled on and up. Presently Burl noticed that the airseemed clearer, here. It was not the misty, only half transparent stuffof the valley. He could see for miles to right and left. He realized thecurvature of the mountain-face. But he could not see the valley. Themist hid that.
Suddenly he realized that he saw the cloud-bank overhead as an object.He had never thought of it specifically before. To him it had beensimply the sky. Now he saw an indefinite lower surface which yetdefinitely hid the heights toward which he moved. He and his followerswere less than a thousand feet below it. It appeared to Burl thatpresently he would run into an obstacle which would simply keep him fromgoing any further. The idea was disheartening. But until it happened heobstinately climbed on.
He observed that the thing which was the sky did not stay still. Itmoved, though slowly. A little higher, he could see that there wereparts of it which were actually lower than he was. They moved also, butthey moved away from him as often as they moved toward him. He had noexperience of any dangerous thing which did not leap at its victims.Therefore he was not afraid.
In fact, presently he noticed that the whiteness which was thecloud-layer seemed to retreat before him. He was pleased. Weak thingslike humans fled from enemies. Here was something which fled at hisapproach! His followers undoubtedly saw the same thing. Burl had killedspiders. He was a remarkable person. This unknown white stuff was afraidof him. Therefore it was wise to stay close to Burl. Burl found hisvanity inflamed by the fact that always--even at its thickest--the whitecloud-stuff never came nearer than some dozens of feet. He swaggered ashe led his people up.
And presently there was brightness about them. It was a greaterbrightness than the tribesfolk had ever known. They knew dayli
ght as agrayness in which one could see. Here was a brightness that shone. Theywere not accustomed to brightness.
They were not accustomed to silence, either. The noises of the valleywere like all the noises of the lowlands. They had been in the ears ofevery one of the human beings since they could hear at all. They hadgradually diminished as the valley dropped behind them. Now, in theradiant white mist which was the cloud-layer, there were no sounds atall, and the fact was suddenly startling.
They blinked in the brightness. When they spoke to each other, theyspoke in whispers. The stone underfoot was not even lichen-covered,here. It was bare and bright and glistened with wetness. The light theyexperienced took on a golden tint. All of these things were utterlyunparalleled, but the stillness was a hush instead of a menacingsilence. The golden light could not possibly be associated with fear.The people of the forgotten planet felt, most likely, the sort ofpromise in this shining tranquility which before they had known only indreams. But this was no dream.
They came up through the surface of a sea of mist, and they saw beforethem a shore of sunshine. They saw blue and sky and sunlight for thefirst time. The light smote their shins and brilliantly colored furrygarments. It glittered in changing, ever-more-colorful flashes uponcloaks made of butterfly wings. It sparkled on the great lance carriedby Burl in the lead, and the quite preposterous weapons borne by hisfollowers.
The little party of twenty humans waded ashore through the last of thethinning white stuff which was cloud. They gazed about them withwondering, astonished eyes. The sky was blue. There was green grass. Andagain there was sound. It was the sound of wind blowing among trees, andof things living in the sunshine.
They heard insects, but they did not know what they heard. The shrillsmall musical whirrings; the high-pitched small cries which made anelfin melody everywhere,--these were totally strange. All things werenew to their eyes, and an enormous exultation filled them. Fromdeep-buried ancestral memories they somehow knew that what they saw wasright, was normal, was appropriate and proper, and that this was thekind of world in which humans belonged, rather than the seething horrorof the lowlands. They breathed clean air for the first time in manygenerations.
Burl shouted in his triumph, and his voice echoed among trees andhillsides.
It was time for the plateau to ring with the shouting of a man intriumph!
The Forgotten Planet Page 10