The Mad Planet

by Murray Leinster

scum surrounded hisnow disintegrating vessel. The river had widened out until the otherbank was barely to be seen through the haze above the surface of theriver, but the nearer shore seemed firm and no more full of dangers thanthe territory his tribe inhabited. He felt the depth of the water withhis spear, then was struck with the multiple usefulness of that weapon.The water would come to but slightly above his ankles.

  Shivering a little with fear, Burl stepped down into the water, thenmade for the bank at the top of his speed. He felt a soft somethingclinging to one of his bare feet. With an access of terror, he ranfaster, and stumbled upon the shore in a panic. He stared down at hisfoot. A shapeless, flesh-colored pad clung to his heel, and as Burlwatched, it began to swell slowly, while the pink of its wrinkled foldsdeepened.

  It was no more than a leech, sharing in the enlargement nearly all thelower world had undergone, but Burl did not know that. He thrust at itwith the side of his spear, then scraped frantically at it, and it felloff, leaving a blotch of blood upon the skin where it came away. It lay,writhing and pulsating, upon the ground, and Burl fled from it.

  He found himself in one of the toadstool forests with which he wasfamiliar, and finally paused, disconsolately. He knew the nature of thefungus growths about him, and presently fell to eating. In Burl thesight of food always produced hunger--a wise provision of nature to makeup for the instinct to store food, which he lacked.

  Burl's heart was small within him. He was far from his tribe, and farfrom Saya. In the parlance of this day, it is probable that no more thanforty miles separated them, but Burl did not think of distances. He hadcome down the river. He was in a land he had never known or seen. And hewas alone.

  All about him was food. All the mushrooms that surrounded him wereedible, and formed a store of sustenance Burl's whole tribe could nothave eaten in many days, but that very fact brought Saya to his mindmore forcibly. He squatted on the ground, wolfing down the insipidmushroom in great gulps, when an idea suddenly came to him with all theforce of inspiration.

  He would bring Saya here, where there was food, food in greatquantities, and she would be pleased. Burl had forgotten the large andoily fish that still hung down his back from the sinew about his neck,but now he rose, and its flapping against him reminded him again.

  He took it and fingered it all over, getting his hands and himselfthoroughly greasy in the process, but he could eat no more. The thoughtof Saya's pleasure at the sight of that, too, reinforced hisdetermination.

  With all the immediacy of a child or a savage he set off at once. He hadcome along the bank of the stream. He would retrace his steps along thebank of the stream.

  Through the awkward aisles of the mushroom forest he made his way, eyesand ears open for possibilities of danger. Several times he heard theomnipresent clicking of ants on their multifarious businesses in thewood, but he could afford to ignore them. They were short-sighted atbest, and at worst they were foragers rather than hunters. He onlyfeared one kind of ant, the army-ant, which sometimes travels in hordesof millions, eating all that it comes upon. In ages past, when they weretiny creatures not an inch long, even the largest animals fled fromthem. Now that they measured a foot in length, not even the gorgedspiders whose distended bellies were a yard in thickness, dared offerthem battle.

  The mushroom forest came to an end. A cheerful grasshopper (_Ephigger_)munched delicately at some dainty it had found. Its hind legs werebunched beneath it in perpetual readiness for flight. A monster waspappeared above--as long as Burl himself--poised an instant, dropped, andseized the luckless feaster.

  There was a struggle, then the grasshopper became helpless, and thewasp's flexible abdomen curved delicately. Its sting entered thejointed armor of its prey, just beneath the head. The sting entered withall the deliberate precision of a surgeon's scalpel, and all struggleceased.

  The wasp grasped the paralyzed, not dead, insect and flew away. Burlgrunted, and passed on. He had hidden when the wasp darted down fromabove.

  The ground grew rough, and Burl's progress became painful. He clamberedarduously up steep slopes and made his way cautiously down their farthersides. Once he had to climb through a tangled mass of mushrooms soclosely placed, and so small, that he had to break them apart with blowsof his spear before he could pass, when they shed upon him torrents of afiery red liquid that rolled off his greasy breast and sank into theground (_Lactarius deliciosus_).

  A strange self-confidence now took possession of Burl. He walked lesscautiously and more boldly. The mere fact that he had struck somethingand destroyed it provided him with a curious fictitious courage.

  He had climbed slowly to the top of a red clay cliff, perhaps a hundredfeet high, slowly eaten away by the river when it overflowed. Burl couldsee the river. At some past floodtime it had lapped at the base of thecliff on whose edge he walked, though now it came no nearer than aquarter-mile.

  The cliffside was almost covered with shelf-fungi, large and small,white, yellow, orange, and green, in indescribable confusion andluxuriance. From a point halfway up the cliff the inch-thick cable of aspider's web stretched down to an anchorage on the ground, and thestrangely geometrical pattern of the web glistened evilly.

  Somewhere among the fungi of the cliffside the huge creature waiteduntil some unfortunate prey should struggle helplessly in its monstersnare. The spider waited in a motionless, implacable patience,invincibly certain of prey, utterly merciless to its victims.

  Burl strutted on the edge of the cliff, a silly little pink-skinnedcreature with an oily fish slung about his neck and a draggled fragmentof a moth's wing about his middle. In his hand he bore the long spear ofa minotaur beetle. He strutted, and looked scornfully down upon thewhitely shining trap below him. He struck mushrooms, and they had fallenbefore him. He feared nothing. He strode fearlessly along. He would goto Saya and bring her to this land where food grew in abundance.

  Sixty paces before him, a shaft sank vertically in the sandy, clayeysoil. It was a carefully rounded shaft, and lined with silk. It wentdown for perhaps thirty feet or more, and there enlarged itself into achamber where the owner and digger of the shaft might rest. The top ofthe hole was closed by a trap door, stained with mud and earth toimitate with precision the surrounding soil. A keen eye would have beenneeded to perceive the opening. But a keen eye now peered out from atiny crack, the eye of the engineer of the underground dwelling.

  Eight hairy legs surrounded the body of the creature that hungmotionless at the top of the silk-lined shaft. A huge misshapen globeformed its body, colored a dirty brown. Two pairs of ferocious mandiblesstretched before its fierce mouth-parts. Two eyes glittered evilly inthe darkness of the burrow. And over the whole body spread a rough,mangy fur.

  It was a thing of implacable malignance, of incredible ferocity. It wasthe brown hunting-spider, the American tarantula (_Mygale Hentzii_). Itsbody was two feet and more in diameter, and its legs, outstretched,would cover a circle three yards across. It watched Burl, its eyesglistening. Slaver welled up and dropped from its jaws.

  And Burl strutted forward on the edge of the cliff, puffed up with asense of his own importance. The white snare of the spinning spiderbelow him impressed him as amusing. He knew the spider would not leaveits web to attack him. He reached down and broke off a bit of fungusgrowing at his feet. Where he broke it, it was oozing a soupy liquid andwas full of tiny maggots in a delirium of feasting. Burl flung it downinto the web, and then laughed as the black bulk of the hidden spiderswung down from its hiding place to investigate.

  * * * * *

  The tarantula, peering from its burrow, quivered with impatience. Burldrew near, and nearer. He was using his spear as a lever, now, andprying off bits of fungus to fall down the cliffside into the colossalweb. The spider, below, went leisurely from one place to another,investigating each new missile with its palpi, then leaving them, asthey appeared lifeless and undesirable prey. Burl laughed again as aparticularly large lump of shelf-fungus narrowly missed theblack-and-s
ilver figure below. Then--

  The trap door fell into place with a faint click, and Burl whirledabout. His laughter turned to a scream. Moving toward him withincredible rapidity, the monster tarantula opened its dripping jaws. Itsmandibles gaped wide. The poison fangs were unsheathed. The creature wasthirty paces away, twenty paces--ten. It leaped into the air, eyesglittering, all its eight legs extended to seize, fangs bared--

  Burl screamed again, and thrust out his arms to ward off the impact ofthe leap. In his terror, his grasp upon his spear had become agonized.The spear point shot out, and the tarantula fell upon it. Nearly aquarter of the spear entered the body of the ferocious thing.

  It struck upon the spear, writhing horribly, still struggling to reachBurl, who was transfixed with horror. The mandibles clashed, strangesounds came from the beast. Then one of the attenuated, hairy legsrasped across Burl's forearm. He gasped in ultimate fear and steppedbackward--and the edge of the cliff gave way beneath him.

  He hurtled downward,